Well, Mark, it's annoying to me. I'm glad you find that it's OK for you. I guess we just have different personalities. I know how to make an action, and all that other stuff ... it's just annoying. I don't like unloading the dishwasher, either ... although I don't mind loading it.
My experience is otherwise as I've been using high quality labs that do what I ask them to do, and, so far, do it well. Even Ritz, a generally low-end place, has given me "no corrections." My quality lab does a fine job ... I won't tolerate "pretty poor" from any lab that's doing serious work for me. Mark Cassino wrote: > At 10:36 AM 1/2/2004 -0800, you wrote: > > >Well, assuming that the BMP files produce a good image quality, using > >them in PS is a PITA. Conversion from BMP to a PSD or TIFF file is > >annoying > > Why? Load the BMP, save as TIF of PSD. Or make an action that reads all > the BMP's in and saves them as TIF's, or use a utility (like ACDSee) that > will batch convert from one format to another... > > >, and had I been using color instead of C-41 B&W for this test, > >I'd have had to fiddle with that as well. > > I consider scanning and Photoshop work to basically be the analog to > darkroom printing. My experience has been that scanning and adjusting an > image so it is ready to be sent to a printer or presented on a screen takes > about as much time as printing and toning in the dark room - less the > rinsing and drying times of course. So yeah, you do have to fiddle with > everything... > > Of course .... > > >The lab's "high res" scans were awful. > > ....having a good scan as a starting point is essential. > > > I asked for no corrections as i > >was playing around with different exposures of the same scene. Of > >course, they screwed that up pretty badly. In fact, an underexposed > >frame was actually brighter than the normally exposed frame taken > >afterwards. It looked more like the following overexposed frame. > > My own experience is that scan software will always try to adjust the > image, and it's almost impossible to get a good neutral scan to work with. > Personally, I scan slides in Vuescan with no adjustments which gives me a > very flat, blah, terrible image. I then adjust it manually in > Photoshop. For color negs I set the scanning software to do minimal > adjustments just to get the colors in the ball park, but for difficult > shots it's easier and faster to just do a completely unadjusted scan of the > neg (i.e. scan it as a slide) manually invert the image and cancel out the > orange mask. > > >While I've not had this problem with the pro lab that I use, his mess > >leads to the question of how to reduce the possibility of this happening > >again, with any lab. I was thinking of including a calibration frame on > >the first frame ... maybe a grey card or a grey scale shot. Do you > >think this'll help? > > I'd expect the lab to be able to kick out scans as good as machine prints > from the negs - which are usually pretty poor. You'd be better off IMO > getting the to do truly neutral scans but those will look really terrible > right off the disk. But then you have the raw data and can adjust to fit > your own tastes. > > - MCC > ----- > > Mark Cassino Photography > > Kalamazoo, MI > > http://www.markcassino.com > > -----
