Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/10/02

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Subject: Re: [Leica] SPRINTSCAN 4000 SILVERFAST - HELP!!
From: Johnny Deadman <john@pinkheadedbug.com>
Date: Mon, 02 Oct 2000 14:17:20 -0400

on 2/10/00 1:50 pm, Peter Shier at pshier@mindspring.com wrote:

> I just tried Silverfast with B&W yesterday and went nuts too. I finally gave
> up and went back to Insight. If you have a quick summary of how to scan B&W
> in Silverfast I'd love to know.

Read and inwardly digest Ian Lyon's excellent tutorials at:

    http://welcome.to/computerdarkroom

My tips are:

1.  Do the initial scan as a 16 bit HDR and save to file, then work on it in
silverfast HDR. This saves massive amounts of time as the program doesn't
have to repeatedly preview using the scanner but reads from the file
instead.

2.  Set image type to 'standard' and film type to 'monochrome' then MOST
IMPORTANT open the drop-down 'color space expansion' box in the 'negative'
window. The default settings are WRONG and will posterize your shadows. You
need to click 'auto' and once it has done its business, click 'apply'. THIS
IS THE ONLY WAY YOU WILL GET AN ACCEPTABLE SCAN.

3.  Crop out the white borders or they will fool the auto levels.

4.  Disregard all of the above, open the 16 bit scan in Photoshop and learn
to use the levels and curves tools there instead. I guarantee once you have
got your head round it it will be faster and you will get better pictures
than by using any of the software out there.

5.  If you can't be bothered to do (4) and you don't mind software that
occasionally crashes your computer and uses impenetrable numbers instead of
visual cues, download Vuescan (www.hamrick.com), pay the 40 bucks, and
forget about silverfast.

If there is enough demand I will post screenshots of my workflow, which I
think is pretty well optimized now.
- -- 
Johnny Deadman

http://www.pinkheadedbug.com