LaserSoft Imaging

I'm using SilverFast to archive my family slides. I currently have 6.4.4 Ai and HDR, expecting to upgrade to the latest 6.6 Archive Studio in a few days.

What I'm wondering about is the "safe" combination of options to choose for batch processing. I have rolls and a roll adapter, most rolls are slides, but a few are black and white. Most slides are ORWO, the film from Eastern Germany from 1980s-1990s, Svema (USSR), and Kodak/Agfa/Fuji from mid-1990s-2000s. The general condition is OK, a bit faded sometimes for the Svema slides, less so for OWRO.

What I'd like to understand better is, how many passes should I choose? For 6.4.4, I have a choice of 1/2/4/8/16. I also can do it with ICE, Standard or Fine, or SRD. As I understand, 6.6 adds Multi-Exposure and iSRD which replaces ICE on Mac OSX, what I'm using.

Do I understand correctly that Multi-Exposure involves multi-pass anyways, and iSRD supercedes ICE and SRD, feeding off the same infra-red data which ICE would be using? So choosing multi-exposure with iSRD should be safest? But is there still a choice of the number of passes, and how do you come up with a number here? I'm doing about 10 slides a day, but still 2 passes take already enough on the LS4000 with ICE on Fine.

Finally, does SilverFast replace the manufacturer's drivers, and so enables the scanner to work on the Snow Leopard? When googling for how to care for the CoolScan (do I need to oil it after 5 years in storage? clean? adjust?), I found that Nikon discontinued its support of Nikon Scan, and LS4000 version does now work with the roll and slide batch adapters anymore on Snow Leopard:

http://instrument-support.nikonusa.com/ ... c-os-10.6-"snow-leopard"-%3F

Cheers,
Alexy

Dear Alexy,

To your questions:

braver wrote:What I'm wondering about is the "safe" combination of options to choose for batch processing. I have rolls and a roll adapter, most rolls are slides, but a few are black and white. Most slides are ORWO, the film from Eastern Germany from 1980s-1990s, Svema (USSR), and Kodak/Agfa/Fuji from mid-1990s-2000s. The general condition is OK, a bit faded sometimes for the Svema slides, less so for OWRO.

This is a very relative question, I would say, for batch processing would be best to use the Archive suite and the HDR or HDRi raw file modes.

braver wrote:What I'd like to understand better is, how many passes should I choose? For 6.4.4, I have a choice of 1/2/4/8/16. I also can do it with ICE, Standard or Fine, or SRD. As I understand, 6.6 adds Multi-Exposure and iSRD which replaces ICE on Mac OSX, what I'm using.

Well, the more passes the better. SilverFast 6.6 adds Multi-Exposure but only for scanners which are Multi-Exposure capable and it is sold separately as an extra module, iSRD replaces ICE on the Nikon scanners but only under Mac. Under Windows Nikon scanners are still using Digital ICE.

braver wrote:Do I understand correctly that Multi-Exposure involves multi-pass anyways, and iSRD supercedes ICE and SRD, feeding off the same infra-red data which ICE would be using? So choosing multi-exposure with iSRD should be safest? But is there still a choice of the number of passes, and how do you come up with a number here? I'm doing about 10 slides a day, but still 2 passes take already enough on the LS4000 with ICE on Fine.

Multi-Exposure uses two passes, one at normal speed and a second pass at a slower speed overexposing the picture and reducing the noise in that way. iSRD uses the information of the infrared channel which is also used by ICE. With Multi-Exposure there is no choise of the number of passes, it is only either on or off.

braver wrote:does SilverFast replace the manufacturer's drivers, and so enables the scanner to work on the Snow Leopard?

Yes, SilverFast replaces the manufacturer's driver under Mac operating systems.

braver wrote:When googling for how to care for the CoolScan (do I need to oil it after 5 years in storage? clean? adjust?)

I guess you should better contact Nikon for a really accurate answer on this point, scanners are delicate precision devices and you do not want to risk damaging it.

Cheers

Hello

What is the best for scanning image quality,
as we cannot do both option :

option 1 : multi-pass (2 or more)

or

option 2 : muti-exposure 2

tell me what's best on different dpi scanning option
what's best for noise reduction / color sync, white balance, dark exposure, clearness, bluryness .???

I try to do some test, but I didn't find major differencies...
so please help

Thanks in advance

Dear Keyman,

This question has been answered many times in multiple threads.

Check this out: http://forum.silverfast.com/post24926.html#p24926

Cheers