I'm a digital newbie trying to scan 4x5 b&w negatives. After quite a bit of research and experimentation I've found the following procedure to work ok, but I suspect they could look better. I'd appreciate any input from people who know about ways to make this work better.

Main purpose is publication on the web. Secondary purpose is to have scans useable for newspapers, magazines, small posters etc. I am not anticipating making fine prints with these scans.

Materials: 4x5 b&w negatives.

Equipment: Epson 2450 scanner, 256mb memory, Photoshop 7.

Here's how I'm doing it now:

1 Using Silverfast SE, set up as a color positive transparency. Using the histogram, push the black and white points all the way out. Set 48>24 bit RGB mode. Scan at 1200dpi, results in a file of about 70mb, which is about as big as my system seems to want to handle.

2 Save a master copy as raw.psd and move to a CD.

3 Save a working copy as working.psd, crop.

4 Convert to lab mode, delete b channel and alpha 2 channel.

5 Convert to greyscale

6 Invert

7 Unsharp Mask

8 Create a new adjustment layer for Curves; adjust curves.

9 Burn/dodge as needed.

10 Save working file.

11 Save as web.psd.

12 Change image size to 500 pixels wide for large web image.

13 Save as large_web.jpg.

14 Open web.psd, change image size to 125 pixels wide and save as small_web.jpg.

Any comments or suggestions? Thanks very much.