Silverfast Ai vs. Silverfast Ai Studio

[MPrice]

Last year I bought a refurb'd Epson 4990 Photo which unfortunately came with Silverfast SE rather than Ai, I tried to get the upgrade but it was past the point when they still did that. Yesterday I finally got around to upgrading to Silverfast Ai. I first installed the demo to make sure everything was working correctly and then spent about 4-5 hours getting familiar with it in order to make sure it was the right thing and that it worked with my computer and system (Mac OSX). Everything seemed fine, I got some nice scans and paid the $109 upgrade fee and entered my serial number. Initially everything seemed fine but as I worked with it I found that the zoom feature was different and then that one of the palettes I had been using had mysteriously disappeared (3 tabs - basic, advanced and navigation with sliders for exposure, saturation, brightness and contrast). I searched on the Silverfast site and found a forum entry saying something similar from an older version and an answer saying that palette was only available in Ai Studio. Anybody know if that is the case? If so, what gives? There are separate downloads for Ai and Ai studio, I downloaded the correct one, it had the palette until I entered my serial number, or so it appears...am I missing something? I know I can achieve similar results with the levels/curves dialogs or in PS, I'm just feeling a bit cheated on the missing features, now they're here, now that you paid...they're not. I guess the first thing to do is contact Silverfast but I have the feeling that isn't going to go anywhere so wanted to check here first to see if anybody else had had any similar experiences or knowledge on where to find the missing features.

On a somewhat related note, I was under the assumption it was best to do as much manipulation (curves, levels, color balance) pre-scan, is this the case with the sliders I mention above or are they doing more harm than good at this level making it a better idea to leave these adjustments to be done after the scanning in PS?

Thanks for the help.

Mike

[MPrice]

Upon further scrutiny of the Silverfast site it appears as if the palette shows up in the image of the interface, anybody know how to make the "picture settings" palette come out of hiding? Also, any thoughts to its usefulness or is it just cutting back on scan info and something I should do later in the process?

Thanks again.. Mike

[MPrice]

Just a quick follow up to this, I wrote to customer service and they returned my email within a day. The demo version does in fact have all of the features of Silverfast Ai Studio, when you purchase a version the serial number determines what features you ultimately receive. In my case it was confusing because the missing palette appeared on the image of the Ai interface on the website (now updated), I pointed this out and they not only apologized for the mistake but gave me an upgrade from Ai to Ai Studio. Pretty amazing service I'd say, beyond what I expected and a far cry from what I'm used to.

[Kirk Gittings]

They do have good service in general though in the past you would never get it that fast.

In general, at minimum, ballpark adjustment of color, contrast, clipping etc. are best done in the scanning stage where there is the most raw information so that you are sending the fullest 16 bit file to PS to do further work on.

[MPrice]

Thanks Kirk,

I understand that it makes sense to get it close before making the scan, in theory if you could get it perfect in Silverfast prior to scanning does this offer some advantage over going to PS to make the changes or is it all the same at this point?

[Kirk Gittings]

Well given that you cannot soft proof in the scanning software you will never be able to get it bang on in the scan. There will always be some need for tweaking in PS.

I really think that beyond getting a full histogram with close color, shadow/highlight detail, contrast etc. one should not go crasy in the scan. Unlike professional scanners who are scanning production for book or magazine reproduction, we leace more to PS.

[MPrice]

Thanks for the info, that helps.