Digital BW, The Print

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Stephen Kobrin" <skobrin@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, May 26, 2003 6:35 PM
Subject: [Digital BW] Scanning


> There have been a number of recent posts about scanning that make me
> wonder if I am missing something.  When I scan, my sole objective is
> to get as much information off of the negative as I can -- shadow
> detail, highlights to the extent possible and as smooth a range of
> tones as I can.  I typically do not play with contrast or even adjust
> the mid tones a great deal, assuming I am better off doing all of
> that in PS when I have more precise controls and a much better image
> to work with.  The Nikon scan software seems to work well in this
> regard.  ( I scan in rgb and convert in ps as the Nikon scanner seems
> to be problematic if set to B&W.)
>
> Should I be doing more than working with the equivalent of levels and
> curves at the scanning stage?  I guess the real question is what
> a "better scan" would entail.
>
>
Steve,

As Kevin said, what is coming from the scanner's electronics is fixed in
most scanners and everything after that is software. I think the results are
very dependent upon the specific scanner and software in question. For some
combinations, it works well to do basic adjustments with the scanning
software and with others you are better off doing everything in PS. Sometime
a middle of the road approach works best.

It all depends upon how the specific scanner and software were designed.

One thing I have observed is that it is better to set your end points first
and then do your contrast/gamma changes later as a seperate action. If do
them both in the same action, some software will apply the gamma change
first within the original range of the data resulting a loss of data while
software that spreads the data out before applying the gamma change better
preserves all the data. The losses are small but can become an issue with
some images if you want to drop into 8-bit and do further adjustments.

A big plus to the "raw scan" approach is that you have the actual output of
the scanner on file and can always go back to the begining without having to
physically rescan the film. However some software leaves you with a "raw
scan" that is very compressed and/or pushed up close to one end of the scale
making it initially difficult to work with in PS.

Personally I use Silverfast Ai to output a 16-bit raw tiff file and then use
Silverfast HDR to "scan" the raw file just bringing the end points in enough
to spread out the data before bringing it into PS.

Martin Wesley