Digital BW, The Print

Is anyone on the list using Silverfast HDR?   What do you all think about it? 
  It shipped along with Silverfast Ai when I got my Microtek 120tf scanner, 
but I've never bothered to install it.   Is Silverfast HDR a good alternative 
to PS Elements?   

BTW, I just installed Roy Harrington's QTR, and am thrilled with the results 
it is giving me.   Roy was incredibly helpful, responding to my emails 
promptly when I ran into trouble (due entirely to my own stupidity in downloading an 
out-of-date version of QTR).   Great tool, generously offered -- thanks again, 
Roy.

Sanders McNew
www.mcnew.net


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Silverfast HDR is designed to manipulate 16-bit scans which have been 
scanned in Silverfast Ai. The purpose of the HDR scan is to preserve 
all the information from the negative in the scan and do the tonal 
manipulation at another step. For this reason, when you set 
Silverfast Ai to save the scan as an HDR scan, you cannot use any of 
the usual tools for image manipulation. 

I haven't used Silverfast HDR enough to comment on whether its better 
or worse than any other software. I usually scan in Silverfast Ai and 
obtain an HDR scan which I then manipulate in Photoshop. Once you've 
saved an HDR scan, there should be no reason to have to go back and 
rescan the negative. Also, there's an advantage to working with a 16-
bit scan as there's significantly less loss of image data. 

I hope that this helps. If you have any scanning questions, I'm sure 
that there are experts here who can answer them.

Evan

* -----Original Message-----
* From: sandersm@... [mailto:sandersm@aol.com] 
* Sent: Sunday, October 19, 2003 2:06 PM
* To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
* Subject: [Digital BW] Image Processors -- Silverfast HDR
* 
* 
* Is anyone on the list using Silverfast HDR?   What do you all 
* think about it? 
*   It shipped along with Silverfast Ai when I got my Microtek 
* 120tf scanner, 
* but I've never bothered to install it.   Is Silverfast HDR a 
* good alternative 
* to PS Elements?

Sanders,

Silverfast HDR is a piece of scanning software designed to "scan" TIFF files
of "raw" or unadjusted scans. I use it in my workflow which consists of
scanning to an "HDR" file with SF Ai, opening the file with SF HDR to set
the end point sliders using SF Levels and sending the file to Photoshop.

It is a nice tool for this if you got it free. When working with raw scan
files the data is often very bunched up close to one end of the scale. SF
HDR simply has a better on-screen Levels histogram and is easier to work
with. I have encountered some problems with SF HDR Levels if I adjust the
gamma as well as the endpoints so I wait to do these adjustments with Curves
in Photoshop.

Martin Wesley
http://www.carolyn.cc/Guests/MartinWesley/pages/MW_01.html
http://www.borderless-photos.de/guests.html