LaserSoft Imaging

Man oh man am I getting frustrated...

I've been all over the Quicktime videos, the FAQ, the (useless!) Support Advisor, and this forum. I've printed out and tried to read the 480-page manual. Lord what a mess!

I just want to get some simple information, and I don't want to earn (another!) graduate degree in order to do it.

All I want to do is convert my 100-plus rolls of 35mm color negatives to an archive of digital files. I want to create the best files I can manage, without making any irreversible changes, except dust and scratch removal. I honestly don't know what I will do with them in future, and I don't think I should have to know that. I'm willing to devote Terabytes of storage, and weeks of my spare time to the project. But I only want to do it ONCE, and I don't want to screw it all up by making some newbie mistake.

I bought a Plustek 7600i scanner, which comes bundled with SilverFast Ai. Supposedly a really good setup for the amateur with hundreds, not thousands, of dollars he's willing to spend. But once I climbed into the cockpit I realized I was facing the controls and instruments of a Boeing 747! It is way, way too much! And as best I can tell, the training manuals are printed in Martian.

Look. All I want is ONE PAGE of clear, unambiguous instructions on how to preserve my photos. I don't want to learn how to rebuild a transmission, I just want to drive the car. I have no interest in learning RIGHT NOW all the cool things you can do with SilverFast, I just want to do my work and get it done. Later, maybe, I'll play around with gammas and Q's and histograms and stuff. Right now I want to go from 'A' to 'B' without making any mistakes.

Can you help me do that?!?

Hi there!

ebianchi wrote:Right now I want to go from 'A' to 'B' without making any mistakes.

There are many ways to go from A to B. The easiest is walking from a to b, still a baby needs to learn how to walk and it might take it a year or so. You can ride a bike or drive a car but you had to learn how to drive a car, and even to get a driving license. But the most important, it requires trial and error and a lot of practice. You never get it right the first time.

Same thing with scanning, there are many variables to take into account.

ebianchi wrote:I've been all over the Quicktime videos, the FAQ, the (useless!) Support Advisor, and this forum. I've printed out and tried to read the 480-page manual. Lord what a mess!

Great! that is something, only the practice is missing!

ebianchi wrote:All I want is ONE PAGE of clear, unambiguous instructions on how to preserve my photos.

All in one page is not possible but simplifying, the steps you need to perform a scan are:

-Prescan (make a preview)
-Frame your picture
-Adjust (select type of material, set scan resolution, make image corrections)
-Scan (let the scanner digitize the picture and save it to a file)

I hope this information is helpful

Kind regards

Have a look at Ian Lyon's tutorials for Silverfast. Not the current version , but the basics are there.

http://www.computer-darkroom.com/sf5_contents.htm

www.scantips.com offers basic scanning information.

Dear Degrub,

Thanks for your contribution

Cheers

I can sympathise with ebianchi's problem. I have much the same issue with this software. I have just spent the entire weekend trying to learn how to scan some slides, and improve the digital files by removing scratches etc. It is seriously difficult for the ordinary mortal. I hope he has found out by now. There is no simple guide anywhere I can find - what I need is something that tells me what to do in ordinary language. Its way too sophisticated. I'm sure its all very clever but all I want to do is preserve a whole lot of slides and take out the obvious scratches and dodgy bits on the way.

My current issue is with the iSRD button. First of all, it comes up after the scan magnified in little boxes. What I want is a global view, which I can then toggle between the raw state and the amended. That way I know whether its worth my while pursuing it further. Instead I am forced to look at each corner and square for artifacts. Of course, I find some - bits of dust etc. So I do an auto 'scratch remove'. But then some black messy bits remain. And I also lose some of the definition on important things like peoples faces. I draw a neat little lasso around them (I've not found any other way, although it says something about paintbrush) and play with that. But I haven't got a clue how to do it and it doesn't seem to work if there is more than one lasso. And I still have over 200 to do. Back to the screen then.

Dear FRuss,

You are on the right track. The size of the enlarged view is directly related to the scan resolution you are using for your final scan. It is way more precise to work in that way than having a general view. If you want to make a general correction you can make a prescan, then set the scan resolution to a low resolution first, then open the iSRD make your corrections, close the iSRD dialogue and then increase the scanning resolution before making the final scan.

Cheers

I have a 100 slide carousel, which I purchased in order to scan lots of slides quickly with my powerslide 3650. Do the simple instructions provided:
-Prescan (make a preview)
-Frame your picture
-Adjust (select type of material, set scan resolution, make image corrections)
-Scan (let the scanner digitize the picture and save it to a file)

mean I must do this for every slide on the carousel, or can I set up for the first slide, hit the scan button and go for coffee?
I sure like my coffee, I hope it is the latter.

Eliot

Hi Eliot,

I think you are looking for this document: http://www.silverfast.com/download/docu/addendumforslidemagazinescanner_en_2008-08-27.pdf

Cheers

Morales,
I have been been working on the instructions you suggested. I am using Silverfast Archive Suite. I have scanned several slides several times, and I have been having trouble with some aspects of the instructions. I am trying to go with the two step process (2 and 5) as suggested in the addendum. One of the problems I am having is in saving the images in RAW format. Perhaps you could explain how to do that. Also, since I haven't been able to save in RAW format, I have been saving in jpeg, and in tiff, but I have been unable to upload the saved image in Picasa. Perhaps you could offer some suggestions. Thanks for your help.

Also, I am getting this message:
"You've selected the following Color Management Settings: Input-Internal: Image color Matching(ICM)
In order to work properly, the following settings are missing: scanner (Kodachrome)

and I have to cancel the process in order to get past this message.

Dear Eliot

Eliot wrote:One of the problems I am having is in saving the images in RAW format. Perhaps you could explain how to do that.

Raw files are written in TIFF format, just make sure you select the 48 bit HDR or 64 bit HDRi scan types, your pictures will then be saved in raw format

Eliot wrote:Also, since I haven't been able to save in RAW format, I have been saving in jpeg, and in tiff, but I have been unable to upload the saved image in Picasa. Perhaps you could offer some suggestions.

Make sure you save your pictures in 24 bit JPG or TIFF. I do not think Picasa is able to read other bit depth formated pictures

Eliot wrote:You've selected the following Color Management Settings: Input-Internal: Image color Matching(ICM)
In order to work properly, the following settings are missing: scanner (Kodachrome)

If you are getting this message is because you are working in Kodachrome mode, so you have to make sure you have the Kodachrome profile for your scanner selected, after that you can also select the "Image Color Matching" color system.

You might want to check chapter 7 of the user manual http://www.silverfast.com/documentation/en.html

Kind regards

Thanks for the info.