Imacon Scans and Flexcolor

[Julian Boulter]

Hi all,

I hired 2 hours on an Imacon X5 this week to try and scan 10 4x5 Velvia transparencies (to output to inkjet and possible book printing down the line) but due to the high cost and the pressure of only 2 hours to get my scans done, experimentation for the optimum settings was not an option. I managed to get the scans done, but I have another hour booked for next week and I want to get the best out of the machine. What I'm interested in hearing are recommendations for configuring the Flexcolor texture settings, namely:

1) Unsharp Mask Filter - normally I scan with sharpening off on a 4990 and use Photokit sharpener to apply capture, creative, and output sharpening. On the X5 I left a default level (can't remember the levels), and the scans look great on screen but a little grainy and perhaps a little too sharp. My thinking was if I use a small amount of sharpening in Flexcolor, perhaps this would dispense with the need for my capture sharpening plus I understand that the Flexcolor sharpening performs a conversion to LAB and then back again to improve color noise. Looking back I think I should have turned all Flexcolor sharpening off (I know about the -120 setting), but what are the recommendations?

2) Color Noise Filter Settings - do people use this? I noticed even at low magnification a suprising amount of color noise in my scans. Normally I apply some grain reduction in my CS2 workflow so would I gain anything using this setting in Flexcolor?

3) FlexTouch Filter - I'm a fan of ICE on the 4990 and use it for all my scans even at the risk of some softening as I really hate cleaning dust and hairs from my scans. I'm fairly sure I set the filter to the maximum (which I think was 80) but the resulting scans are still covered in dust and hair. Reading back through the manual it mentions that it is only used for very fine dust and scratches only recognizeable at 100% magnification and that large pieces of dust and hair will not be removed. The 4990 ICE removal seems much better, what are the recommendations? do people just not bother using this filter on the Imacon?

Finally on the 4990 I scan everything in 16 bit but on the Imacon, to cut down on file size and speed up dumping the files to DVD afterwards can I just scan in 8 bit and the convert to 16 bit in photoshop afterwards? i.e is that the same as scanning in 16 bit? I'm guessing not but I seem to remember a previous post mentioning that results would be the same.

Thanks

[Stephen Best]

Here's what I do on my 848:

1. Turn sharpening off (in FlexColor this is Unsharp Mask ON and amount -120). Sharpen in Photoshop with Smart Sharpen (Advanced, Lens Blur, More Accurate). For 4x5 at 2040ppi try starting values of amount 50-80%, radius 2.5-3.0, shadow and highlight fade 75%.

2. Turn noise reduction off. For Fujichrome at 2040ppi there should be hardly any grain.

3. Turn FlexTouch off. Get a Wacom to speed up dust busting.

4. Output in 16-bit, unless you're going to spend considerable time in FlexColor tuning shadow/highlight points, tonality, color etc. Export to something like Beta RGB.

[Walter Foscari]

Do a search on this topic. You'll find a couple of recent threads where the option of scanning the negative as a 3f file (native flexcolor) is discussed. That's the workflow that I and others on this forum are using and the one that seems to be the most flexible (pun intended)

W

[Bruce Watson]

1. Turn sharpening off (in FlexColor this is Unsharp Mask ON and amount 120).

I seem to recall turning sharpening off was "-120" with the emphasis on the negative sign. Has that changed?

[Stephen Best]

I seem to recall turning sharpening off was "-120" with the emphasis on the negative sign. Has that changed?

Corrected above.

[Julian Boulter]

ok great, thanks guys I'll give these suggestions a go next week.

BTW what is the difference between the X5 and the earlier models?

Cheers

Julian

http://www.photohome.uku.co.uk/