LaserSoft Imaging

Disappointment is the only word to describe my reaction to this scanning software. Using the interface supplied with the Minolta scanner, a 2700 lpi scan of a 35mm transparency was taking 50 secs without scratch and dust removal and about 6 minutes with.

With LaserSoft it started around 8 minutes and gradually rose as the day passed to finally reach 49 minutes per scan. I rebooted but have just tried again and it's shortened to 18 minutes. The resulting scans are obviously good but the exceedingly long scan times is not mentioned anywhere on this site.

I bought Lasersoft so that I could transfer my collection of 30000 slides to DVD so they would never fade. I had hoped to do this before I died. Using the Minolta software I calculated a total scanning time of 4000 hours or about 5 years of work. With Lasersoft 24000 hours or 30 years of work ... the comparison is obvious ... at my age I will be dead before I finish.

Dear Louis

thank you for the the support request that you did raise apart from this posting. We will seek a solution to this as soon as possible.
Please note that the intention of the imaging forum is to provide a means for exchanging ideas and experience between imaging professionals, and not for communicating supporting issues between LaserSoft staff and customers.

Best regards
Sonny Noack
- tech support, LSI AG -

The content in my first posting was made on the basis that I might be doing something wrong hence the idea of getting help from other Forum members.

Dear Louis

as SilverFast defaults settings differ in some aspects from DimageScan, therefore please activate the fast prescan in SilverFast:
SF Options > Prescan draft = "on"
Also you need to set these options on the vertical button panel on the preview window:
grain dissolver, auto focus and exposure off, no multi-sampling

Furthermore, please activate in DimageScan 16 bit per color channel.

How are the prescan and scanning times when compared now?

Kind regards
Sonny Noack
- tech support, LSI AG -

I have done what you suggested.

This has had some positive impact on prescan time but not much. I am concerned about having auto-focus off. However the scan time is still longer than with Minolta interface due as you say to a higher scan resolution. The scan time now achieved with auto-focus = on, grain dissolve = off, multi scan = off is acceptable if the final scan quality is taken into account.

There remains the problem of final scan. Using the settings above I am now getting a consistent scan time of about 5-6 minutes. The gradual increases in scan time during a session have disappeared as a result of changing grain dissolve from on to off.

However a new problem has now occured. Each scan is being completed in 5 mini-scans with the scanner stopping and waiting for processes within Silversoft to complete. I have 0.5 gig RAM so it shouldn't be a resource problem even with 35mm scans at 2700 dpi. Tried a 5400 dpi scan and scan time was identical again with 5 mini-scans completed to build up the final scan.

Hope the above information helps track down the problem. The above is better but still longer than the 65 seconds scan at 2700 dpi achieved with the Minolta interface.

When I can get it to open(see Tiger OS-X 10.4 problems)
The prescan times with default setting are fast, but once you want to set the various filters and enhancements, ie Ice, ACCO, grain disolver at 675dpi/10"x*8" scan will take over an hour if it does not freeze up 3/4 way through as it does 1 time out of 5. what's up. used to be awesome under all previous versions of OS-X, seems buggy and unstable when I can get it to open..which is not very often..trying to get v**s**n to work as I have wasted a day at least trying to get SF to work properly. maybe the next update will address the speed and incompatanility issues's with Tiger.