Scanning Negative Colour Film and also Prints
Hello.
I have just set up all my scanning software and my 8800F on my new Win7 system. Can you advise what settings you recommend to use for scanning both negative colour film as well as 6x4 prints? Is it best to disable all image corrections etc like sharpening, dust removal, or can hardware dust removal etc help in any way? Which software would you advise to use with my 8800F? The Canon software, Silverfast or Photofun Studio (scangear driver)? How do you select whether to use the full platen or to scan for individual film negatives in the Silverfast settings? I was thinking of scanning at 48 bit colour to Tiff files at either 2400 or 4800 dpi. Just not sure whether to use the Silverfast for this or the Canon software. In the Canon software I try to disable everything like sharpening and tone but it seems to always re-enable itself e.g. the option for tone always turns itself back to "ON" so I think I must need to find a way to save my own settings as default. Finally, the last thing is what do you select for the gamma setting or would you just leave that on the default? I think mine is set to 2.2 as default. Thanks for any advice, I am pretty much a newbie to scanning especially film. John |
Scanning Negative Colour Film and also Prints
On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 17:29:11 -0700 (PDT), John
wrote: Hello. I have just set up all my scanning software and my 8800F on my new Win7 system. Can you advise what settings you recommend to use for scanning both negative colour film as well as 6x4 prints? Is it best to disable all image corrections etc like sharpening, dust removal, or can hardware dust removal etc help in any way? Which software would you advise to use with my 8800F? The Canon software, Silverfast or Photofun Studio (scangear driver)? How do you select whether to use the full platen or to scan for individual film negatives in the Silverfast settings? I was thinking of scanning at 48 bit colour to Tiff files at either 2400 or 4800 dpi. Just not sure whether to use the Silverfast for this or the Canon software. In the Canon software I try to disable everything like sharpening and tone but it seems to always re-enable itself e.g. the option for tone always turns itself back to "ON" so I think I must need to find a way to save my own settings as default. Finally, the last thing is what do you select for the gamma setting or would you just leave that on the default? I think mine is set to 2.2 as default. Thanks for any advice, I am pretty much a newbie to scanning especially film. I use VueScan as my scanning software and I think I'm satisfied with it, sort of. I've been scanning negs and slides and prints for years and still consider myself a newbie. Many mysteries remain for me. When you print negs, the prints all have the same gamma. But when you scan a neg, the software goes about setting black and white points, and so every scan has a different gamma. Well, this is how it seems anyway the way I do it. Several quite similar pics on the same roll will come out with different contrast because the white and black points are always a bit different. Color balancing seems to depend on which tones are clipped by the white point setting. Depending on the range of tones of your neg, you may clip more or less. Usually there are specular highlights or other highlights which might as well be clipped. But this affects the resulting color. So similar pics on the same roll come out with different color. It is annoying and time consuming to tune the pics to have similar color and contrast. You can decide not to clip and to capture all the tones in the original. But then the scan will (depending on tonal range) have low contrast and will require more post-processing. I have not had success in doing good "contact print" scans, because the non-image areas affect the black point, and that screws up the contrast and color. If the Canon software will allow setting the gamma, that is something I should look into. But just about everybody says VueScan is way better than Canon software or the software that came with the scanner. Film in the olden days did not have such good resolution. Quite amazing really, how grainy it was, compared to what we expect today. In my experience 2000 dpi is fine for most 35mm shots. If the shot is important, then maybe go for higher res. For 120 format, a bit lower dpi is good, again depending on how important the shot is. I always use IR dust removal when this is possible. Sharpening needs to be done with end-use in mind. You need different sharpening depending on whether you will print the image or view on a monitor. Therefore save a TIF or RAW without any sharpening and then sharpen prior to using the image. I don't have specific advice about settings. I just let Lightroom decide. (I use LR for post-processing.) I wonder if you and I are the only ones on this NG. Th |
Scanning Negative Colour Film and also Prints
On Oct 29, 6:32*am, Thiophilus wrote:
