RE: filmscanners: Ed Hamrick: Output files in VueScan
Another sidenote (WARNING) is that if you give a static (non-incrementing) name, like 'danastuff.tif', VueScan will write every image to that name, which means at the end of scanning several (many?) frames you have only one file, and it is of the most recent scan. I consider this to be the biggest bug in VueScan. It should never overwrite a file without first asking for permission and giving a chance to rename/overwrite/cancel.
RE: filmscanners:RE: filmscanners: Correction for daylight slides with artificial light
Anybody knows some kind of filter to apply during scanning or in Photoshop that parcially corrects for greenish color of daylight slides taken with artificial light? (I would like to recover a slide collection that I made almost thirty years ago in the assyrian rooms of the British Museum). TIA. I use iCorrect Pro ( http://www.picto.com/icorrect/default.htm ) by Pictographics. It uses the concept of memory colors to make color corrections. Predefined memory colors are included for neutral, skin, sky, and foliage. For images containing identifiable portions of grays and/or skin I find it does a remarkable job. Simply click on the various regions and undo if the color gets worse.
RE: filmscanners: No luck with Superia 400
Very strange. I've tried everybody's suggestions, scanning under SGH, NGH, Real 100 (Japan) even Royal Gold 400, but a shot I have of a blood-red DayLily keeps coming out deep purple. Any ideas? The problem may lie with the film, not the scanner. If the film sees colors differently than the eye sees them, then apparent color shifts can occur. This is related to metamerism. If the film is sensitive to very deep blue or near ultraviolet that the eye has little sensitivity to, what appears red to the eye will appear red+blue=magenta (purple) to the film. For a technical explanation with examples see http://www.rmphoto.com/Documents/Color%20Accurate%20Photography.pdf Dean Shough [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: filmscanners: Vuescan - filenames
On a related note - I kind if wish Vuescan didn't leave it so easy to overwrite a file, since it doesn't ask you if you want to overwrite the file of the same name. I've had to rescan a couple when I forgot to go into files and change the name. This is such a given in most Windows apps, I wonder why Ed didn't set it up this way? Or am I missing something? It is also standard on Macs to ask before overwriting files. Yes, I know about using number+ in the file name, but I would much prefer to have VueScan ask before overwriting files.
RE: filmscanners: RE: filmscanners: Best solution for HD and imag es
PS Can someone confirm for me that all this discussion of IDE RAID is irrelevent to Mac users? Are there IDE RAID solutions for Mac? Mac OS Z 10.1 has RAID capabilities built in. I believe it works with SCSI, IDE, or FireWire drives. The problem is that it can not be used as the boot disk and it is not usable from Mac OS 9.x.
RE: filmscanners: RE: filmscanners: Best solution for HD and imag es
PS Can someone confirm for me that all this discussion of IDE RAID is irrelevent to Mac users? Are there IDE RAID solutions for Mac? Mac OS Z 10.1 has RAID capabilities built in. I believe it works with SCSI, IDE, or FireWire drives. The problem is that it can not be used as the boot disk and it is not usable from Mac OS 9.x. Both problems are fixed with a hardware RAID system. One mentioned by Bare Feats ( http://www.barefeats.com/ ) is by ACARD Technologies ( http://www.acard.com/eng/product/safm/aec-6880m.html ) for $179 plus drives. Same card works for both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X. Doubt very much if it will work under Mac OS Z - blame my fat fingers for this typo.
RE: filmscanners: Re: Dynamic range
What is the dynamic range figure - i.e.3.2, 3.4 or whatever - a measurement of? Or maybe I should ask, what is the unit of measurement? Two different answers: 1) The units are specs and it is a measurement of how far the manufacture is willing to push them. 2) There are no units for dynamic range - it the log base ten of the ratio between the lightest and darkest material that can be measured. These days it tends to be nothing more than the range of the A-D converter, with each bit adding 0.3 to the dynamic range. Thus a 12 bit system is said to have a dynamic range of 3.6. As far as I know there is no standard on how to decide what is the darkest material that a scanner can measure. As a test I placed a series of neutral density filters (no filter, ND 1, ND 2, ND 3, ND 4, and ND 5) in my Microtek 8700 scanner. I was clearly able to distinguish between the ND 4 and the ND5 filters, but only because each was a large uniform area that I could average over. The noise level was larger than the difference, but by looking at a large number of pixels I could tell the two patches apart. I had enough peculiarities in this test that I want to repeat it to see if something was wrong.
