LaserSoft Imaging

Hi all!
When scanning B&W-Film with my Microtek 120tf-scanner, I get very coarse, almost posterized tonality. The problem seems to be a missing Negafix-Profile for Neopan Acros and Agfa Copex, the Films I mainly use. When scanning 6x6 negs, it is no longer a problem, since I scan them as positive and revert them in PS. BUT - if I try to scan the 35mm film as positive film, the images gets soft (because the scanner expects a mounted slide. So my neg-stripes are outside the scanners DOF). My question: Is there any way to disable Negafix so that I get a neutral Tonecurve or which Negafix-Profile is closest to neutral, so that I don't get those weird tonalities?
Regards
Nitrofunk

Hi,

this might be too trivial for your purposes, but did you try to choose, e.g., 16bit Grayscale as output format? I guess it won't be possible to get more neutral images...
Regarding Negafix: I have a different scanner, but in my case turning Negafix off is simply achieved by selecting "Neg:direct" in the "General"-Tab.
Of course it should also be possible to fine-tune the Negafix profiles, but I don't have much experience with that.

HTH,
Bernhard Barkow

Thanks Bernard. Where exactly is this "general"-Tab?

-Nitro

In the main dialog window (where you can adjust the resolution settings, color depth, etc.) there is a row of tabs immediately below the tools palette (where you see the magnifier glass, the auto-adjust button, etc.). The first says "General", the second is "Frame". By default, "Frame" is active, but by clicking on "General" you can access the card with the positive/negative setting (and also the preferences dialog, IIRC).

Bernhard

I knew it... There isn't any "Neg: Direct"-Option in my software. What a shame...

Ok, I just did some research and found out that this Neg:direct mode is probably only available only for Nikon scanners (which I have). Sorry for pointing you in the wrong direction.
So the only option is to adjust the Negafix profiles; it should be possible to create a completely neutral profile, after all I think it's only a set of curves mapping film data to image data. As I said before, my experiences with Negafix are very limited, but I'll take a look at it later.

Bernhard

Nitrofunk,

It looks like the best you can do is to select Other as the film type and then select the appropriate ISO setting.

Perhaps LaserSoft will make this an option in future versions, I don't know.

Good luck

Nitrofunk,

sorry, it took me some time to play around with the NegaFix settings; the best choice I found was (as RAG suggested) to select Other/Other and then fine-tune the results by overriding "Auto" adjustment and moving adjusting the sliders in the histogram (you have to activate Expert mode by clicking the button at the bottom right to do this). Adjusting the curves seems rather difficult, the user interface seems not to be made for me.
What also works ok (probably better) is to select a b/w profile and use the midtone tool to define 4 neutral spots on the image (evenly distributed over the whole range from black to white).
And of course I still think that the best way to scan b/w film is to scan it as grayscale. This makes the result neutral by definition, and if you want to have a slight color cast you can finetune this in PhotoShop more comfortably (either make it duotone or just superpose a gradient map layer or a solid color fill layer with the proper adjustments).

HTH
Bernhard