On Fri, 28 Oct 2011 17:29:11 -0700 (PDT), John wrote: Hello. I have just set up all my scanning software and my 8800F on my new Win7 system. Can you advise what settings you recommend to use for scanning both negative colour film as well as 6x4 prints? Is it best to disable all image corrections etc like sharpening, dust removal, or can hardware dust removal etc help in any way? Which software would you advise to use with my 8800F? The Canon software, Silverfast or Photofun Studio (scangear driver)? How do you select whether to use the full platen or to scan for individual film negatives in the Silverfast settings? I was thinking of scanning at 48 bit colour to Tiff files at either 2400 or 4800 dpi. Just not sure whether to use the Silverfast for this or the Canon software. In the Canon software I try to disable everything like sharpening and tone but it seems to always re-enable itself *e.g. the option for tone always turns itself back to "ON" so I think I must need to find a way to save my own settings as default. Finally, the last thing is what do you select for the gamma setting or would you just leave that on the default? I think mine is set to 2.2 as default. Thanks for any advice, I am pretty much a newbie to scanning especially film. I use VueScan as my scanning software and I think I'm satisfied with it, sort of. I've been scanning negs and slides and prints for years and still consider myself a newbie. Many mysteries remain for me. When you print negs, the prints all have the same gamma. But when you scan a neg, the software goes about setting black and white points, and so every scan has a different gamma. Well, this is how it seems anyway the way I do it. Several quite similar pics on the same roll will come out with different contrast because the white and black points are always a bit different. Color balancing seems to depend on which tones are clipped by the white point setting. Depending on the range of tones of your neg, you may clip more or less. Usually there are specular highlights or other highlights which might as well be clipped. But this affects the resulting color. So similar pics on the same roll come out with different color. It is annoying and time consuming to tune the pics to have similar color and contrast. You can decide not to clip and to capture all the tones in the original. But then the scan will (depending on tonal range) have low contrast and will require more post-processing. I have not had success in doing good "contact print" scans, because the non-image areas affect the black point, and that screws up the contrast and color. If the Canon software will allow setting the gamma, that is something I should look into. But just about everybody says VueScan is way better than Canon software or the software that came with the scanner. Film in the olden days did not have such good resolution. Quite amazing really, how grainy it was, compared to what we expect today. In my experience 2000 dpi is fine for most 35mm shots. If the shot is important, then maybe go for higher res. For 120 format, a bit lower dpi is good, again depending on how important the shot is. I have been reading a few more posts on the web and people seem to be suggesting that scanning at 48-bit and with 2400dpi gets pretty good results with the 8800F for scanning colour negatives and leaving all other settings switched off. I will have to check into the VueScan software and see how much it is costing. I also have the Arcsoft Photostudio software and Lasersoft Silverfast which has the iSRD hardware dust removal. I always use IR dust removal when this is possible. Sharpening needs to be done with end-use in mind. You need different sharpening depending on whether you will print the image or view on a monitor. Therefore save a TIF or RAW without any sharpening and then sharpen prior to using the image. I don't have specific advice about settings. I just let Lightroom decide. (I use LR for post-processing.) Most of the scanning I am doing is just to digitise old photos so will be viewed on a monitor. I wonder if you and I are the only ones on this NG. It seems to be pretty quiet at the moment. A few years ago it was quite a busy group full or posts. I guess a lot of people may have moved onto web based forums now? Using the Canon software (scangear) when I switch everything off it still always turns the Auto Tone adjustment back on when I restart. I need to try and figure out how to save my own settings or overwrite the default. I'm just wondering what setting you would use for Gamma if its something you would change? The default seems to be 2.2 on the Canon software. What setting is the best to use in your experience for negative film colour and b&w and also for prints? Have you used or tried Silverfast and the iSRD hardware dust removal or equivolent in VueScan? If so what’s your experience of this and what setting do you use in this? I hear that hardware dust removal is pretty good so was thinking of using Silverfast with everything switch off except that. I seem to recal reading posts in the past that suggest to have hardware dust removal on low settings for best results? Cheers, John |
Scanning Negative Colour Film and also Prints
I have just tested using the iSRD dust removal in SilverFast and I
wasn't too impressed with it. I'm not sure whether it is software or hardware based but when I use it to remove scratches and dust the settings that I have to use in order to do this also wipe out peoples eyes, teeth and other areas that it also thinks are defects when they are not. Lowering different settings doesn't help much because then it also still leaves in the true defects the dust and scratches and doesn't reduce them by much. For example on one negative setting detection at 65, defect size at 7 and intensity at 100 will get rid of the dust and scratches but it will also remove other detail that are not defects like eyes, and finer detail in the image. Reducing the settings to detection 55, defect size 3, intensity 100, will prevent this but leave large portions of dust and scratches still visible. These figures also differ greatly from one negative to the next so as to make it pretty much worthless as a