LaserSoft Imaging

When batchscanning slides (and thousands of them) with a magazine filmscanner (for instance a digitdia) no slide will be in exactly the same position as the one scanned before.

Setting the frame size by prescanning a landscape and portrait slide and storing the frames will either leave you with black stripes on the border of every other pic (or even artefacts from iSRD trying to "remove" the slide cartridge) or with reducing the frame size (to make sure every slide is within) and thus loose some of the picture.

In addition if you are forced to delete your prefs (occurs quite regurlarly with Silverfast) you have to do everything anew.

Now, with sophisticated hardware like a magazine scanner, infrared tool etc. and a software like Silverfast it seems it should be possible to leave detecting the borders to the equipment.

That would save quite an amount of time.

Dear Kul

when scanning you have two different option to setup the scan frame handling:
Either the automatic orientation detection should be used and the frame set accordingly by SilverFast.
Or SilverFast should instead use the scan frame you did draw on the preview window.

(A) SilverFast can detect the orientation of the slides (i.e. Is the image in landscape of portrait layout?).
If you run batch scans it automatically is set to this mode - this effectively means that the scan frame drawn is not considered when scanning.
Because SilverFast tries to avoid cutting into the image at any cost, it can occur that scans show a black border around the actual image in the final scan.

(B) In order to avoid this for an instance, and also if generally an individually set frame should be scanned by SilverFast, please follow these guidelines:

1. Prescan a picture in portrait format
Draw a scan marquee frame around the motif so that it is slightly within the image.
After that you change the option for portrait to "frame" or "save" and save this individually set scan frame. The option is to be found on the "General" tab of the main dialogue / scan control window.
If you choose "save" the frame can be recalled in later scan sessions for reuse.

2. Prescan of a picture in landscape format.
Procede accordingly to B.1.

(C) Batch scanning with individual frames
After one took the steps described in (B), SilverFast can in a following batch scan now use the automatic orientation detection *and* consider the set frame.
If you still happen to experience a black border, you can refine the frame at that particular border and save its settings again.

Best regards
Sonny Noack
- Manager Technical Support, LaserSoft Imaging AG -

Dear Sonny,

thank you.

As for A):

The way you described would have been my wish. If I don't save the frames as described in B) Silverfast uses a "standard" frame that doesn't fit with the slide.

As for B):

That is exactly the way I do my batch scans. But because the scanner is not (mechanically) able to position each slide axactly like that one before. So you are forced to draw the frame smaller than the actual slide. That was may point.

Dear Kul

(A) should work in general, although (depending on image motif) black borders can occur, as said before. However, if you experience that with lots of images, you might want to update. The detection algorithm had been improved between the latest releases gradually.

(B) Well, you draw the frame just a slightly bit smaller than the actual image extends. That's not a real loss, is it?

IMHO other image detection and automatical cropping solutions out there are much more troublesome, because they do work quite aggressively sometimes, cutting heavily into the image.
I'd rather have my automations procede more carefully and leave the actual image cropping to my devices. Mainly because this is done relatively fast, whereas re-scanning takes a considerably longer time.

Fine regards
Sonny Noack
- Manager Technical Support, LaserSoft Imaging AG -

I agree Sonny. I had another scanner (I won't name the brand) that allowed me to auto load strips and rolls of film, but when I came across some half frame negatives I would end up with two half frame images. It was difficult to work around the problem, though I was able to do it, and that is part of the reason I changed to another scanner.

I appreciate being able to set and save custom frame selections in SilverFast, not to mention all of the other features! On the other hand, it would be a huge time saver if the scanner/software could accurately detect and select the frames.

Thanks for allowing us to make wishes like these. Who knows, maybe some day they will become a reality, right?

OK Sonny,

I admit the Problems with A) were a couple of thousands of slides ago, I'll try that again.

Thank you for answering.

Regards

Dear Kul

:D Have a splendid weekend!

Sonny
- tech supp, LSI AG -

Auto-Framing in SilverFast

dear users,

rejoice, SilverFast will soon have an auto-framing function! Watch out for the next release (6.5).

best regards

Karl-Heinz Zahorsky
President & CEO
LaserSoft Imaging

Dear Karl-Heinz,

Any additional information, such as other enhancements and timeframe for the release? :D