Hi, Colin--You wrote:
>>I *always* do the touchup in another program, and I'm leaning toward doing
*all* of the
>>color-correction from Raw scans there, too.
>Is that with slides or negs Lynn?
I've used it mostly with negs, and lately with HP flatbed images. Slides
tend to be somewhat darker, which often adds problems that need to be sorted
out with exposure-tweaking.
>I have been trying some processing of raw neg scans in PS lately, but
reproducing the tonal range/gamma that VueScan's crop file achieves is not
easy for me.
Vuescan has a way of "seeing" that sometimes baffles me. Rather that
fiddling with the controls for an hour (when I know it will only work for
that one picture), I'm likely to try my hand at correcting the Raw scan.
The first thing I do after inverting a raw neg scan in Photoshop(which you
can actually do in Vuescan, but not in MiraPhoto) is to click on Auto
Levels, then I'll try the Variations, and tweak the result with Color
Corection. This works about 90% of the time. If not, then I have to get
serious with curves and intensities &such, which are sometimes a little
ticklish for me.
> Should I be restoring the full 0 - 255 (or slightly less) range of the RGB
channels before or after gamma/ curve correction?
I'd be doing it before, just so you can see accurately what's happening with
the curves. PS is pretty forgiving about color corrections, though, so
either way should work, and sometimes it depends on what you're after and/or
what you've got. As you can tell, I "play it by ear"--a *lot*! :-)
> Also, presumably it is best to get the Invert function out of the way
first, so that you can see what you are doing on a positive image.
Oh, yeah. The only situation I can imagine where you wouldn't invert first
would be where there were some serious exposure problems (although I'm sure
you don't have any like that ;-) ), and you're experimenting with bumping
the levels up or down. I've never actually done that, but now I think of it,
it might work a *little* bit.
> It is all a bit hit and miss so far.
I think the ease of experimenting is the only thing that's kept me from
using my Photoshop CD as a Frisbee. It would all be very nice if there were
some mathmatical formula that worked for every picture and every situation,
but if there is, it's a well-kept secret that I've never stumbled onto. I
figure if I can only keep doing this 'til I'm 90 or so, I just might start
getting good at it. :-)
Best regards and good scanning--Lynn Allen
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