RE: filmscanners: New New ColorSlide Profile
ftp.polaroid.com/pub/imaging/input/ss4000/ Make that ftp://ftp.polaroid.com/pub/imaging/input/SS4000 Appears to be case sensitive.
RE: filmscanners: OT: Email contacts
If trying to contact www.xyzcompany.com, try [EMAIL PROTECTED] webmaster@... admin@... administrator@... abuse@... system@... Don't forget to try [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: filmscanners: RE: filmscanners: Re: Hello, thanks, and more.
One of the new features of the upcoming release of Polacolor Insight is the ability to use one of several decimation techniques from nearest neighbor(lowest quality) to bicubic(highest quality also longer). Your choice would depend on use. David Actually, the best technique use sinc functions for resampling the data. This is due to the Fourier transform properties of rectangular pixels or sampling. See http://www.fh-furtwangen.de/~dersch/interpolator/interpolator.html for a comparison of different techniques applied to rotating images multiple times.
RE: filmscanners: best film scanner for bw negs
I've became aware of this when I was doing similar analysis recently; that much of the apparent scanner noise was in fact film grain. So now that I'm aware of this I factor it into my testing. --Bill Bill, What you write, runs contrary to all of the recent (6 months) threads on the colorsync list regarding grain and noise. Not that you are wrong, it's just what I've read and experienced with magazines scanning our work for reproduction. I will try to grab a set of neutral density filters this weekend and see if they reduce the amount of noise. These filters should have *no* grain al all.
RE: filmscanners: Nikon film flatness (was Glass slide mounts)
For someone with time, Photoshop savvy, and an important slide that suffers from the focus problem, I would like to recommend A Multifocus Method for Controlling Depth of Field at http://www.sgi.com/grafica/depth/index.html The author, Paul Haeberli, takes two images of the same scene and performs some manipulations to create a single image that retains the sharpest portions of each individual image. When applied to scanners, the two images would be scans with the focus set to different places on the slide. It should not be hard to create Photoshop action that will combine the sharpest portion of two scans using this technique.
RE: filmscanners: best film scanner for bw negs
You might be interested in the measurements I made on my Nikon IV ED with the Stouffer BW target. Different curves are obtained with different media settings in NikonScan and Vuescan. 0 is the lowest density step on the Stouffer which I estimate to be about 0.15 OD. The LS4000 should have better results. Very nice. I particularly like your converting from 0-255 to scanner density. I plan to do the same type of plot with my scanners, but I would like to add a) plot each color and b) error bars representing the noise. I was going to calculate the noise in Photoshop by drawing a box slightly smaller than each patch and reading off the standard deviation from the histogram window. The rest was going to be done in Excel. Biggest problem is the time it will take to manually read off all the values. This would seem to be an ideal way to compare different scanners and software packages - at least as far as their dynamic range and maximum useable optical density. If I have time this weekend...
RE: filmscanners: Mac users
Hemingway, David J wrote: Any Mac users considering purchasing a SS4000?? David Yes, why do you ask? I am currently considering either the Polaroid or Nikon scanners. Not quite happy with either and will probably wait several months for something better. The Minolta Scan Multi PRO with 4800 dpi, ICE^3, and diffuse illumination comes closest to what I want. I don't need medium format and it's twice what I am willing to pay. Almost decided to get the SS4000 at around $500 after rebate. If it had ICE or ICE^3 I would get the SS4000 Plus.
