Epson 4990 clipping with Silverfast SE

[Ivan J. Eberle]

Trying to decide whether the 4990 is adequate for 4x5 work from Ektar and Portra negs.The bundled Silverfast SE version is old and has no Ektar 100 profiles that work a darn and Portra film has since been reformulated, I think?

Anyhow, I lean toward overexposure of negs and find I'm getting clipped highlights. Any way to turn clipping off in Silverfast? Seems like it's a software control and not simply a dynamic range fault of the scanner. Also I've got the trial SilverFast Ai version, which has the newer Negafix profiles. They seem to be buried and not easily dragged over/plugged in to SE, does one need buy Ai to use them?

[domaz]

Why not give Vuescan a try. It doesn't have Ektar 100 profiles either but if you use the Lock Film Base color and Lock Image Color options carefully you can get good scans from it.

[Ivan J. Eberle]

Vuescan doesn't have an actual Digital ICE implementation using the IR channel for this scanner, is why not. Long ago tried VueScan for my 35mm Minolta DMSE 5400 and found it unacceptably noisy in the shadows, not an improvement over the bundled plug-in and really care for the GUI at all. Like SF having canned Negafix profiles and highlight warnings in SilverFast.

I do find it possible to scan without clipping in Silverfast SE by only by using the 48 bit HDR mode-- file sizes are so large from 4x5 that my old scan-dedicated Mac Power PC (1GB max RAM) chokes on the ICE computations at 2400 dpi. Trying my first large file just now, not launching with a plug-in from PS but standalone for more RAM availability. Hopefully I'll know if 1800 dpi works-- sometime before bedtime tonite (yawn. Scanning gets to be a bore. It also grabs most of the system resources so I'm reminded why I've been keeping a spare old PPC box around).

[Robert Budding]

I've been happy with the ColorPerfect Photoshop plug-in. I scan everything as a linear positive with the software that came with my scanner (D-ICE works fine) and then I use the plug-in to invert and color correct.

There's some good information on this German site and a group that I started on Flickr:

http://www.colorneg.de/sitemap.html
http://www.flickr.com/groups/977912@N23/

You can download a demo version of the plug-in here ($67 for the license if you decide to buy it):

http://www.c-f-systems.com/Plug-ins.html

[Greg_Thomas]

I've been happy with the ColorPerfect Photoshop plug-in. I scan everything as a linear positive with the software that came with my scanner (D-ICE works fine) and then I use the plug-in to invert and color correct.

There's some good information on this German site and a group that I started on Flickr:

http://www.colorneg.de/sitemap.html
http://www.flickr.com/groups/977912@N23/

You can download a demo version of the plug-in here ($67 for the license if you decide to buy it):

http://www.c-f-systems.com/Plug-ins.html

Yes, thank you Robert, I ended up buying a license the night before last. I've given up trying to scan with Silverfast SE as a negative. Still working on my color fine tuning but scanning as an HDR positive has preserved much more info for me.

[domaz]

Vuescan doesn't have an actual Digital ICE implementation using the IR channel for this scanner, is why not.

It has the "Infrared clean" option. It's not true "Digital ICE" but your not paying $100 extra for it, and it does work fairly well.

[Ivan J. Eberle]

It's a productivity thing. I want to scan and convert in the scanning software, if I can, rather than the extra step of tweaking a linear 16-bit negative file to get rid of the orange mask.

(I've already got everything I need to do the latter. But I find it time-consuming and the files are larger by 2X than I need for most images, which means I'm often hitting RAM limits and can't choose both ICE and high res at once.)

So, anybody actually using Silverfast with Negafix?

[Greg_Thomas]

It's a productivity thing. I want to scan and convert in the scanning software, if I can, rather than the extra step of tweaking a linear 16-bit negative file to get rid of the orange mask.

(I've already got everything I need to do the latter. But I find it time-consuming and the files are larger by 2X than I need for most images, which means I'm often hitting RAM limits and can't choose both ICE and high res at once.)

So, anybody actually using Silverfast with Negafix?

Not I. And ignoring the Negafix part of the workflow with SE I've never been able to capture the full range while scanning as a negative with SilverFast SE. That's even with B&W. After talking with one of the techs at SilverFast there are some things that SE automates based on the density of the negs that you just can't change. In my case I wanted to scan full contact sheets as negatives on my V700 with the full area mask but with all the non-film areas in the scan area it completely threw off the exposure and the tech said I just had to live with it. If I wanted better manual control I had to upgrade.

[Greg_Thomas]

It's a productivity thing. I want to scan and convert in the scanning software, if I can, rather than the extra step of tweaking a linear 16-bit negative file to get rid of the orange mask.

(I've already got everything I need to do the latter. But I find it time-consuming and the files are larger by 2X than I need for most images, which means I'm often hitting RAM limits and can't choose both ICE and high res at once.)

So, anybody actually using Silverfast with Negafix?

Not I. And ignoring the Negafix part of the workflow with SE I've never been able to capture the full range while scanning as a negative with SilverFast SE. That's even with B&W. After talking with one of the techs at SilverFast there are some things that SE automates based on the density of the negs that you just can't change. In my case I wanted to scan full contact sheets as negatives on my V700 with the full area mask but with all the non-film areas in the scan area it completely threw off the exposure and the tech said I just had to live with it. If I wanted better manual control I had to upgrade.