Digital workflow, this is the part I hate dealing with.

[biedron]

As for the dying of film, I suppose there is a different way to look at it than I have been presenting. Rather than abandoning it because it has no future, perhaps we should treat it like a dying friend, and spend some time with it while we still can. It would be rather cold to say, "Well, he'll be gone soon, so no use getting invested any further. Might as well cut loose." We won't have any better chance in the future to shoot color film than we have right now, so we might as well have at it while it lasts. Maybe we should relish it, and be conscious of how it is more precious now that it is endangered.

Amen!

Bob

[oysteroid]

Earlier, I made some disparaging remarks about ColorPerfect. I didn't mess with it for a while after that, but last night, I solved my problem. I had apparently messed up some settings and after I reset to defaults, (holding ctrl+shift while loading the plug-in), it started working VERY well again. It now does what I expect. Also, I have found that I get the best results just using Epson Scan and turning off all adjustments, using no color profiling, scanning as positive, at 4800ppi, then, in PS, downsampling, sharpening, and doing some final adjustments and clean-up. ColorPerfect almost nails it every time. I just need to make some rather minor adjustments to color and tone. And I tried to replicate what it does by inverting in Photoshop or by scanning as negative in Epson Scan and SilverFast, and I can't get color nearly as accurate as with ColorPerfect, nor can I get quite the same dynamic range. I am not sure how that can be the case, but it is.

[BenJT]

Oysteroid, could you describe exactly what your doing in Epson scan before you go into colorperfect? I am having trouble getting a good positive to bring into Photoshop. Once in Photoshop and inverted I get a nasty color cast on my images. There has to be a straightforeward way to end up with a positive scan that offers an optimal starting point.

[Bruce Watson]

Where can I buy a cheap it8 target?

For a negative? You can't. Ain't no such thing. An IT8 target is used to build an ICC profile for a scanner. This can only be done for tranny films.

The reason is that tranny film doesn't vary that much from sheet to sheet. Since it's designed for projection, it always presents a full range image from black to white, and a strong contrast. Negative film OTOH, has a wider density range from sheet to sheet, and a much more variable contrast. It also has this cool orange color correction mask that makes color, and the relationship between colors, more accurate than you can get from tranny film. And all of this makes it difficult to impossible to create ICC profiles for scanners scanning negative films.

So... you're actually going to have to think to scan negative films. It's a hardship for those in the "I hate anything digital" camp, but good photography seldom comes without thought. Digital or analog.

If you like the darkroom workflows so much, why not print to RA-4 materials in the darkroom? Might solve all your problems.

[John Rodriguez]

I'm getting good results just using Epson Scan in the negative setting and adjusting in Photoshop. In Epson scan I adjust output to 0-255 and adjust R G B inputs individually to give 1-2 points on either end of their histograms. Then in PS I do a color adjustment using separate R, G and B curves, and occasionally use a color balance adjustment. I have contacts made of all my negatives when they're processed which gives me a color reference. Using this approach I can balance color in a couple of minutes.

[Brian C. Miller]

Curse the scanning problem though! I hate it! Why can't I have quality scans for cheap and with no headache? Hell, to drum scan a single 10 exposure box of film would cost me more than I paid for my whole 4x5 setup! So I have to suffer with this Epson piece of friggin' garbage and only go part way to what my negatives contain! ARGGH!

I must have gotten lucky with my Epson 750. The scan above is at the 6400 setting, and sitting on a normal table. The film is Kodak E100S. There is fringing (chromatic aberration), but I have never seen the bouncing/jagging/zig-zagging problem that you demonstrated with yours. But I haven't used the 4800 setting, either. I think the 6400 setting is the highest stepper setting, so maybe the slower speed will mitigate the vibration problem.

As for scanning costs, the drum scanners aren't speed demons, so it takes some time to complete the scan. We do have the DSLR scanner project going on here in the DIY section, so that may be of interest for you.

Have you tried Ektar and Portra 160? I've scanned Ektar, and it's a reasonably fine-grained film. As for "enjoy film while we have it," I agree completely. I have some boxes of 8x10 color, and I do intend to have some fun!

[timparkin]

Curse the scanning problem though! I hate it! Why can't I have quality scans for cheap and with no headache? Hell, to drum scan a single 10 exposure box of film would cost me more than I paid for my whole 4x5 setup! So I have to suffer with this Epson piece of friggin' garbage and only go part way to what my negatives contain! ARGGH!

Actually you can get drum scans for 4x5 for £15 each with a discount for bulk - so I've been told.. <whistles!>

Tim

[John Rodriguez]

Actually you can get drum scans for 4x5 for £15 each with a discount for bulk - so I've been told.. <whistles!>

Tim

If only you were in North America Tim

[oysteroid]

Oysteroid, could you describe exactly what your doing in Epson scan before you go into colorperfect? I am having trouble getting a good positive to bring into Photoshop. Once in Photoshop and inverted I get a nasty color cast on my images. There has to be a straightforeward way to end up with a positive scan that offers an optimal starting point.

Here are some screenshots showing the settings I use:



Also, if you press the "file save settings" (has a folder with picture icon) button, next to the "scan" button, and then press the "options" button, you'll get this dialog:



I have "embed ICC" unchecked.

That's pretty much it. The reason I use Epson instead of SilverFast is that for some reason, if I scan at 4800ppi or higher in SilverFast, my Photoshop CS2 will not open the TIF, saying "wrong file type" or something. I have to open it in Lightroom and then export it again as a TIF, which takes quite a while, and then open that in Photoshop. PS then reads it fine and it can be manipulated directly in PS without problems, but Lightroom does something to the image that causes weird psychedelic colors if you then try to invert it in ColorPerfect. If I scan in Epson Scan, I don't have any of these problems. Photoshop reads the huge TIF just fine. Go figure.

If you are getting a strong color cast still in ColorPerfect, you might try holding ctrl+shift while loading the plug-in (alt+shift on Mac). This will reset it to factory defaults. Then, in ColorPerfect, at top right, select ColorNeg, make sure the button next to that says "L" and then select whatever gamma C setting seems about right and then select correct film profile at the bottom. You might then need to make some minor color, saturation, and gamma adjustments before you take the result to PS for further refinement.

This seems to work great for me, and I am using no IT8 targets or scanner profiles anywhere in this process. In Photoshop, my working color space is AdobeRGB. I don't know if that makes any difference.

[oysteroid]

I must have gotten lucky with my Epson 750. The scan above is at the 6400 setting, and sitting on a normal table. The film is Kodak E100S. There is fringing (chromatic aberration), but I have never seen the bouncing/jagging/zig-zagging problem that you demonstrated with yours. But I haven't used the 4800 setting, either. I think the 6400 setting is the highest stepper setting, so maybe the slower speed will mitigate the vibration problem.

As for scanning costs, the drum scanners aren't speed demons, so it takes some time to complete the scan. We do have the DSLR scanner project going on here in the DIY section, so that may be of interest for you.

Have you tried Ektar and Portra 160? I've scanned Ektar, and it's a reasonably fine-grained film. As for "enjoy film while we have it," I agree completely. I have some boxes of 8x10 color, and I do intend to have some fun!

I took your sample into Photoshop and placed it right next to a scan from mine at the same resolution and my results are pretty much the same. And it doesn't seem noticeably worse at 4800ppi than at 6400. Take a closer look at your image though. You have those same zig zags or whatever they are. They are running vertically in your image. It is hard to sharpen this JPG up properly to show it clearly as I end up sharpening the JPG compression artefacts, but if you take your "raw" scan and sharpen it considerably, trying a range of radius values, you should be able to see it clearly.