RE: filmscanners: Sprintscan 4000 Plus
Dean, don't you mean $1,450? CDW lists about the same price but no tech details Yes, I slipped another digit.
filmscanners: Sprintscan 4000 Plus
The Sprintscan 4000 Plus is now listed at eCost for $14500. See http://www.ecost.com/ecost/ecsplash/shop/detail.asp?dpno=962229 Only changes appear to be FireWire/USB interfaces and 14 bits per color.
RE: filmscanners: brandnew user queries
Which brand of compressed air/gas is recommended? Try using a hurricane blower, available from photo stores. This is just a large version of the rubber bulb as used for cleaning optics. Lots of air, never any worry about permanently marking your film with the liquid propellant, and it never runs out. Only problem is that if the air in the room is very dusty you end up adding more dust onto your film.
RE: filmscanners: NIKON LS 4000 AND D1X
There is one good thing about that tough. The CCD require that the rays come in at 90 degrees. Especially with a wide angle lens the exposure rate would depend on the distance from the middle point. I have to admit that I don't know how bad that effect is, though. Also I believe that lens design can compensate for it somehow. And if not you can still do it electronically. Assuming that the most important object is somewhere around the middle that shouldn't be too bad. I believe you are referring to the cosine to the fourth power falloff of light with angle of incidence. The classic method of compensating for this effect is to place a gradated neutral density filter near the leaf shutter on a view camera. Modern 35 mm lenses compensate for the fall off by using pupil distortion. Look through the back of a wide angle 35 mm lens. Rotate the lens and look at what happens to the apparent size of the aperture. Near the edge of the field of view the aperture appears to increase in size, letting more light through the lens. With older lenses the aperture gets smaller as you increase the angle of incidence - contributing to the cosine^4 falloff.
RE: filmscanners: ReSize, ReSample or ReScan ?
How did you access the PhotoDisk TIFF test file.? It looks like they have moved it since I originally downloaded it. I went up one level from the URL I posted and now find it in ftp://ftp.photodisc.com/Tech/PDTarget . The original 47 MB TIFF file seems to be gone.
RE: filmscanners: ReSize, ReSample or ReScan ?
#1 Resize the scanned pixels so the image is 4 inches by 4 inches within photoshop keeping the 2900 dots of data from the original scan. (I am not at all certain how this works, but this is what I got from reading A Few Scanning Tips by Wayne Fulton and Photoshop 6.0 seems to do it.) Many (most or even all?) print drivers will take your 2900 / 8 = 363.5 dpi image and perform a quick and dirty decimation to get down to the printers 200 dpi. By decimation I mean they will throw away extra pixels until the resolution is 200 dpi. Likewise, if you feed the printer less than 200 dpi then the print driver will simply duplicate adjacent pixels until it has 200 dpi. Remember, when I say 200 dpi it is only because that is the example resolution you used. I will send another reply that has an Acrobat file I created that tests this for your printer. For my printer (an Alps MD5000) the magic resolution is 300 dpi. The other post may or may not pass through the list because the size is 56 kB. #2 Resample in photoshop to convert the 2900 dots of data to 800 dots of data at 200 dpi which I send to the printer. This should give the best results - the bi-cubic resampling used by Photoshop (make sure you have your preferences set to use bi-cubic by default) is near optimal. I am aware of only one program that uses the optimal, sinc, resampling - PanoTools at http://www.fh-furtwangen.de/~dersch/ (closed for the summer). #3 Stick the slide into the scanner and get the desired 800 by 800 bits of data from the selected portion of the slide. i.e. somehow use the Twain drivers to get the resolution I want. Should be equivalent to #1 - decimation of pixels to get the right resolution. I recognize in the real world the choices will never be this clear, but can one generalize that resampling to a *lower* resolutions is better/worse then resizing under certain circumstances? It seems to me scanner software would not even offer the option of lower resolution scans if the quality were always better for resampling and resizing. But it is much easier to brag about scan time. Image quality is much harder to measure.
