New Silverfast feature in 6.5 - Multi Exposure Scanning

[Henry Ambrose]

The update to version 6.5 of Silverfast has some new features. More Negafix profiles are included in the update.

This new feature in particular looks interesting as a way to get more out of your scanner:

http://www.silverfast.com/highlights...posure/en.html

Anyone tried this yet?

[Walter Calahan]

I've got it for my Epson V750 but haven't tried it yet. Tomorrow!

[Kirk Gittings]

I've had it for about a week and a half now. The new profiles don't exite me, but that may be my problem, read below, For instance I was using a tweaked NPS profile for 160S, but the new 160S profile doesn't seem any better. I am beginning to think that this is because I shoot 160S at EI 100 instead of the 160 it is profiled at and the 2/3 stop difference causes a color shift that is inconsistent with the profile. Their profiles almost always generate too much magenta in the blues. This is correctable by tweaking the profile in Negafix and saving it but I always wonder what a really bang on profile would do.

The multiscan feature appears to be a big improvement but still there are problems with the consistency of passes with the 750 as did the 4990 and 4870. The scanner has to be warm (fresh from a "dummy" scan) otherwise subsequent passes may be enough out of size to defeat the registration program. In otherwords the software appears to work great, but the hardware is still lacking. The 750 is actually sloppier than the 4990 was.

[Doug Fisher]

It appears that if you if registered your copy of Silverfast prior to Nov. 1, you are going to have to pay to upgrade to 6.5.

"To update your SilverFast software bought prior to Nov. 1st, 2006 to SilverFast 6.5, please visit our shop."

and...

"Up to version 6.4.4r7 you are allowed to download all updates for free after having registered your serial number on our website."

Doug
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www.BetterScanning.com

[Henry Ambrose]

I bought this upgrade and its does not work. Be sure to try out a demo before you buy it to see if it might work for you.

Multi exposure does not align and leaves lots of artifacts in the scan.

The auto frame feature does not work. It drew three frames on one 4x5 frame.

I've written them about these problems (asked for a refund) and will post back what turns out. I'm sorry that I didn't read Kirk's post before proceeding. Live and learn.

[Henry Ambrose]

Perhaps I am too cynical these days.........

I got a fast response from Boris at Silverfast. Shortly thereafter he sent me a link to download a "fixed" version. I installed it and Multi-exposure scanning works now. I see no misalignment or artifacts. The scan looks good. In theory this feature should really extend the capability of flat bed scanners. After a bumpy start it looks good.

The new color features seem to work well although the Negafix profile for 160S doesn't seem to be as good with my 160S film as when using the old one for NPS. Overall the color is better than I've seen in the past. ACCO and CCR (two color correction features for color neg, CCR is new in 6.5) seem to be an improvement.

More trials to come with a tough to scan B&W neg.

[Bill McMannis]

Hi Henry,

What scanner are you using with Silverfast? I have spent the past few hours trying to get the demo version of Silverfast's multi-exposure to work on my 4870 to no avail?

Thanks!

[Ken Lee]

Is this feature built-in to VueScan ?

Can one do this one's self, by scanning multiple times, and then merging the layers in Photoshop ?

[Ken Lee]

Is this feature built-in to VueScan ?

Can one do this one's self, by scanning multiple times, and then merging the layers in Photoshop ?

Here's an anwer to my own question about VueScan, taken from http://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/html/vuesc12.htm

Bold letters are mine.

Maximizing Image Quality

After you've decided on the resolution of your finished image (or alternatively the pixel dimensions of your finished image), how do you maximize the image quality? There's one thing you can do which involves taking longer to scan but getting more raw data for each pixel in the finished image.

The basic idea is scanning each pixel more than once and averaging these pixels. Each doubling of the number of pixels increases the effective number of useful bits of data by one. For instance, if you have a 10-bit scanner like the Nikon LS-30 and you read the CCD 4 times at each pixel position, you get effectively 12 bits of useful image data.

There are several ways of getting multiple image samples. The first of these is single-pass multi-scanning. Some scanners are capable of reading each pixel position multiple times before advancing the scan head to a new position. The film scanners that can do single-pass multi-scanning are the Minolta QuickScan 35, Scan Dual, Scan Dual III, Scan Multi, Scan Multi Pro, Scan Speed, Scan Elite, Scan Elite II and Nikon LS-2000/LS-4000/LS-8000. The second technique is multi-pass multi-scanning, which most scanners are capable of (however, some can't accurately reposition each scan pass, so this sometimes doesn't work well).

Another useful way of getting multiple image samples is to scan at a higher resolution and then average adjacent blocks of pixels. For instance, scanning at 2700 dpi and averaging every 2x2 block of pixels will result in a higher-quality 1350 dpi scan than just scanning at 1350 dpi. Scanning at 1350 dpi in this case will throw away every other pixel and every other scan line, while scanning at 2700 dpi and setting "Output|TIFF size reduction" to 2 will result in averaging 2x2 blocks of pixels and increasing the number of effective bits of resolution by 2 bits.

Note that multi-scanning is the only way to increase the quality at the highest resolution, and that using "Output|TIFF size reduction" is a better way of producing quality scans at lower resolutions.

[Bill McMannis]

SilverFast's tech support got my demo version issues resolved.

Things look promising.