wet mounting and sharpening with cezanne5500

[hbjornson]

I have now tested wet verses dry scanning with my cezanne elite. The wet mounted tests were only slightly sharper but large flat areas like skies were noticeably more uniform, less streaky, and less grainy than the dry mounted tests. Wet mounting was also quite easy after viewing the Aztek video. A further advantage is that I will spend considerably less time spotting in photoshop afterwards.
As to sharpening. I wonder if anyone can advise me on the use of the elaborate sharpening tools in the colorgenius 2.1 software. Are there some simple sharpening formulas for scanning negs hi rez. I'm afraid it's a little over my head!
Thanks

[Peter De Smidt]

Personally, I would sharpen in Photoshop, although I believe that Ted thinks differently.

[hbjornson]

Peter - I'm no expert but the sharpening controls in color genius look to be more sophisticated and so I'm guessing better. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find much help navigating this tool.
Am I the only one who has noticed benefits in wet mounting on flatbeds?

Howard Bjornson

[Peter De Smidt]

Hi Howard,

Yes, there can be benefits in wet-mounting on a flatbed. It depends a lot on the negatives. Wet-mounting tends to make grain appear smaller and more even, and it minimizes scratches. Remember that viewing a print at 100% on a screen is much bigger than most people would ever print. So the question is are the benefits worth the hassle given how big you'll print? Only you can answer that.

Regarding sharpening, Photoshop can be as sophisticated as you like with regards to sharpening. You can sharpen various channels, such as a LAB luminance channel, you can use all sorts of masks, including surface masks ... The sharpening in Color Genius does appear to be pretty good, with the ability to effect both the light and dark halos, and the ability to sharpen some colors more than others. Ted would know much more about this. That said, I prefer my scans to have as much info as possible. Sharpening throws out info. If you sharpen wrong in the scanning software, assuming your software doesn't have the capability to use a 'raw' file, you have to scan again. If you sharpen poorly in Photoshop, it's easy to fix. But you should do your own tests. I recommend printing out the color genius manuals which are available on the Screen Japan site.

Note, my computers affect my view on the matter. My scanner computer is really, really slow; whereas my Photoshop computer is pretty fast. Doing lots of software manipulations in the scanning software causes a big increase in scanning processing time, at least for me.

[Ted Harris]

Sorry for a short response ... flat on my back with back spasms.

ColorGenius has more sophisticated sharpening algorithms than PS. Generally I recommend initial sharpening during the scan and then some 'touch up' scanning in PS. You are loosing a lot of the power of the scanner by not fullt mastering and using all the capabilities of the software.

[Peter De Smidt]

Hi Ted, Sorry to hear about your back problems. I hope you're better soon!

What do you see as the advantages of sharpening in CG as opposed to in Photoshop? Photo Genius sharpener seems to do a pretty good job in PS.

[Michael T. Murphy]

flat on my back with back spasms.

Hi Ted! Sorry to hear about the back - I hope you are doing better.

E-mail me if you like, I have had chroic back problems for 15+ years. Haven't had a day without back pain, I have been off work for 2+ years.

I have tried 30+ meds and all kinds of solutions - acupuncturte, etc. - I may be able to help a bit.