RE: filmscanners: ReSize, ReSample or ReScan ?
you said the magic resolution for your Alps MD5000 is 300 dpi. Two questions, How does one determine the magic resolution of one's printer? and since I am lazy, what is the magic resolution of an Epson 1280? Look at my other post in this thread that has a 56 kB pdf file attached. I see it came through (I thought it might be too large), although it probably did dot show up until after your post. Print it out and see for yourself. I don't have an Epson so I can't say what the Epsons do.
RE: filmscanners: Vuescan 7.1.1.4 not working with Microtek 8700?
I have a Mac G4 silver with OS 9.2.1 and Microtek scsi and firewire 8700 flatbed scanner; I just got the latest version of Vuescan BUT I do not see from the list of the supported scanner models, from the Vuescan menu the Microtek 8700..; in fact when I ask the software for a preview scans, nothing happen. I believe that Ed has stated that Firewire on the Mac is only supported under MacOS 10.1. I know that the 8700 attached via Firewire doesn't show up under 9.2.1 and VueScan 7.1.11. Have not tried USB yet.
RE: filmscanners: ReSize, ReSample or ReScan ?
Just how is this chart/print supposed to be interpreted? At first I thought all resolutions printed well on my Epson1160 with MIS VM quadtone inks. Then I noticed that there are heavy lines scattered about within each resolution target, but then I looked at the PDF, and they are there too. However, as I change the view magnification in acrobat, their location shifts. As some of this appears to be either an optical illusion, or an effect that occurs within the monitor or the path to the monitor, I have no idea how closely my print should match my screen view in this regard. If I am just looking for the little line slashes to print without jaggies (aliasing) then I'd say, on my setup, all targets print excellent. With the printers that I have tried (1 Alps and 2 different HP laserjets), only the 300 dpi image prints with no variations in linewidth or gaps in the lines. The displayed image seems to show the lines with various intensities and fades to gray before dropping and lines. I presume that this is because of the Postscript interpreter built into Acrobat. The HP printers were postscript but still dropped pieces of the lines.
RE: filmscanners: ReSize, ReSample or ReScan ?
Don't buy into this magic resolution claim. Just because a particular pattern (that has nothing to do with the variety of real images you will be printing) prints better at a particular DPI does not mean there is a universal magic resolution for every/other image(s). The image that was posted only has black and white lines. Again, hardly indicative of a normal photographic image. Personally, I believe this is a very flawed test, and any conclusions drawn from it are only valid for THAT very image, and are erroneous for any real photographic image. I believe that in practice you are correct. I created a similar test file using a real image (a small piece of the 47 MB PhotoDisc TIFF test file from ftp://ftp.photodisc.com/Tech/Target/ ) and detected very little difference between the various images. It was only when the image had regular, repeating patterns in it that it became obvious that the print driver was doing some sort of simple sampling. I am not surprised that the effect is not visible with real images as most real images do not have much content at the higher frequencies. The line test I posted shows the sampling effect most clearly. A zone plate (grayscale, concentric circles with various frequencies) test shows the effects of sampling, but it is not nearly as obvious. The real image only showed the effects where the original image contains high contrast, high spatial frequency, repeating patterns. Even then it took very close examination to detect. I expect the effect will appear completely different in any printer that does not use the regular halftoning used in the printers I tested. I am curious how it appears in the Epsons with their error diffusion halftoning.
RE: filmscanners: New review of Nikon IVED
New review of Nikon IVED scanner. http://www.imaging-resource.com/SCAN/CSIV/C4A.HTM They also have reviews of the Nikon 8000, Nikon 4000, and Polaroid 4000 scanners. I know of no other site that comes close to the quality and depth of their scanner reviews. The test test targets (a personal favorite of mine ;-) ), slides with lots of details, dense shadows, and off beat emulsions. They let you look at the default scans and the same scans after being tweaked in Photoshop. You can download full resolution scans and reduced size scans as appropriate. They walk you through the software in endless, gory detail. The main downside to their site is the limited number of scanners they have tested.
