I have checked your images - I frankly don't see the problem. I opened the
Vuescan scan on Photoshop and applied Auto Levels and the image was close to
the one scanned with Nikonscan - some curve adjustments brought it into an
identical image.
There was no clipping in the Vuescan scan - check it in the "Levels"
histogram and see. This is what Vuescan is designed to do - to capture the
highlight and shadow details and sharpness, and to leave it to you to
fine-tune colors and contrast and tone on Photoshop or your other graphics
program of choice.
One additional comment - why are you setting the gamma to 3 in Vuescan?
rather than something in the range of 1 to 2.5?
Maris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ralf Schmode" <rschmode@gmx.net>
To: <filmscanners@halftone.co.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2001 12:11 PM
Subject: filmscanners: Vuescan 7.1.18, LS-30 and Fuji Superia negatives:
What in hell am I doing wrong?
| Hi everybody,
|
| as you may know, I have written a couple of times about my problems in
| getting correctly exposed and naturally colored negative scans out of my
| Nikon Coolscan III LS-30 using Ed Hamrick's Vuescan. A couple of days
| ago, Ed addressed me via e-mail about the new 7.1.18 version and its
| improvements as to negative film profiles. I decided to give it a try
| but the results are still... well... I'd better explain in detail.
|
| I have put four files on my web page for everyone to evaluate:
|
| is a 337 dpi Vuescan scan of a tiger in
| Hagenbeck Zoo, Hamburg (Germany) using the settings to be seen in
| ; most important amongst them are white
| balance as color balance method, a gamma of 3 and Fuji Reala 100
| (Superia 100 does not exist) as film settings.
|
| is the same picture scanned using Nikon
| Scan, sRGB, ICE on, analog gain to -0,25 and, as I always do,
| comprehensive use of the curve tool in Nikon Scan until the preview
| looks right on the money (I cannot get the Vuescan preview even *close*
| to this)
|
| I can see that the Vuescan version is sharper but, believe me, this is
| due to the 337 dpi (Ed's algorithm as to lo-dpi scanning seems to be
| better) - at 2700 dpi, Nikon Scan is film grain sharp with 100 speed
| color negative film even with ICE on. As to the colors, Vuescan seems to
| *extremely* give away in the highlights part of the histogram and clip
| the shadows at that, plus putting a blueish/magenta cast on everything.
| I can get better use of the highlights by setting the white point to .1
| (everything above would clip them as well) but the blueish cast persists
| as well as the shadows clipping. I am aware that I could get some of
| this straight with comprehensive post-scan processing but, believe me,
| this ain't what I was looking for. Neither am I going to scan, check the
| result, correct, then scan again, check again and so forth until the
| result is as I can set it in the accurate Nikon Scan preview and
| histogram before one single full scan is done.
|
| I have uploaded the original scan as
| well, with a link to it on (to right
| click/save in case your browser does not display .tif files) should
| anybody be willing and able to evaluate it (those files won't open in
| Paint Shop Pro 7 :-(). Meanwhile, I stand disappointed again, waiting
| for one of the next versions of Vuescan to (maybe) correct what still
| seems wrong with the current one.
|
| Greetings from Germany -
|
| Ralf
|
| --
| My animal photo page on the WWW:
| Find my PGP keys (RSA and DSS/DH) on PGP key servers
| (use "TrustCenter" certified keys only)
|