feature as it would take up so much of your time doing these settings for each individual frame to make it not worthwhile cost/benefit/time wise. Just wondering if you have has had good results using any similar dust removal feature in Viescan and found settings that you can apply to all your scans to get a decent level of dust and scratch removal without sacrificing finer detail and noising and softening out your results into a watercolour? I feel I may as well just use the CanoScan software than SilverFast because it is faster and I can also scan at 48 bit colour to get a positive and not have to revert the colours in software to obtain this. (Scaning at 48 Bit in SilverFast will only give you a negative of a negative). I can then just use dedicated software to remove any noticeable defects by hand without affecting things that are not defects. The final option I guess is to download the Vuescan trial to see if I like it any better than the Canon Software and if it does any better at dust removal using the hardware (i.r.) of the scanner. John |
Scanning Negative Colour Film and also Prints
On 2011-10-30 03:57:55 -0400, John said:
I have just tested using the iSRD dust removal in SilverFast and I wasn't too impressed with it. I'm not sure whether it is software or hardware based but when I use it to remove scratches and dust the settings that I have to use in order to do this also wipe out peoples eyes, teeth and other areas that it also thinks are defects when they are not. Lowering different settings doesn't help much because then it also still leaves in the true defects the dust and scratches and doesn't reduce them by much. For example on one negative setting detection at 65, defect size at 7 and intensity at 100 will get rid of the dust and scratches but it will also remove other detail that are not defects like eyes, and finer detail in the image. Reducing the settings to detection 55, defect size 3, intensity 100, will prevent this but leave large portions of dust and scratches still visible. These figures also differ greatly from one negative to the next so as to make it pretty much worthless as a feature as it would take up so much of your time doing these settings for each individual frame to make it not worthwhile cost/benefit/time wise. Just wondering if you have has had good results using any similar dust removal feature in Viescan and found settings that you can apply to all your scans to get a decent level of dust and scratch removal without sacrificing finer detail and noising and softening out your results into a watercolour? I feel I may as well just use the CanoScan software than SilverFast because it is faster and I can also scan at 48 bit colour to get a positive and not have to revert the colours in software to obtain this. (Scaning at 48 Bit in SilverFast will only give you a negative of a negative). I can then just use dedicated software to remove any noticeable defects by hand without affecting things that are not defects. The final option I guess is to download the Vuescan trial to see if I like it any better than the Canon Software and if it does any better at dust removal using the hardware (i.r.) of the scanner. John I have been using Vuescan for a few years now but I have never used Silverfast so I can't make any comparisons. I have a Canon FS4000 and Vuescan works very well with it. The program utilizes the IR capabilities of your scanner - no IR, no dust removal as far as I know. With my FS4000 I have been using the "Medium" setting for IR dust removal and it works very well. I should add that I have thouroughly cleaned all my slides with Pec-12 and when they are inserted in the slide holder I go over them with a blower brush. Negatives should get the same treatment. The cleaner the neg the less work your software has to do. I found that the original Canon software was laughable compared to Vuescan, plus Vuescan has given new life to my scanner by making it compatible with all current operating systems. I don't need the Canon driver to keep it working. I believe you can download Vuescan for a trial. If you decide to buy, then getting the Pro version is the only way to go as it offers updates for life. I even use Vuescan to save documents from my Epson flatbed scanner. Vuescan knows which scanner is turned on and loads the last init file used for that scanner. I have init files for different types of film as well as for different kinds of PDF files that I might want to create. It can also scan images to DNG type TIFF files which unfortunately are huge. It would be nice if the program developer can get it to scan to RAW. |
Scanning Negative Colour Film and also Prints
On Sun, 30 Oct 2011 00:57:55 -0700 (PDT), John
wrote: I have just tested using the iSRD dust removal in SilverFast and I wasn't too impressed with it. I'm not sure whether it is software or hardware based but when I use it to remove scratches and dust the settings that I have to use in order to do this also wipe out peoples eyes, teeth and other areas that it also thinks are defects when they are not. Lowering different settings doesn't help much because then it also still leaves in the true defects the dust and scratches and doesn't reduce them by much. For example on one negative setting detection at 65, defect size at 7 and intensity at 100 will get rid of the dust and scratches but it will also remove other detail that are not defects like eyes, and finer detail in the image. Reducing the settings to detection 55, defect size 3, intensity 100, will prevent this but leave large portions of dust and scratches still visible. These