RE: filmscanners: New filmscanners reviews
If people on this list don't know who I work for !! :0) Sorry, I probably should not have responded to the original post - it just struck me as funny and obvious that the review would be favorable to Polaroid. I have seen enough of David Hemingway's post to know that, although he works for Polaroid, he is not just a shrill for them. In fact, there are certain posters that I tend to read even if the thread does not sound interesting to me - David is one of them. I was serious when I said thanks for posting the notice of the upcoming review as I am looking into buying a new high-end 35 mm slide scanner. I am trying to decide between the Nikon and the Polaroid 4000 dpi scanners. I definitely like the price of the Polaroid but would really like to have the ICE^3 for my older slides. I expect to wait for the price of the Nikon to come down or for Polaroid to introduce a new model.
RE: filmscanners: Photoshop 6.0.1 Colour management with VUESCAN 7.1.9
One final trick I tried in PS that seems to work (but I'm sure is not a good Idea) was to output from vuescan without a profile then open in PS and force my monitor profile on the image [with convert to working space after ticked] and that seems to do the trick. The image in PS looks like the image in VueScan but this must be a bad idea I feel. VueScan displays the image with no correction for the display color. If what you see in VueScan's preview window is the color you would like to see in Photoshop, then the procedure you mentioned is correct. An ICC savvy program would take an image, determine its color space (e.g., AdobeRGB), and convert the display values to the color space used by the monitor, e.g., DisplayRGB. By not doing the display conversion, the displayed image can be correct only if the image color space is DisplayRGB.
RE: filmscanners: New auto adjust software on it's way
Yeah, that article has stuck in my mind also. I remember that the method had to do with mathematically analyzing circles of confusion to sharpen unsharp images (don't remember anything about motion blur, but it might have been there). I onced asked about it on some list or other and someone mentioned that there was some problem or other. Be curious if anyone has any less vague info about the technique. John M. WARNING: science and math explanation - please skip if not interested A simple way of looking at the image formed by an optical system to consider the image to be the convolution between the ideal image and the point spread function for the optics. The ideal image is just the image that you would have if the optics had no aberrations and light did not diffract. The point spread function is the real image that would form if you were looking at a point source, such as a star. The convolution is a two dimensional integration that combines the point spread function with each point in the ideal image. If the ideal image consists of just one star, the real image would be a single point spread function properly located and with the correct intensity. Add another star to the ideal image and add the corresponding point spread function to the real image. Keep adding points to the ideal image until it looks like the scene you are photographing and add the corresponding point spread function to the real image. If the array of points looks sufficiently close the input scene the real image (smeared by the point spread function) will be what finally reaches the film. Various complications arise. To model an image of a colored object the above process needs to be repeated for the different colors. If the point spread function varies across the image (as it would for any real optics) then the appropriate point spread function must be used. Instead of convolving the ideal image with the point spread function, the mathematically equivalent operation can be carried out using Fourier transforms. Instead of doing a two dimensional integration one Fourier transforms both the ideal image and the point spread function, multiplies them together, and then performs an inverse Fourier Transforms. The end result is the same smeared image the convolution obtained. Long ago it was realized that doing the math using Fourier transforms was both quicker and it would allow the smearing to be undone, at least in principle. If the smeared image is just the product of the point spread function and the ideal image, then the ideal image should be the smeared imaged divided by the point spread function. There are MAJOR problems with this simple minded approach, but it is the basis of most current imagine sharpening techniques. Some of the problems include dividing by zero, noisy images, and inadequate modeling of the point spread function. Various methods have been proposed to overcome the problems, but only a small class of images are practical to sharpen. Stellar images from the Huble telescope sharpen very nicely. Images of grandma taken with a cheap zoom lens are a lost cause.
RE: filmscanners: New filmscanners reviews
The October issue of MacWorld will have several film scanners reviewed. Watch for it on your news stand! David Gee, I wonder if this posting by [EMAIL PROTECTED] means that the review is favorable to Polaroid? (Rhetorical question only - and I see nothing at all inappropriate with the original post. Thanks for the info!)
