LaserSoft Imaging

I have a Plustek 7500i w/ Silverfast SE Plus. I am looking to archive my old travel slide collection. There are about 2,000 so I only want to do it once. I manage all my new images with LR3. Things are old enough that I really need to take advantage of the infrared. In sorting through the various SilverFast versions, looks like I need to buy some version of HDR. Then I would scan to a 64bit file with SE and use HDR to 'process' the infra red into a format that I can take into LR3 with the infrared corrections in place (doesn't look like I can get to DNG and there isn't a LR3 plugin?). Too many spots to do manually in LR3. I would end up with the 64bit file as an archive so if there is an image that I want to spend serious time with I can re-tweak the infrared corrections as needed in HDR and re-export to LR3 without rescanning. So couple of questions: Since I don't know how or where I may use the images is there a good rule of thumb on where the quality /file size trade-off levels off? If I go for about a 45mb file I should be able to get about a tray (90-100 slides) per DVD for archive. Does that preserve a decent quality image or should I be shooting for 100mb files (2 DVD's per tray)? Second- What version of HDR (any?) do I need to buy that allows me to process and save the infrared corrections in something (what format?) that I can then import and work with in LR3? Other than the infrared I will not be playing with the image in SilverFast. Looking for a simple cost-effective way to move this along in some sort of organized fashion. Clearly, I am in the beginner category
Thanks,
Kim

Dear Kim,

The infrared information in 64bit HDRi files can only be processed in SilverFast HDR (Studio).
Other software does not have the capabilities to process this information.

SilverFast HDR (Studio) will create normal 24 or 48bit files which you can import into other software using the regular file import function.
This also allowse the necessary colorspace and color range adjustments.
these have to be done in SilverFast or you will loose image information.
The process of setting highlights and shadows and the correct colorspace transformation can not be done in LR or Photoshop.
the necessary information would already be lost at this point.

DNG is not an export option as the scanner delivers RGB data and not raw sensor data like a digital camera.

The resolution is something you will have to figure out by yourself for your workflow.
You have to detremine for your own work how large your images have to be.


kind regards,
Arne Ketelhohn.