Basic Silverfast question

[Jim Andrada]

I'm just starting to try Silverfast 8 Ai with my Epson 750.

I scanned a neg with Silvrfast and with Epson scan. The neg was wet mounted on the Epson wet mount carrier and the Epson scan was much sharper than the Silverfast scan.

Is there a way to make sure Silverfast uses the high(er) res portion of the scanner focused above the scanner glass? In Epson scan you can tell it that a film carrier is in use, not sure how to do the same with Silverfast.

Thanks

[Ed Bray]

Selecting negative in Silverfast automatically selects the film carrier, reflective and large transparency settings use the lower resolution lens and the glass platen.

[Jim Andrada]

Thanks Ed.

By the way, just scanned a transparency -again Epson scan was sharper. And I didn't have the large/wide transparency selected.

[welly]

How do scans compare with Epson Scan or if you've got VueScan, can you do a comparison with those?

[Brian Ellis]

I used Silverfast for quite a while. I can't help with your specific question but I can tell you that for me there was a very steep learning curve involved with learning to use all the options to best advantage (and I'm not sure I ever did). I didn't find the "manual" that came with the software all that helpful. I did find the book "Silverfast: The Official Guide" by Taz Tally to be very helpful. I think it's available on the Silverfast web site. The Silverfast instructional videos that accompany some of the features are also useful if you can stay awake while the guy with the German accent drones on and on.

[Jim Andrada]

I think the Silverfast user interface is absolutely bizarre. I know there's a way to get it to scan more than once to get better shadow detail, but damned if I've figured out how to do it - maybe that's what they're calling "HDRI" or something.

[john borrelli]

Don't give up on Silverfast just yet. You may have already tried all of the following but the info might be useful to someone.

You might want to reset your defaults and try again. Make sure you are scanning at the highest bit level like 64bit HDRi color or 32bit HDRi for black and white. You might want to try shutting off any of the dust and scratch removal features and most importantly, you want to check off the scanning option that scans once for highlights and once for shadows, I don't remember what it's called but it is the icon on the scanning window that looks like a sun. You click on the sun and you should see the # 2 appear: when you are actually scanning you should see and hear the scanner going over your image twice. Now there is another similar looking icon right above it, that feature looks like 4 cards, leave that at one.

If you are scanning black and white, give the black and white negative feature a try. There you click the negative option under the general tab, then you will see a film option menu pop up to select the film, you might loose a tiny bit of sharpness but I find the scans to look more film-like and there is slightly less of an annoying tint to black and white scans. Hope this helps, John

[StoneNYC]

Don't give up on Silverfast just yet. You may have already tried all of the following but the info might be useful to someone.

You might want to reset your defaults and try again. Make sure you are scanning at the highest bit level like 64bit HDRi color or 32bit HDRi for black and white. You might want to try shutting off any of the dust and scratch removal features and most importantly, you want to check off the scanning option that scans once for highlights and once for shadows, I don't remember what it's called but it is the icon on the scanning window that looks like a sun. You click on the sun and you should see the # 2 appear: when you are actually scanning you should see and hear the scanner going over your image twice. Now there is another similar looking icon right above it, that feature looks like 4 cards, leave that at one.

If you are scanning black and white, give the black and white negative feature a try. There you click the negative option under the general tab, then you will see a film option menu pop up to select the film, you might loose a tiny bit of sharpness but I find the scans to look more film-like and there is slightly less of an annoying tint to black and white scans. Hope this helps, John

I hate SilverFast 8, I can't even get anything to click, haha, let alone select options from menu's.

Also I don't understand why there's a 32bit B&W ... I thought the V750 only did 16bit in B&W and 48bit color (16x3 for CYM) or something like that?

I'm only asking as I don't quite know or understand.

[Jim Cole]

I never could get a better scan with Silverfast than I do with the much simpler Epson scan. Silverscan always had issues they were "working on". I gave up on it three years ago. The multi-scan images would never exactly align causing sharpness issues and other artifacts.

[john borrelli]

I hope I am getting the names of these functions correct.

I am a little fuzzy on the Silverfast terminology but Jim you may have been using the multisampling feature, this feature admittedly never did work that well. However the Sun icon feature which may be called Multiexposure works very well. The idea of this feature is to expand the dynamic range of the scan. It works by scanning for the shadows and then doing another scan for the highlights and then combining them into one scan. Why is this important? Because the average consumer scanner, like my Epson 4990, has poor dynamic range. The multiexposure feature tries to expand the dynamic range of the scan to help compensate for the difference in the DR of your film versus the DR of your scanner. Shadow detail in the scan will first appear dark and muddy on your monitor but when you export to Photoshop and do your processing you will be able to get more real detail in your print.