RE: filmscanners: film vs. digital cameras - wedding/commercial p
Er how do you implement scenario 3? Some radical new advanced semiconductor that can measure the colour of all incident photons? 3: One chip with twice the density (each pixel position contains full RGB info). Use a dispersive microlens array. Over each camera pixel is a microlens that focuses the light and a blazed, dispersive microlens that separates the colors. The CCD would have three small pixels underneath each microlens to sense the RGB color information. US patent 5,600,486.
RE: filmscanners: film vs. digital cameras - wedding/commercial p
Use a dispersive microlens array. Over each camera pixel is a microlens that focuses the light and a blazed, dispersive microlens that separates the colors. The CCD would have three small pixels underneath each microlens to sense the RGB color information. US patent 5,600,486. That's nice, now try producing one. We made and tested them 5 years ago. Then my company decided that they were not interested in pursuing micro-optics and dropped this line of research.
RE: filmscanners: Silverfast vs Nikon Software?
placing their DLLs in the System folder. However, a work around to this problem is to put the DLL in question (the one that the newly installed application wants to place in the System folder, overwriting the current DLL in that folder) in the application's own folder. Then create a zero byte file that is named the same as the application, plus an extension of .local. For instance, if the application was called crankyapp.exe, you A similar trick works on the Mac when different programs insist on their own version of a dynamically linked library. Put the new (or most commonly used) version of the DLL in the system extension folder and place the other DLL in the same folder as the application that requires the incompatible DLL. On the Mac there is no need for the *.local file.
RE: filmscanners: film vs. digital cameras - wedding/commercial p hotography
When the digital cameras get to 16M pixels, I will consider getting one...but I will probably always use film anyway, since I shoot mostly BW these days, and I don't do weddings any more. Kodak already has a 16M pixel back out for Hasselblad cameras - the Kodak DCS Pro Back. See http://www.kodak.com/go/dcsproback . Only $20k :-)
filmscanners: Understanding Curves
On one of the threads someone asked about a tutorial on Photoshops curves tool. Imaging Insider ( http://www.imaginginsider.com/ ) just wrote an on this very subject and they include a PDF file. Use http://www.imaginginsider.com/data/archive/508/4PpYQ55ZTI.pdf to directly download the 2.1 MB file. IMAGING INSIDER BONUS: Download a PDF of Chapter 7 entitled Understanding Curves, compliments of Peachpit Press and Adobe Press. Ben Willmore, founder of Digital Mastery, has released his latest Adobe Photoshop 6.0 Studio Techniques. It goes beyond conventional step-by-step instructions and helps explain the most complex techniques. Studio Techniques includes four new chapters and covers all the new features of Photoshop 6.0. *BONUS: Imaging Insider has included a downloadable bonus. Understanding Curves as excerpted from Adobe Photoshop 6.0 Studio Techniques by Ben Willmore is posted compliments of Peachpit Press and Adobe Press. Click the thumbnail at left to view or download. Dean Shough [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: filmscanners: Scanning 4x5 under $500 US?
Scan Multi is up to 4 x 5 Not according to the Minolta web site: DIMÂGE SCAN MULTI ... Usable film types include 35mm, Medium format, APS, 16mm, and TEM. Are you thinking of the Polaroid SprintScan 45i Multi-Format scanner? It looks interesting at 2000 dpi for 4x5. I will check used prices and see.
RE: filmscanners: Scanning 4x5 under $500 US?
Or a used Minolta Scan Multi which are available for around £500 But the scan Multi only goes up to 6 x 9 cm, not 4 x 5 inches. Are you thinking of either the Leaf, the Nikon LS-4500 or the Polaroid? I don't think any of them would be under $1,000US.
RE: filmscanners: (anti)compression?
