LaserSoft Imaging

This is my first posting here. I have been using Silverfast for years, with other scanners. I just purchased a Plustek OpticFilm 120 and have been trying to perform first scans.

I cannot understand how to prescan the 35 mm filmstrip holder so that all of the frames are showing. When I use Silverfast with my Epson V700, the prescan button gives an overview of the entire holder, with all frames visible. How do I do this using Silverfast for Plustek 120?

I do see the "Overview" button, but this is not what I'm looking for. Is it possible (with the Plustek 120) to see a single prescan of all frames in the 35 mm holder?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Dear customer,

The Overview is what you are looking for.
This device can not fit all images in the scan area at once.
So it can not perform a single preview for all images.
The Overview is necessary to select which image you want to work on.


kind regards,
Arne Ketelhohn.

LSI_Ketelhohn wrote:The Overview is what you are looking for. This device can not fit all images in the scan area at once.
So it can not perform a single preview for all images. The Overview is necessary to select which image you want to work on.

Thank you for the reply. I suppose this is the 'solution' to the prescan offset problem with the OpticFilm 120. When using an older version of SF, it did a prescan of the whole filmstrip. However, the prescan was offset to one side. Now the new version of SF will no longer do a prescan of the whole film strip.

The current workflow, using "Overview", selecting each slide, then doing a medium-res prescan on each one individually, while the holder returns to the initial position between each one, is very slow.

It would be nice if Plustek (eg., via firmware) can solve this problem and allow the SF software to present a single prescan of all the negatives in the holder. Is this being worked on or is the current "Overview" the permanent solution?

Thanks again!

Sorry, I do not know wther Plustek will improve performance at this point.

kind regards,
Arne Ketelhohn.

Hello Mr. Ketelhohn,

> "This device can not fit all images in the scan area at once."

I don't understand. It seems that the hardware should be sending all data, from scanning the length of the film holder, to the software. Once received by the software it can be stored in RAM memory or on the hard drive. So this seems to me to be something that the software should be able to handle.

Can you please explain? When used with other film scanners, can SilverFast show 6 frame lengths from a 35mm film strip, in a view such as below?

Dear customer,

Unfortunately it is not that easy.
But Plustek is currently developing new drivers for us which will improve the handling a lot.

The current driver does not allow the process you suggest, because it has fixed scan areas.


Kind regards,
Arne Ketelhohn.

Is there a fix for this yet? And can you please explain why it isn't so easy?

Overview is the solution to that. I didn't know what "overview" was or where to find it (hidden under a drop-down arrow at the bottom of the page). But now that I am using it, I found that there are four things in that feature that I think could use some modification.

1. I think the Overview button should be put on the horizontal toolbar at the top, next to Prescan, since it is an important part of manual workflow. I have seen a lot of frustrated messages elsewhere on the web by people who intuitively think (as I did) that Prescan is the feature to use, and can't figure out why is has a severe limitation.

2. It also seems that the Prescan button should be greyed-out (except when it appears as the Cancel button) when a multi-frame media carrier is being used, since it only does one frame and Overview is the way to go in that situation.

3. I also note that when Overview is clicked without a media carrier inserted, there is a message to insert it and "start again by pressing Prescan." That just dings. The message should say to press "Refresh thumbnails."

4. I think also that much time could be saved if the Overview box didn't actually do any scanning itself, but merely were used to provide a place for the photographer to manually indicate which frames in the media carrier are occupied. Any selected frames get rescanned again anyway in the Job Manager, where borders can be adjusted and other edits made. In all, three scans are used (including producing the final image), and doing this would eliminate one of them.

... Just some ideas.

Dear customer,

Plustek has fixed the overview issue in the latest drivers.

I will forward your suggestions to our product management.
However the scan of the Overview is a necessary function.

Kind regards,
Arne Ketelhohn.