LaserSoft Imaging

1) Although the software has improved lot I could imagine a slightly better syncronisation between the internal Silverfast Colormanagement with the Adobe CMM as Adobe ACE for some cases. In general for example keeping the correspondance of highest higlight in CMYK Preview (3% cyan) and colored greytones (when color isn?t concrete), blue tones turned in SF?s selektive color correction, or prescan-correspondance of Kodak Portra 160 VC/NC 120new in special - if it is possible. It seems to be nearly the same wether a) working with SF launcher or with the PS plug-in or b) wether working in SF CMS internal perceptive or relative colormetric.

2) The color cast removing tool in the histogram dialog seems to have some little negative influence a) on the orange tones in selective color correction with 12 tones referring to skin tones (it tears apart the changeover of color zones), and b) to the highlight saturation in contrasty but not overexposed flashlight situations (a kind of histogramm compression). This is meant for the ai software as well as for the hdr software in use with the right presets.

3) Maybe I could imagine a small tool to adjust the angle/width of the selected color in the tool selective color correction. Maybe it corrects the little rest-bug mentioned above at 2).

Well, just if you think about how to optimize a very good software.

Ogando

Dear Ogando,

thank you very much for your suggestions:

(1) What do you mean by synchronisation? Should it be possible to choose from within SilverFast the CMM to work with in SilverFast?

(2) Color cast removal is performed before the selective color correction "sees" the image data. Is the problem observed by you that the color cast shift moves somes skintones into a different color sector?

(3) The current selective color correction does not allow to customize the orientation and size of the color sectors. Changing this would need to implement a different tool. Are you mainly interested in this because of your item (2) ?

Best regards
Martin

Dear Martin,

thank you very much for the answer.

>> (1) What do you mean by synchronisation? Should it be possible to choose from within SilverFast the CMM to work with in SilverFast?

(1) Maybe this could help, until Adobe?s Photoshop rules the market with its offers of CMMs and it is setting the standard.

Somehow I like to have the opportunity for a zero conversion between Silverfast and Photoshop and between SilverFast Ai and HDR-Studio also without using 48Bit/HDR, that means in the normal workflow.

After using SilverFasts possibilities in the tools I would like to find my prescan adjustements in the final scan of the Ai or the HDR file for digitals.

First of all as SilverFast user I don?t know wich CMM SilverFast is using.
But using exactly the corrspondand colorsettings in the profile dialogues of Photoshop and SilverFast there should be possible to do a zero-conversion between both programms. But asctually it isn?t. That means the same for the Ai software as for the HDR, that now became the HDR-Studio.

I try to do special adjustements in the SF-histogramm dialogue using the densitometer in CMYK-preview but still working in RGB.

At first opening my files in Photoshop I miss sometimes my settings for white inside the offestprinting range as C5/M3/Y4 or C4/M3/Y3. In some cases (according personal experience somehow predictable) I get C0/M0/Y0 using in Photoshop the current Adobe ACE as standard for RGB workflow. I try to prepare my files for the limits of offestprinting. Perceptive or colorimetric RIs keep their individual charcater, but don?t change the issue.

The problem seems to be the same wether using for the densitometer-corrspondance ISO Coated (in both SF and PS) or Euroscale Coated v2 (in both SF and PS). I use to work this way for scans and digital camera files.

At second opening my files in Photoshop I miss sometimes my settings for saturation of the colors, wether using the ACR in SilverFast or not. This is specially relevant for the Ai software scanning Fuji Superia or Kodak 160VC/NC 120film. In the described categories the final file however doesn?t correspond with the preview.

From discussion threads in the ECI transmedialist I know that it seems to be difficult to keep the correspondance of color numbers in finally adjusted files between applications using different CMMs.

It would be very nice to avoid double work.

>> (2) Color cast removal is performed before the selective color correction "sees" the image data. Is the problem observed by you that the color cast shift moves somes skintones into a different color sector?

(2) It seems to move not only skintones into a different color sector, it seems to affect also the whitebalance sometimes.

Since starting with SilverFast with version 5.5 I used to keep "color cast removal" always on and I forgot it along the time. It served me always as a kind of minimal final adjustment help for general settings, specially in the histogram and curves dialogue.

Since I use SF Versions 6 Ai/HDR/HDR-Studio in calibrated mode for Mac OSX I made the experience better not to use this tool anymore wether with ACR slightly on or not. The first time I observed this has been with a Rawfile of my garden with snow testing the new HDR-Studio version at the end of 2004. I got all kind of rainbowcolors until I remembered the already forgotten (and until now never critical "color cast removal"). If now I have some trouble I look after this button at first .


>> (3) The current selective color correction does not allow to customize the orientation and size of the color sectors. Changing this would need to implement a different tool. Are you mainly interested in this because of your item (2) ?

(3) Yes, although there were noticable improvements from version5.5 to 6 and following. Actually I find more and more difficult to make even little prescan adjustements for skintones in the selective colorrection for 12 tones (doesn?t matter if working in 16 bit or 8 bit in the critical cases). Actually I use the 6 tone correction only specially with the latest orange masks of C-41 120 film and 4/5inch I still use.

I hope this report will help you. In german its easier for me. Ogando

Dear Ogando,

sorry for the short answer.

SilverFast currently used the CMM that has been specified in the ColorSync's system settings.
You can edit these using the "ColorSync Utility" found under Applications/Utilities.

Best regards
Martin

Dear Martin,
in the color-sync utility of Mac OSX Panther I only can edit "Automatic- whatever automatic may be here" or "Apple CMM"( which nobody I know uses in Photoshop). In Mac OSX Tiger there is really no editing possible any more.

Thank you for the hint, but I?m afraid this doesn?t really help here as far as most people use the Adobe ACE engine for many reasons.
(There has been a remarkble thread at the ECi-list two summers ago.)

The standard profile settings in the Col-Sync-utility are for opening non tagged files only.

These are the facts as far as the context menue tells me.

best regards
Ogando