It turns out that it is impossible to create lossless compression scheme that does not cause some files to expand in size. A set of random files always expands. There is no way to encode the random information that does not take up at least as much space as the original file. Because of this, any image that contains lots of random noise tends to compress much less than a high quality image with little noise. What about Genuine Fractals compression which claims non lossy compression and small file size. The small file size will only occur for a subset of all possible images. Hopefully this subset includes the majority of photographic images. The best possible compression for an image that consists of nothing but random data is a one bit flag to indicate that the rest of the file is untouched. Luckily, most images are more interesting than random noise and compress with the appropriate compressor.
RE: filmscanners: (anti)compression?
It turns out that it is impossible to create lossless compression scheme that does not cause some files to expand in size. A set of random files always expands. There is no way to encode the random information that does not take up at least as much space as the original file. Because of this, any image that contains lots of random noise tends to compress much less than a high quality image with little noise.
RE: filmscanners: VueScan 7.1.7 Available
Mac OS no longer supported Last I heard Ed was working on adding FireWire (or USB?) support to the Mac OS X version. I believe he dropped off this list for a week so he could start programming after he obtained the SDK from apple . Sound like Apple must have done something to really piss Ed off. Hopefully this is just a temporary measure. Ed - what is going on with the Mac OS version of VueScan? (a copy of this message is being sent both to Ed and to the filmscanners list)
FW: filmscanners: VueScan 7.1.7 Available
This is the reply I received from Ed. I am forwarding it to the newsgroup as I don't believe the Ed is currently subscribed and can not post. Bad news for Mac users of VueScan. Dean Shough [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, August 1, 2001 6:42 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: filmscanners: VueScan 7.1.7 Available In a message dated 8/1/2001 8:36:54 AM EST, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Last I heard Ed was working on adding FireWire (or USB?) support to the Mac OS X version. I believe he dropped off this list for a week so he could start programming after he obtained the SDK from apple . Sound like Apple must have done something to really piss Ed off. Hopefully this is just a temporary measure. Actually, I got VueScan working with FireWire on Mac OS X before I went out of town (I went to Berlin for a few days of vacation). Ed - what is going on with the Mac OS version of VueScan? I got an e-mail from a manager in Apple's Developer Relations Group (Godfrey DiGiorgi) giving me a hard time about supposedly violating some sort of Non-Disclosure Agreement (which was just nonsense). I'm quite busy trying to add support for the Canon FS-4000, and I don't have time to waste arguing with Apple. I've dropped Mac OS support as a result. Regards, Ed Hamrick
RE: filmscanners: Re: Vuescan gripes
There are GUI tradeoffs that I need to make in order to accomplish this, and this drives some Mac OS GUI purists crazy. True. If I had not heard (probably from this list) that VueScan did great job of scanning I never would have gotten past the interface. This was long ago when VueScan was just starting to support the Mac - the interface was much worse and VueScan often crashed or did not function correctly on a Mac with my scanner. Very quickly VueScan became stable and properly supported my scanner. At the time, Minolta's software for the Dual looked great but the results were almost unusable. Now days, my only real problem with VueScan is when I want to do something unusual (unusual for me). Let's see, what option does what I want? It's usually there somewhere, but I end up spending time reading the html manual and experimenting until I find what I want. BUT, at least VueScan will usually do what I need.
RE: filmscanners: Re: Vuescan gripes
I'm guessing that you don't like the way file names are entered. I can't use standard file dialogs to enter file names that have the letter + in them, but I suppose I could drop this feature (specifying the plus after the digit(s) to be incremented) and use standard file dialog boxes. Would anyone object if I did this? It would only take me 5 minutes to do, but I suspect it would annoy thousands of people. It would be nice to be able to use standard file dialog boxes to specify both the directory and filename, but not at the expense of giving up auto increment. I would like to see a button next to the file name that would pop up a standard dialog box for navigating to the desired directory and setting the file name. Instead of Save the dialog box would have a Select button. The selected directory and filename would then be entered into VueScan much as it is now, including processing of the + symbol. Or have a check box next to the filename entry (either in the file dialog box or on the options pane or both) that would specify if the last number in the filename is to be auto incremented. I don't think this would be hard to implement and should not generate too many complaints.
