Another thing to play with if you are not aware of this yet : When scanning B&W negs, perform the scans as RGB and then perform the conversion to monochrome in Photoshop (or your editing software) via the various ways you can find on the 'net. In general adjusting the relative contribution of each of the R,G and B channels allows you to tailor the final contrast and highlight/shadow detail. These operations should probably be performed in 16bit mode!
Correct...scan in RGB then Invert in Photoshop. Try to do all corrections in RGB 16 Bit. There probably will be a slight color cast...but the cast can be fixed with Hue and Saturation. If you don't need a Grayscale file proper try to stay in RGB as the file will be more versatile...like mostly all filters will work in RGB and not Grayscale.
John V.
ScanHi-End Moderator
Before you spend money on an Imacon scan, you might consider downloading a trial version of VueScan. If it supports your scanner, you can use it to make complete scans, except that it embeds some $ characters in the image (prompting you to pay the modest license fee).
You can configure VueScan to "do nothing" to your image, other than present the widest possible contrast range.
Lock Exposure Option, RGB Exposure = 1
Exposure Clipping = 0%
Color Balance = Manual
Black Point = 0
White Point = 0
Brightness = 1... or however much/little to print the film edge as black
B/W Vendor = GENERIC
B/W Brand = COLOR
B/W Type = NEGATIVE
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