Descreen Moans, Groans and Algorithm Pains
PostPosted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 11:39 pm
Ok, I know the descreen feature has beed debated elsewhere but can I run this past anyone interested...
I'm a designer working on book which is essentially a reprint of old magazine articles. I recommended to my client they buy a Microtek i900 for the task. Spec seemed good and it came with Silverfast Ai. Had a look round this site and was impressed with the auto-descreen demo (as you are with demos) and since this is a key part of the job in question it seemed a major bonus.
First gripe, SF site says of the descreen feature:
* Ai, DCPro and HDR offer the complete descreening dialogue with preview, manual selection and automatic screen-detection. The fully automatic functions are not included.
Great methinks. Auto de-secreen detection, and therefore removal, here I come. I visit my client to set up new scanner and soon discover that, er, the SF Ai that ships with it doesn't have the auto-detect feature. I now expect to get swiftly pointed to the bit of the software agreement that explained this and yes, I can now see the demo is Ai Studio, but come on SF I think the site page on descreening quoted above is somewhat misleading.
Anyhow, I still have a job to do - and assuming the MD of SF is not about to offer me a free Studio upgrade - is the auto-detect worth the extra 60 bucks? Anyone used it and find it great?
I have to say I've found the SF descreen no better - in fact slightly worse on first tests - than Microtek's own Scanwizard software. Furthermore I do need to up the resolution of some of my scans and the lpi input ratio thing on SF is limiting. (No need for anyone to post up explanation of screen algorithms and the optimum scan resolutions of already printed matter. I've read the other very useful posts, tried the tricks kindly suggested and understand the logic - but with text and graphics as well as printed images you just sometimes need a bit more res to play with than what's in the original printed matter).
I like the look of the auto-detect descreen but if the Ai Studio version also prevents lpi enlargement above 100% without canny reworking of the input ratios, and, it doesn't improve on the descreen of the MT scanwizard it looks like I've backed the wrong software for this job.
I'm a designer working on book which is essentially a reprint of old magazine articles. I recommended to my client they buy a Microtek i900 for the task. Spec seemed good and it came with Silverfast Ai. Had a look round this site and was impressed with the auto-descreen demo (as you are with demos) and since this is a key part of the job in question it seemed a major bonus.
First gripe, SF site says of the descreen feature:
* Ai, DCPro and HDR offer the complete descreening dialogue with preview, manual selection and automatic screen-detection. The fully automatic functions are not included.
Great methinks. Auto de-secreen detection, and therefore removal, here I come. I visit my client to set up new scanner and soon discover that, er, the SF Ai that ships with it doesn't have the auto-detect feature. I now expect to get swiftly pointed to the bit of the software agreement that explained this and yes, I can now see the demo is Ai Studio, but come on SF I think the site page on descreening quoted above is somewhat misleading.
Anyhow, I still have a job to do - and assuming the MD of SF is not about to offer me a free Studio upgrade - is the auto-detect worth the extra 60 bucks? Anyone used it and find it great?
I have to say I've found the SF descreen no better - in fact slightly worse on first tests - than Microtek's own Scanwizard software. Furthermore I do need to up the resolution of some of my scans and the lpi input ratio thing on SF is limiting. (No need for anyone to post up explanation of screen algorithms and the optimum scan resolutions of already printed matter. I've read the other very useful posts, tried the tricks kindly suggested and understand the logic - but with text and graphics as well as printed images you just sometimes need a bit more res to play with than what's in the original printed matter).
I like the look of the auto-detect descreen but if the Ai Studio version also prevents lpi enlargement above 100% without canny reworking of the input ratios, and, it doesn't improve on the descreen of the MT scanwizard it looks like I've backed the wrong software for this job.