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Author Topic: How much should I be expecting from my scan?  (Read 5866 times)

Mark D Segal

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Re: How much should I be expecting from my scan?
« Reply #20 on: April 22, 2011, 10:58:58 am »

Mark, that did the trick. I now have a scan that shows the detail in the reflections. To close this off I am attaching one last version to show the reflected leaves. This is still a work in process as I have lost the blue sky but that should not be too big a problem to correct.  As has been mentioned on another thread, if you ever do a podcast on scanning I would certainly subscribe if for no other reason than to see the differences between Vue Scan and Silver Fast.

Nick, thanks for the reference. I do not know how gamma works but will read that article.

Mark F, much better. You lost a bit of sky possibly because the correction was not quite localized enough. This is fiddly to control in Vuescan. If you can shape the curve to dampen the collateral effects on the mid-tones the sky would improve, but I think you'll have more success amending this in Lightroom, now that you've rescued the shadow detail.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
Author: "Scanning Workflows with SilverFast 8....."

Mark D Segal

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Re: How much should I be expecting from my scan?
« Reply #21 on: April 22, 2011, 11:14:41 am »

Oh - re differences between SilverFast and Vuescan - they are numerous, subtle and not so subtle. I doubt that I'll ever be doing a podcast providing a detailed comparison between the two. Besides which it's a moving target. And different people just have different preferences based on how they relate to the software and what they prepared to spend for it. The good thing is that you already have one, and you can download a free demo of the other to see for yourself whether you think it gives you the value-added relative to the price difference, which for the Nikon 5000 scanner is large. This is a personal judgment people need to make based on their needs and budgets. But if you are doing a lot of scanning from that scanner, I would recommend you download SilverFast, at least the Ai version, and give it a good test run. If you rely on the internet for this, you will see passionate opinions all over the place on what to use, and end-up in a quandry. The most reliable guide in this will be your own findings once you've mastered what each can do.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
Author: "Scanning Workflows with SilverFast 8....."

mcmorrison

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Re: How much should I be expecting from my scan?
« Reply #22 on: April 22, 2011, 11:44:15 am »

Hello,

I just saw this post and thought I would add some of my experience with the LS5000.

I use VueScan almost exclusively for other scanners, but after many trials settled on Nikon Scan 4 for use with the LS5000. In spite of its "quirks", the image quality is just plain better.

My workflow is to turn off Nikon color management and all other scanner adjustments (including ICE, etc.), and to get as close to a "raw" scan as possible. I scan in 16 bit, and multi-sample. For a special project like this one, I would multiple-sample 16 times. Though I scan a lot of Kodachrome, I use the RGB Positive setting.

Initially, I have scanned a HCT target with this workflow and made a custom profile. Then, when I scan an image, I bring the original scan into CS4 and assign my profile. The color in this file then reflects the color in the chrome very closely. Then I open in LR3, which reads the embedded profile but does nothing to the original. This way I get access to everything that was ever in the scan.

These scans are almost always flat, and almost never blown (NS4's exposure setting is automatic, but quite good). With 16x sampling I can get a good deal of detail from the shadows. I then set white and black points, and otherwise adjust. I have been very happy with the results.

Best,

Michael
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Mark F

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Re: How much should I be expecting from my scan?
« Reply #23 on: April 22, 2011, 08:15:46 pm »

Good idea Mark, I will download a trial copy of SilverFast and see how I like it.

Nick, Nikon Scan 4 does not seem to run on my Mac under Snow Leopard so I cannot go that route.
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Mark

mcmorrison

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Re: How much should I be expecting from my scan?
« Reply #24 on: April 22, 2011, 08:17:49 pm »

Hello,

Yes, NS4 is pretty close to orphan-hood if it isn't already there. I have an old G4 laptop that I keep exclusively to run NS4.

Best,

Michael
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Mark D Segal

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Re: How much should I be expecting from my scan?
« Reply #25 on: April 22, 2011, 08:27:39 pm »

Hello,

Yes, NS4 is pretty close to orphan-hood if it isn't already there. I have an old G4 laptop that I keep exclusively to run NS4.

Best,

Michael

It is definitely there. We are now depending on LaserSoft Imaging and Hamrick Software to keep these high-quality scanners usable. Thank goodness they are doing it, and at least in the medium-term future will continue to do so.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
Author: "Scanning Workflows with SilverFast 8....."

Jonathan Ratzlaff

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Re: How much should I be expecting from my scan?
« Reply #26 on: April 22, 2011, 09:22:27 pm »

With vuescan make sure your whitepoint is set to about.01 or even 0.  That ensures that no highlights are clipped.  Black point is already 0 by default.  There is a Kodachrome profile in Vuescan, however I often just set the image type to image and the colour rendition to neutral. 

Vuescan is a good program and I have had better luck with it than Silverfast, however I have been using it since the first iteration came out for the HP Photosmart scanner
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