PDA

View Full Version : Is it really neccessary to profile your scanner?



Hugh Sakols
14-Feb-2006, 14:49
If you are not scanning hundreds of images at a time is it really neccessary to create a profile for your scanner. I can completely understand having a profile for your monitor but why your scanner. Can't everything be corrected in photoshop?

julian_4860
14-Feb-2006, 15:17
you can only profile your scanner if you shoot tranny. It is IMPOSSIBLE to profile for colour neg or BW...

Leonard Evens
14-Feb-2006, 15:33
I presume that it is worth profiling your scanner if what the scanner software shows you is signficantly different from what you see when you look at the scanned image in your photoeditor. If that is the case, it would be hard to make adjustments, the effect of which would be predictable, when scanning. I use Vuescan to scan color negative film and some transparencies, and what I see in Vuescan looks to me to be virtually identical to what I see in my photoeditor, so I've not found it necessary to profile the scanner.

Harley Goldman
14-Feb-2006, 16:30
I found it far easier to get accurate colors on my Epson 4870 after calibrating it. My scans improved immediately.

Bill McMannis
14-Feb-2006, 17:23
I agree with Harley. As a matter-of-fact, the time to calibrate your equipment will be "earned back" after only a few scans. Matching prints to transparencies will be much easier with your scanner, monitor and printer profiled.

Bill

Kirk Gittings
14-Feb-2006, 18:25
Yes it is necessary or at least very productive to profile your scanner for color transparencies.

There may also be some value for color negs as well as as b&w negs if you follow a particular and common workflow. That workflow is to scan everything as if it were a transparency and invert it in PS. For color negs that involves purchasing a plugin called POS/NEG which allows you to create a "conversion profile" for particular films. For b&w negs some believe there are advantages in sharpness and noise reduction by then throwing away all but the best channel.

This workflow however is NOT my preference as with my scanners (EP 4990/MTK 1800f/Nikon 8000) I get better results using Silverfast's very good color neg profiles over POS/NEG. And with b&w I get better results scanning as neg but in 48 bit color and throwing away all but the green channel.

tim atherton
14-Feb-2006, 20:51
"Yes it is necessary or at least very productive to profile your scanner for color transparencies. "

Kirks right - it may not be essential for many uses, but it doesn't hurt. I happen to already have a Q60 target a while back from another use, and have generally profiled the scanners I use (I just set up a new Epson 4990 for the University museum and art collection here in the last few days. Couldn't find my Q60 in all the piles of papers in my office until today, so the first few test scans were done without calibration. The ones I did today after calibration show, to my eye, a difference. It's not dramatic, but just enough to make colours etc closer to what they should be. Saves extra work down the road)

BTW - int he PosNeg and Silverfast thing we are talking subtle difference I think not big differences in quality (I think you asked me a question about this a week or two ago Kirk... been crazy here - the missus having to slog away on a course in snowy Banff in the Rockies while I wrangle a 4 and 2 year old!). Kirks silverfast workflow works for him (and I quite like SIlverfast), my vuescan RAW + NegPos for colour neg film and B&W works for me. It may just come down to shooting style - from what I've seen of Kirks work (admittedly not a lot), he has some bold rich colours and dramatic ranges in b&w. Much of my work relis more on subtle tones in colour and lots of mid tone and shadow detail in b&w ( I much prefer grey and overcast days for photography). SO I wouldn't be surprised if each of us has found a very good ,slightly different, workflow that happens to work for the type of images we produce

neil poulsen
14-Feb-2006, 21:35
Profiling your scanner has the unintended effect of clipping the gamut of the scanner to the gamut of the target.

But the other day, I scanned a transparency and was having trouble getting the right colors for certain portions of the transparency. Yellows kept showing up as oranges. I used the IT8 4x5 transparency target and Monaco profiling software that comes with the pro version of the 4870, and this solved the problem.

Don Wallace
15-Feb-2006, 06:45
Damn. I thought I was finally up on most of this. How do you profile a scanner? I have an Epson 4870. BTW, my scanned transparencies look fine and I do very little adjustment in PS (elements).

Bill McMannis
15-Feb-2006, 10:17
Don, If you purchased the Pro Version of the 4870 it came with Monaco EZ Color. This includes IT-8 targets for reflective and transparencies. I use it to build not only scanner profiles, but pretty good profiles for my Epson 2200 using different papers.

Kirk Gittings
15-Feb-2006, 10:44
"Profiling your scanner has the unintended effect of clipping the gamut of the scanner to the gamut of the target."

Could someone explain this, because I profile my scanners and then sometimes scan in Prophoto for archiving. Yet there is a huge difference in gamut between scanning in Prophoto vs, Adobe RGB with a profiled scanner with the same IT8 target. What am I missing here.

Michael Chmilar
15-Feb-2006, 11:18
Profiling your scanner has the unintended effect of clipping the gamut of the scanner to the gamut of the target.

But, I would think that if your target equals or exceeds the gamut of the material you are scanning, this is not a problem.

Brian Ellis
16-Feb-2006, 11:33
"It is IMPOSSIBLE to profile for colour neg or BW..."

So why does Kodak make IT8 targets for color negative film?

Kirk Gittings
16-Feb-2006, 11:52
Brian, Where? I have never seen them.

julian_4860
17-Feb-2006, 09:42
Brian, so you can create custom means of handling the neg to pos conversion. this is not an icc profile. I have targets for my usual neg stocks for this reason

Julian

Kirk Gittings
17-Feb-2006, 10:59
Seriously Brian where have you seen IT8's for Kodak color negs ? I have looked a few times and could never find any from any manufacturer.

Kirk Gittings
17-Feb-2006, 13:01
"So why does Kodak make IT8 targets for color negative film?"

After a thorough search of the web, once again I can find 0 references to IT8 color negative charts by any manufacturer. Therefore Brian I assume you are mistaken.