LaserSoft Imaging

Normally the image in the preview looks exactely like in Photoshop(6).But as soon as I zoom in in the preview window,the image looks significantely darker than before.
(Powerlook 3000/WinMe/SF 5.5).By the way I never had a Silverfast Version without any annoying bugs.WIll I ever get one?

How to get problems solved more quickly and efficiently!

You are talking plural here, but only mentioning one problem! I would advise you work with us with personal email and you have a chance to get your problems solved more quickly.

We are working hard and do our best to solve all problems as fast as possible. The forum is meant to be a contructive means to help customers to profit from advice of others and to inspire us to enhance our product. It is not intended to distribute negative feelings, whatever the reason might be.

So, please work closely with us and you will profit along with others!

You can submit your problems directly to me and I will personally take care of them!

Karl-Heinz Zahorsky, email: khz@silverfast.com

Just to put things right,it was not my intention to ?distribute negative feelings".But as I already mentioned before in this forum,the version I bought(SF5.0) was so full of bugs (for my Powerlook 3000),that I was not able to scan
black and white negatives and color negatives for about half a year.Meanwhile I forgot the less important bugs,
fortunately.I don`t want to harp upon old stories,`cause now I have SF 5.5 and most of the bugs are gone.But maybe you can understand,that every new bug,that I notice,is a red rag to me (for example the missing histograms;I know,you told me,they will be fixed).But I want to emphasize,that on the whole I consider Silverfast as one of the best scanning softwares.By the way,I thank you for your offer,to email directely to you.
I know,the purpose of this forum is to help each other and I will try to use it this way,but please don`t feel angry
about a little criticism from time to time.

"The forum is meant to be a contructive means to help customers to profit from advice of others and to inspire us to enhance our product. It is not intended to distribute negative feelings, whatever the reason might be."

Stephan's comments were appropriate. If SilverFast ever gets to the point where we can do something useful with it, then we can turn our attention to exchanging advice with one another in this forum "as it was intended." But as long as SilverFast is a buggy, sorry piece of crap, I find it useful to know that I'm not the only one having severe problems with it. When you stop hearing our complaints, it'll be because we gave up on SilverFast, left the forum, and took our business elsewhere. As long as we're in this forum, you at least have a chance to convince us that SilverFast has some merit.

This morning I received an e-mail from my best customer discussing a project we'd talked about a couple of months ago. It wasn't a time-critical project then. Now it is. Next Tuesday I'm going to have to explain to her why I can't commit to a deadline. She's not going to express any "negative feelings" if I tell her that SilverFast causes my system to crash when scanning medium format negatives. She's not going to express any "negative feelings" if I tell her that SilverFast can't scan the entire slide on my 35mm film scanner or that the scanned image doesn't match the prescan crop box. She's not going to express any "negative feelings" if I tell her I've spent 400 hours trying to get SilverFast to work to at least a basic level. She's not going to complain at all. If fact, I'll never hear anything from her again. And she was my best customer.

Roger,

I've been on this forum for awhile, and I've noticed your many negative posts as well. I'm sorry to hear of your troubles, but for many of us, Silverfast is a Godsend - in my case Epson's TwainPro is a piece of crap that required me to spend an additional hour or two in PhotoShop cleaning up the scan - now I typically spend 5 minutes, post-scan.

It sounds like you should take this matter up with Lasersoft's Customer Service People instead of posting all over this forum.

If I were you, I'd also be very upset - considering how much Silverfast AI costs. I'd try to get my money back, and try out another scanning package.

I think what people are trying to tell you is that this seems to be a problem that won't be fixed on the forums, and your negative comments are too much.

Roger,

On 2001-09-01 01:26, RogerMillerPhoto wrote:

Stephan's comments were appropriate. If SilverFast ever gets to the point where we can do something useful with it, then we can turn our attention to exchanging advice with one another in this forum "as it was intended." But as long as SilverFast is a buggy, sorry piece of crap, I find it useful to know that I'm not the only one having severe problems with it. When you stop hearing our complaints, it'll be because we gave up on SilverFast, left the forum, and took our business elsewhere. As long as we're in this forum, you at least have a chance to convince us that SilverFast has some merit.

Not everyone is experiencing the problems that you seem to be having, especially those associated with Photoshop and very large images when using Windows Me.

I note that some of your queries regarding memory and crashing that you posted on the Adobe Photoshop UtoU and scanner forums received no direct response. I haven't read a comprehensive description of the problem on this forum. So unless you have communicated the problem directly to LaserSoft they don't know anything about it. That will make fixing it a very difficult task.

