Output scans don't match preview

[anywhereSF]

Strong blue cast

Screen shot 2013-06-29 at 2.59.44 PM copy.png (135.34 KiB) Viewed 2090 times

Hello all,

After spending several hours trying to get reliable scans on my new Plustek 8200i with SilverFast 8 on a Mac, I'm at a loss on several issues, and hoping someone here can provide some help.

I've spent time figuring out how to adjust the manual settings to get the image to look correct, but my final scans almost never match the prescan image. I've had a couple scans come out correct, but most vary from a slight to extreme color casts. I've tried editing the settings in both standard preview and 1:1 preview, but both give me the same issues.

Also, looking through some information online, I've seen mention that SilverFast automatically adjusts some features like NegaFix with each frame. I've suspected that NegaFix may be a problem, so I've turned off the automatic feature, adjusted the threshold to max, and tried manually setting the curves and expansion to look correct, but the output scans still do not match.

I can't seem to find a way in Silverfast 8 to fully turn off all of these automatic adjustments. Is this an option that I'm missing somewhere?

I can sometimes get one frame to look correct, but can't find a way to lock these settings in to scan at least the rest of the same roll of film, without Silverfast applying automatic corrections that mess up the subsequent photos. At this point, I'm having to spend 20 minutes to an hour for each photo, going through multiple iterations of prescan, 1:1 scan, settings adjustment, final scan, and repeating if the output doesn't match. The software seems to have a lot of useful features, which are, at the moment, completely useless to me because I can't trust that I will get an image that at all resembles the preview that I see.

I would love to be able to take advantage of the NegaFix and other auto adjust features in the software, but I can't seem to trust Silverfast to choose the correct settings. Is there any way to switch the software to a fully manual mode and stop Silverfast from choosing any settings for me?

I've attached at couple screenshots with the output scan on the left and the 1:1 preview on the right to show the range of difference I see between the images.

Strong blue cast

Screen shot 2013-06-29 at 2.59.44 PM copy.png (135.34 KiB) Viewed 2090 times

Slight color cast

Screen shot 2013-06-28 at 8.45.58 AM copy.png (166.93 KiB) Viewed 2090 times

Thanks,
Mike

[LSI_Ketelhohn]

Dear Mike,

Please delete the "Plustek****.frameworks" folders from
/Library/Frameworks

After that reinstall the latest SilverFast version 8.0.1r26.


kind regards,
Arne Ketelhohn.

[anywhereSF]

Dear Mike,

Please delete the "Plustek****.frameworks" folders from
/Library/Frameworks

After that reinstall the latest SilverFast version 8.0.1r26.


kind regards,
Arne Ketelhohn.

This seemed to work for a while, but the color casts are back again. I have downloaded some new versions as they've come out. Do I need to manually go in and delete the frameworks each time I update? Even 1:1 scans at the same resolution as the final scan give me very different color profiles. In the attached file, preview on the right with a greenish tint, and output on the left with a strong purple cast.

[LSI_Ketelhohn]

Dear Mike,

No, we do not get new drivers that often.
So reinstalling the frameworks should not be necessary for every update.

Is that cast maybe occurring after some time of working?
Do they vanish if you let the scanner cool down?

That would point towards a temperature based issue.

Have you contacted Plustek about that matter?

kind regards,
Arne Ketelhohn.

[anywhereSF]

Thanks for the reply!

I haven't contacted Plustek yet. Since it was fixed by firmware before, I figured it might be a similar issue. I'll go ahead and reach out to them as well.

It doesn't seem to matter much if the scanner has been used for a while and is warmed up or has just been turned on, I see the effect with both. Oddly, I seem to notice it more with Portra 400 than with other films that are scanned using different curves. Maybe certain scan settings are exaggerating the effect, or causing some colors to be over or under sampled in the actual scan?

I can't find a good explanation for it, but I'll see what Plustek has to say about it, too.