LaserSoft Imaging

After experimenting with Negafix for several weeks with some hundred of negatives I found by accident the feature "Negativ Direct" (instead of Negafix).

My Nikon Coolscan V ED now produces perfect scans from color negatives (Kodak Farbwelt 100, 200) an all the problems in high saturated reds and browns (with NegaFix) ore gone! No more strange color shading!

1 Who has made similar experience?

2 "Negativ Direct" makes use of Nikons own negative algorithm. Does this detect the type of film being scanned?

Thanks

Where did you find "Negative Direct"? This tip might come in handy for others.

See page 66 of Manualcomplete_230905_en_winmac.pdf


"Positiv/Negativ*
You select between ?positive? and ?negative? according to the
film type used. Clicking ?Negativ? opens the dialogue window
?SilverFastNegaFix?.
Scanners that have a hardware solution for
positive-to-negative conversion, this can be
reached by ?Neg.Direct?. SilverFastNegaFix
will then be deactivated"

Well,

I guess my Epson does not support that feature.

This feature is only available on certain Nikon scanners.

OK. Again:

Does "Negativ Direct" detect the type of film being scanned?

Thanks

Hi,

I've found a similar problem using SF with an LS2000. NegDirect scans look fine (and similar to scans using NikonScan3). NegaFix prescans are sometimes dark and finals scans are about 3 fstops darker than the prescan view and have color balance problems. Some examples are shown at:

http://www.michaelsmithers.com/pictures ... roblem.htm

At this stage I'll soon be looking to get my money back.

Cheers,
Michael

msmithers wrote:Hi,

I've found a similar problem using SF with an LS2000. NegDirect scans look fine (and similar to scans using NikonScan3). NegaFix prescans are sometimes dark and finals scans are about 3 fstops darker than the prescan view and have color balance problems. Some examples are shown at:

http://www.michaelsmithers.com/pictures ... roblem.htm

At this stage I'll soon be looking to get my money back.

Cheers,
Michael

Are you saying that when scanning negatives, the preview is correct but the final output is different when viewed in Photoshop CS2 etc...(assuming right colour space settings in both Photoshop and Silverfast).

If so,
I have a simmilar problem and I made a support ticket request....

Yes, that is roughly what I'm finding. It's very obvious when looking directly at the histograms. In my case the silverfast histograms look ok with little or no clipping, but the final scan is heavily clipped on the dark side. And of course the color balance is different.

In fact even just with the prescan, I can never get the color balance to be good when compared to NegDirect or NikonScan3.

Cheers,
Michael

Hi msmithers,

what I see from your images is exactly the typical ugly colorcast from NegaFix.

However, in my case both prescan and final scan are looking identical, but ugly.

If the negative brand & type matches exactly with a Negafix profile you can usualy remove colour cast with the 'auto tolerance' slider and correct brightness a ltitle with the 'exposure' slider. Choosing the right spot for a whitebalance correction point usualy corrects the rest...

...however in my case the final output never matches the preview. When I set the 'Internal-Monitor' profile to 'none' the output usualy comes closer to the preview (but not fully) and this is also weird.

I already spent weeks on this subject but without any result, I hope Lasersoft solves this problem, because at this moment every image needs further processing in Photoshop and thats not why I bought Silverfast Studio.

I'm sorry, but you can work with autotolerance and white balance and any other SF-controls for 10 hours or more: You will never get a result as good as with Neg-direct (which is nothing but the original Hardware / Firmware from Nikon!!!)

However, I just double checked: NegaFix Preview and final scan look 100,0% identical (poor). I checked with Photoshop CS 9.0

Make sure, both SF and your viewer are using the same color space and your viewer supports your monitor profile. (this won't work with Irfanview etc!)

SF moderators are still silent ....

Unfortunately Neg Direct is not available in my version of SF for the 9950F scanner (Canon).

I have checked and tested everything hunderded times and more, but colour spaces are ok (Adobe 1998) the monitor is calibrated (I especially bought an Monaco Optix XR calibrator for that...) but the problems persist.... and the problems only occure when scanning negatives. When scanning a print there is zero difference between the preview and the output in Photoshop CS2.

So I am pretty sure this is a silverfast problem and not a configuration or usage problem. But I am having this scanner for two months now and I am still unable to scan negatives without colour problems.