This morning I received an ...
...to her why I can't commit to a deadline. She's not going to express any "negative feelings" if I tell her that SilverFast causes my system to crash when scanning medium format negatives. She's not going to express any "negative feelings" if I tell her that SilverFast can't scan the entire slide on my 35mm film scanner or that the scanned image doesn't match the prescan crop box.

The crash is EASY to get round without loosing ANY productivity time given the workflow that you were following. You state that Insight does not crash, therefore scan the negative raw in Insight and edit them as you have been doing in HDR using Negafix. In the meantime ensure that LaserSoft support are made aware of ALL the details associated with this problem and hopefully a fix will be available soon.


The prescan of a whole 35mm slide? I read this complaint before and to be honest I struggled to understand what it was you were trying to communicate. The above description helped a lot.

The S4000 and SS120 will overscan your image by some VERY large margin so the only way that the final scan is clipped tighter is if your cropping margin was too tight. This happens in Insight and SilverFast. If for some reason you not getting the full frame I would suggest that you set the crop box to capture the full scan window and then crop in Photoshop. Another possibility assumes that you are trying to use a common cropping frame for a batch of four scans. This will NOT work since the SS4000 and SS120 do NOT scan each frame in the identical position. The crop box for the first frame will not be anywhere near correct for the 3rd and 4th frame (mounted slides). Again this very same problem exists in Insight. It is a function of the scanner mechanics NOT the software. Yes I agree it is a pain in the butt, but not one LaserSoft have any control over.

If you are using the Polaroid uncut film strip holder for your slide scans then the very tight cropping is a function of the those damned spacer strips and usually requires that you pay VERY careful attention to the film strip alignment.


I think using the phrase "sorry piece of crap" is unlikley to endear you to the guys and gals who write the software and who like you have a life outside of work but haven't seen it for weeks as they try to iron out the problems they "now" know to exist. I learned that lesson the hard way with Nikon. Like a few others I gave them hell on their scanner support forum over an issue that caused scans to have jagged edges to diagonals. I'll not waste bandwidth with details other than to say that forum no longer exists.





BTW: my comments and suggestions are intended to be constructive.


Ian



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: ilyons on 2001-09-01 12:30 ]</font>

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<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: ilyons on 2001-09-01 12:33 ]</font>

Thanks for your comments, Ian. It's always a pleasure to hear from you. You seem to have a knack for being able to give specific information to solve a specific problem that no one else seems to be able to do.

I would have replied sooner, but I took my own advice and left the formum when I decided that I would never be able to get SilverFast to work. I intended to use Insight and v**s**n for all scanner processing, but upon brushing up on the new version of Insight I rediscovered that it is now capable of creating 48-bit files. I knew that a couple of months ago, but had forgotton it during my SilverFast problems. Too bad Lasersoft didn't know about Insight, or they could have suggested it as a workaround. And too bad they didn't know that SilverFast Ai won't handle large files on a 512k RAM machine or they wouldn't have wasted so much of my time with wild goose chases. I've posted a suggestion that they fix SilverFast Ai as I know there are going to be a lot of medium format scanners used with 512k RAM machines. If Photoshop, Insight, and SilverFast HDR can do it, then Ai ought to be able to do it too.

Yes, I've kept Lasersoft informed of my problems. Their info@silverfast.com address is worthless as I've never gotten a response from it, though I have to admit that I haven't tried it since their serial number problems. Maybe they've got more time to answer their mail now. I've been corresponding with Paul at SilverFast. He seems to really care about helping me with my problems, though I haven't heard from him since last Wednesday or Thursday of last week. I think Lasersoft shut down for a 4-day extended weekend. And I wrote an e-mail to the company's president this weekend before I found the Insight workaround.

So far as the problem with my Polaroid SprintScan 4000 35mm film scanner goes, I'm sure I'm doing everything right. It worked OK with the previous version of SilverFast. I think I may have a bad software install. I've ask Paul for some advice on how to do a reinstall properly. I think I have some bad preference files for the SS4000, or something similar, as its scan doesn't agree at all with the prescan's crop box. If it turns out to be a SilverFast Ai 5.5 problem, I can simply reinstall the old version as I can't use Ai with my SS120 scanner anyway.

With regard to this forum, my dictionary defines "forum" as "a public meeting place for open discussion or expression of ideas." If Lasersoft wants to use the forum as a marketing tool rather than as a service to their customers, then it will fail as people will see right through them. Anything I've said is not to be taken personnaly. I have no fault with the people at Lasersoft whom I've spoken to by telephone, and certainly not with Paul. I do wish their responses to my problems were a little faster, though.