Silverfast, AAAAARGH!

[Lars Daniel]

I have used Silverfast (full version) for my Epson V500 for some months now, and although I find it clumsy, it has worked. Now because I wanted to scan my first 4x5 neg, I needed to do it in two parts to be merged afterwards. Thus I needed to be sure that there is no auto exposure going on.
So I switch every single auto thing off, but auto is still on. I do some research, and some say that you should alt-click the auto icon, some say you should shift-click it, but whatever I do, the bloody thing is on auto exposure. I read the faq, I googled this and that, but I can not find out how to turn all auto OFF!

It seems to me that Silverfast knows everything there is to know about scanners, but unfortunately very little about making an interface that works with humans. (For 15 years I have made a living using computers for making music, and I have spent a LOT of time with software and manuals.)

Should I ditch Silverfast or is there hope?

[John T]

Have you actually contacted Silverfast?

[Lars Daniel]

Good point John. I am sitting here tonight trying to scan my first 4x5 and I suppose I was really hoping for a quick solution from you guys. And letting out some frustration. I will contact Silverfast though.

[Bill L.]

Hmmm. . . I tried the auto once on my Silverfast Ai, wasn't impressed, and turned it off. I think I just clicked it again like a toggle switch. Have you tried deleting the frame and creating a new one? I know sometimes I have annoying settings stick around if I use the same frame as a previous scan (and it tends to remember the frame even after shutting down the program and restarting).

Good luck!
Bill

[Cesar Barreto]

Hi, Lars.

I think you're in trouble because scanning negatives always means a strong curve being apllied by software, so if one half of the image is a bit different from the other there's no way to get uniform scans from both sides, unless you manage to capture raw files.
When scanning b&w panoramic negatives I'll always prefer to capture positive just to avoid this problem, but color negatives introduce some other difficulties into the equation.
So I don't think Silverfast is the only to be blamed for and some work should be done by yourself to make it work out fine.
Good luck,
Cesar B.

[Jeffrey Sipress]

I tried using silverfast for years, but the UI was alway such a pain in the butt. 250 menus, pages and decisions. I finally bailed, and now scanning is fun and easy again. Who came up with that much crap?

[Kirk Gittings]

If I remember correctly. Sandy King asked a similar question awhile back and there were some answers, one by me but I can't remember what and though I love Silverfast for difficult scanning problems, I no longer use a flatbed for anything but very casual proofing scans where I just use the Epson software.

[patrickjames]

Try using Vuescan. It is cheap for what it does (get the professional version and it is good for life). Most importantly for your purposes it has the ability to lock the exposure. I was stitching 4x5 like you a while back and Vuescan made it simple.

[Harley Goldman]

I use Silverfast Ai for my color scans and have for years, but I cannot get it to work properly for B&W negs no matter what I do. Silverfast support was worse than useless, so I use EpsonScan for B&W. I don't like the interface as much, but it gets the job done properly.

[JimL]

This is how I do it when scanning multiple frames while keeping exposure and color balance constant:

- in the Negafix panel (where you set the film type), click on the professor icon (bottom right). The panel will expand to show you the advanced options.

- at the bottom of the panel, you'll see the Auto button. Make sure the check box next to it is checked, then do a prescan.

- When the prescan is done, set the crop box on the part of the negative you want SF to take the color balance and exposure from. You'll see that SF will automatically set the black and white points for each channel of the RGB histogram depending what's being framed by the crop box (the histogram in the Negafix panel represents the raw RGB data straight off the negative). Generally you'll want to use quite a large part of the negative to make sure you capture the darkest and brightest parts of the image, and get a good overall color correction. This is where scanning a negative in 2 parts can get you if the prescan of the first half doesn't contain the full range of values in the whole negative. So you might find yourself going through this routine twice, but that will be true for any scanning software.

- At this point, you can also set all the other auto image adjustments at once by clicking the iris icon on the main panel, or using any of the individual curves, histogram, and color balance tools next to it. In particular, I usually open the histogram tool to drag the white point all the way to the right to make sure there's no clipping of the highlights (how much is automatically clipped can also be set in Options). To reset all the adjustments on the main panel, hold down the Alt key and you'll see the Options button (bottom right) change to Reset.

- When you've got the exposure and color balance how you want, UNCHECK the box next to the auto button. Now you can scan, change the crop box, do more prescans and scans of different parts of the negative or other negatives, and the exposure and color balance will stay the same providing you don't touch any other adjustments.

- Think of the Negafix panel as where the large adjustments taking the raw negative scan to a roughly balanced starting point occurs, and the main panel as where the refinement of the image occurs.

- Once you get the hang of it, it won't seem that difficult. I've used this procedure with my Nikon 8000 to scan 6x12 and 6x17 negs in several parts to stitch together, and the results are perfectly even. Silverfast may seem frustrating and quirky, and the documentation isn't great, but there is some thought behind the way it works and it has the most control of any scanning utility I've come across. For B&W, I usually scan as 16bit HDR and do an inversion and curves in Photoshop.

HTH,

Jim