figures also differ greatly from one negative to the next so as to make it pretty much worthless as a feature as it would take up so much of your time doing these settings for each individual frame to make it not worthwhile cost/benefit/time wise. Just wondering if you have has had good results using any similar dust removal feature in Viescan and found settings that you can apply to all your scans to get a decent level of dust and scratch removal without sacrificing finer detail and noising and softening out your results into a watercolour? I feel I may as well just use the CanoScan software than SilverFast because it is faster and I can also scan at 48 bit colour to get a positive and not have to revert the colours in software to obtain this. (Scaning at 48 Bit in SilverFast will only give you a negative of a negative). I can then just use dedicated software to remove any noticeable defects by hand without affecting things that are not defects. The final option I guess is to download the Vuescan trial to see if I like it any better than the Canon Software and if it does any better at dust removal using the hardware (i.r.) of the scanner. Hi, John. In VueScan there are only 3 settings for dust removal: Light, Medium and Heavy. (Plus also "none".) I usually use Medium and it works great. I don't notice any degradation of detail. Note that this is dust removal using IR technology. As far as I understand it, the infrared picks up where the scratches and dust are, and then the algorithm in the software fills the defects in with whatever color is immediately surrounding those defects. There should be no effect elsewhere in the image. I'm not familiar with your scanner, so don't know if it would work along the same lines. Th |
Scanning Negative Colour Film and also Prints
On Sat, 29 Oct 2011 20:02:37 -0700 (PDT), John
wrote: On Oct 29, 6:32*am, Thiophilus wrote: When you print negs, the prints all have the same gamma. But when you scan a neg, the software goes about setting black and white points, and so every scan has a different gamma. Well, this is how it seems anyway the way I do it. Several quite similar pics on the same roll will come out with different contrast because the white and black points are always a bit different. Color balancing seems to depend on which tones are clipped by the white point setting. Depending on the range of tones of your neg, you may clip more or less. Usually there are specular highlights or other highlights which might as well be clipped. But this affects the resulting color. So similar pics on the same roll come out with different color. It is annoying and time consuming to tune the pics to have similar color and contrast. You can decide not to clip and to capture all the tones in the original. But then the scan will (depending on tonal range) have low contrast and will require more post-processing. If the Canon software will allow setting the gamma, that is something I should look into. But just about everybody says VueScan is way better than Canon software or the software that came with the scanner. I have been reading a few more posts on the web and people seem to be suggesting that scanning at 48-bit and with 2400dpi gets pretty good results with the 8800F for scanning colour negatives and leaving all other settings switched off. I will have to check into the VueScan software and see how much it is costing. I also have the Arcsoft Photostudio software and Lasersoft Silverfast which has the iSRD hardware dust removal. I always use IR dust removal when this is possible. Sharpening needs to be done with end-use in mind. You need different sharpening depending on whether you will print the image or view on a monitor. Therefore save a TIF or RAW without any sharpening and then sharpen prior to using the image. I don't have specific advice about settings. I just let Lightroom decide. (I use LR for post-processing.) Most of the scanning I am doing is just to digitise old photos so will be viewed on a monitor. I wonder if you and I are the only ones on this NG. It seems to be pretty quiet at the moment. A few years ago it was quite a busy group full or posts. I guess a lot of people may have moved onto web based forums now? Using the Canon software (scangear) when I switch everything off it still always turns the Auto Tone adjustment back on when I restart. I need to try and figure out how to save my own settings or overwrite the default. I'm just wondering what setting you would use for Gamma if its something you would change? The default seems to be 2.2 on the Canon software. What setting is the best to use in your experience for negative film colour and b&w and also for prints? Have you used or tried Silverfast and the iSRD hardware dust removal or equivolent in VueScan? If so what’s your experience of this and what setting do you use in this? I hear that hardware dust removal is pretty good so was thinking of using Silverfast with everything switch off except that. I seem to recal reading posts in the past that suggest to have hardware dust removal on low settings for best results? I have no experience setting gamma in scanning... if I was using software where I could do that, then it would be fun to experiment with different gammas. Negs are low contrast originals, so you would want to crank up the gamma. But the gamma that you would select would also depend on your output -- lower for prints and higher for screen display. Not sure what you mean by hardware dust removal. Th |
All times are GMT +1. The time now is 03:18 AM. |
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
HardwareBanter.com