LaserSoft Imaging

I have recently acquired SilverFast 6.6.1r4a to run on my Mac dual-2.4gHz machine with 4gb of RAM, Mac OS 4.11.

This newest version is awesome and the thought that went into it is mind-boggling. With so many complexities in the app, and LSI having to make it work on so many different scanners and systems, certainly some problems are to be expected and I do have one I can't get a grip on.....

I can scan several images without issue, then it seems I cannot run any at all without crashes, even when I trash the Prefs files, re-boot the scanner and/or the machine, remove the scanner from a hub, swear without reproach, or pray incessantly..... but after gaining some gray hair I have finally figured out that the crashes occur right at the end of the second MultiExposure cycle. I have since scanned several images with MultiExposure off without incident, so am relatively certain that this is where the issue lies.

This feature is a big part of what drove me to the upgrade..... and contrary to what many have stated on this Forum, MultiExposure DOES make a big difference in the shadows, ONCE I set my Options > Auto tab > Shadow Offset to a setting below the default of 98 (mine's at 92 now), and I think setting the Gamma to 2.4 also helped. In fact, many of the issues I've read here seem to relate to improper Options settings.

Anyone know a fix to my crashes?

Thanks LaserSoft, and in advance to anyone who can help!

Dear Mr. Wunrow,

Is your scanner still attached to the Mac through a hub?

Please make sure not to use a hub or a slow USB 1.1 connection.
This will not be sufficient to transfer the massive amounts of data collected trough a MultiExposure scan.

If this does not solve your problem please remove other FireWire/USB devices
to ensure no conflict is present.
This can especially be the case with other imaging devices (scanners,
(web-)cams, multifunction printers, WACOM tablets, etc.) but some customers
even reported cases in which external hard-disks or iPods caused problems.

kind regards.
Arne Ketelhohn

Hello, Arne:

Thanks for your help on this last week! I'm posting the results here so hopefully other users can circumvent the same issue I was having.

It turns out the crashing wasn't related to using a hub — a common fix but I don't use one to scan — or RAM shortcomings (as I'd thought). The issue continued until you supplied the new plugin, and though the plugin was marked as being for a Nikon scanner I never had a single crash with my Epson V750M Pro while running the same-version software. So I see no reason that the issue has been fixed for the Nikon as well.

I scanned over 100 test and actual files late last week, all from 4x5 originals, and most of them being 600mb files..... and NOT ONE crash, even when I tried hard to crash it by simultaneously running PhotoShop, which I've allocated 80% of my RAM to, during the 600mb scans. And I tested several deep-shadow Velvia files with and without MultiExposure, the difference is significant and this is THE feature I've long awaited — Great Job, LaserSoft!

So it seems the new plugin worked to fix this problem, THANKS for that!

The new software is definitely a marked improvement over the old bundled version that came with my Epson in early 2008..... for anyone with lots of 4x5s to scan to a very high level, the upgrade price seems a great value indeed! I'd have never thought it possible to generate this quality of scan from any CCD scanner, Epson has also done an incredible job.

THANK YOU!

EW