noise suppresion in the Imacon 848 scans

[Matus Kalisky]

Hello,

I have a posibility to have scanned my 4x5 negatives with Imacon 848. First batch arrived already. While the dynamic range and sharpness is much beter than with a flatbed scanner (drum scanning at a price of 200 euro is beyond my possibilities) I do notice rather high noise in the scans.

I am about to get the Picture Cooloer which is rather cheap and produces a reasonable clean-up of the image.

The question is:

Should I first adjust the picture in the PS and in the end use the PictureCooler, or vice versa?

Let me mention that I do decrease the size of the original scan as it has ~ 200 MB (~70 Mpix) to ~ 60 MB for the final print (~ 10 x 14 '').

[Henry Ambrose]

I would print one first to see if the noise shows up in the print. It may not show in the print. Then perhaps print it again after you have used PictureCooler to compare.

[Helen Bach]

Are they scans of reversal film?

When removing noise or graininess, my practice has been to do that early in the process - usually the first step. I've never had noise problems with Imacon 848 scans, even with Kodachrome.

Best,
Helen

[MJSfoto1956]

Should I first adjust the picture in the PS and in the end use the PictureCooler, or vice versa?

Scanning color negatives produces noise in the highlights (i.e. dark areas of the negative). For many people this is a surprise. The good news is that your shadows will likely be noise-free!

Tools like Noise-Ninja look for statistical patterns in the data in order to clean up the image with the least amount of softening (however, some softening is bound to occur). As such, you should do your "de-noising" before performing any other changes to the data (including resizing). While it is painful, I often duplicate the orginal data to a new layer, label it "Noise Ninja" and see if I like what transpires. Usually I "mix" the Noise Ninja highlights with the original shadows to obtain a reasonable compromise.

As others have advised you already: often you cannot see any differences in PRINT -- you should not worry too much about what you see on screen, and rely more on what the print looks like instead.

Cheers,

[Helen Bach]

Scanning color negatives produces noise in the highlights (i.e. dark areas of the negative)...

With an Imacon 848? What colour negative film gets dense enough to cause a problem?

Thanks,
Helen

[Matus Kalisky]

Thanks for your comments

Excuse me for not making myself clear enough - I am speaking of Ilford fp4+, kodak E100G and kodak EPP 100. The noise is not so tragical and especially after downscaling the imga size it will probably be reduced anyhow. But I also shoot DSLR where I tend to increase the image size.

Matus..