Rick hit the nail on the head. Over fifty percent of the reproductions we do are now via DCS. Cleaner, faster digital delivery versus transparency and given you are printing ink to a relatively porous substrate the difference in edge definition is marginal when compared to a scanned tranny. We also find controlled shooting under measurable light to render more accurate first-pass color than our calibrated and profiled Scitex Jazz scanner. No film casts, but over-saturation is (and will be) a CCD sensor issue for a while to come.Rick Lee wrote: As it happens, I'm a pastel artist in addition to my day job of commercial photographer. Personally, I think the risk of damage is just too great to put a pastel painting on a drum scanner. If you are familiar with "soft" pastels (which is what I'm assuming we're talking about) you'll know that any touch of the surface will smear the color. It never "dries" like oil paint and you cannot use enough fixative to make it so that it can be handled. I have been making "giclee" (inkjet) prints of my pastels using the output from a good digital camera and I'm very happy with it. In the past, the preferred way to do this was to get a large transparency (4x5 or 120) and then have that scanned... but using a digital camera is a lot easier and cuts out a lot of hassle and expense.Putting the pastel directly on a drum scanner might produce a great file, but I think the risk is not worth it when you have the option of shooting it with a top flight digital camera. I doubt that one would be able to see much difference. IMHO
6mp is a bare minimum and can suffice up to 30x20 with the right interpolation depending on the original (and your lens quality) and your printer's capabilities. As a preference I prefer a PhaseOne or other medium format back or larger and believe that currently to repro anything over 20x30 you will need to start with a minimum 11mp. Haven't finished my testing yet. Hopefully March this year...I'm sure by June I'll know what to tell Dick what I want for my birthday.
Anyway...to get back to Ellie's original query:
Can I ask the scanner operator to scan in RGB and can they embed a profile for me?Most drum scanning of originals we've experience (in Canada) are RGB, unprofiled workflow, no embedding. Most simply scan the widest dynamic range the material whitepoint/blackpoint can reveal and are provided RAW with no alterations. You might ask if they really are drum scanning. Some large format DCS systems are referred to as drum even though they are not.
Surprisingly assigning a profile to many of these scans is not too much trouble for much of the color ranges with the exception of reds and nuetrals. ECI v1 RGB.icc quite often renders the yellows, blues, greens better than any of its counterparts, but alas the reds always suffer. Most scanners near the standardized basis of 5000k/gamma 1.8 which is why ECI falls well into place for these generalized workflows...good luck. (It's not as hard as it sounds...assign and go straight to levels and you are halfway there.)
However, I could be completely wrong about all of this. I am, after all, Canadian.
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joel johnstone
Color Canuck
(A Lesser-known of the Great Northern Crowned Joels)
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