RE: filmscanners: Re: Vuescan gripes
yeah but you guys miss the point I don't think we miss the point, but rather we have different priorities. I would love it if VueScan had a better (and more Mac like) interface, but given the choice between improving the guts of VueScan or the interface, I will take the guts anytime. Especially since I can work around the portions of the interface I don't like. If the raw scan is bad there is no work around. Ed could hire 5 programmers to assist him, spend 6 months getting them up to speed before getting anything useful out of them, and raise the price of VueScan from $40 to $400, but I think it would kill VueScan. I will soon have a brand new computer and am looking into new scanners, both 35 mm film and flatbed. I would much rather Ed support my next scanners with an adequate interface than not support my scanners with the worlds best interface. I will be very interested to hear when VueScan will support FireWire scanners running under MacOS X.
RE: filmscanners: Re: Vuescan gripes
I vote for an option for the two-pane approach--definitely. I didn't like the old VueScan, semi-two pane approach. But, two windows that clearly separate the previewing from setting the options would be a good thing. The preview window should have just the preview and the command buttons to scan, preview, etc. Once the options are set up, the options window could be closed if desired, or, while adjusting the settings, it could be left on top to facilitate changes. Perhaps the options window should have its own set of buttons for scanning. That way if you are not interested the preview window could be closed. .
RE: filmscanners: Link to Nikon 8000 banding example...
I don't really have enough RAM in my computer, only 384. Just a thought. Do you get stop/start motion of the film carrier because of spooling, during the actual scanning process? First - RAM is dirt cheap these days - I just ordered 2 - 512 MB RAMs for my new G4 from Coast to- Coast ( http://www.coastmemory.com ) for $65 each. At this price why not have at least 1GB of RAM? Second - sounds like a plausible explanation for the banding. If this is the case, giving more or less memory to the scanning software may change the nature of the banding. Or find a friend with a PC and try it out on his system. Third - I am hoping to buy a Microtek 5700 or 8700 scanner (with FireWire interfaces) for, among other things, scanning some 4x5 negatives. I expect to ask the list about them in a couple of weeks. According to Ed, I'm hoping to work on adding support for FireWire scanners on Mac OS X in the next week or so. I don't know when (or if) I'll add support for FireWire scanners on OS 9.1. I would expect that when FireWire is supported on the Mac that the LS8000 will be supported.
RE: filmscanners: Semi OT: 16-bits [was Which Buggy Software?]
| Ask yourself -- how did the pros manage to get | nice looking colors before the ICC came along | to fix everything? Work in a closed system. Basically, the scanner directly outputs CMYK file that matches the characteristics of the press. Ignore what the monitor shows. If you need to output to a different medium, rescan for that medium.
RE: filmscanners: Vuescan gripes
I get around all of these problems by not using these features in VueScan: - I never have used the crop box. Probably a carryover from when the Mac version did not have it. - Tried to use folders once. Now I just leave the images in VueScan's folder and manually move them afterwards. - I always use the default VueScan filenames and auto incrementing numbers. After I move the file I drop it onto iView Multimedia Pro I add comments and change the filename from there. - I resize the VueScan window before scanning anything and have never seen this problem. I used to complain about the VueScan interface but thought it had gotten much better recently. Maybe I have just gotten used to VueScan and tend to avoid its quirks. Me: It hurts when I do this. Doctor: Well, don't do that.
RE: filmscanners: Nikon MF LED light source...
**In any case as we know and has already been discussed many times on this list, the **quoted** dynamic range is usually based on the num of A/D bits and so is not related to either Dmax OR Dmin in any case! Once one manufacture starts doing this the others would be crazy not to follow suit. How many people look beyond the ad copy when comparing products? Scan time? Oh, we didn't include focus or saving the file or... Resolution? This was easy enough to check that most manufacturers no longer highlight interpolated resolution. But some still report what the stepper motor will resolve or neglect (except in the fine print) to mention that the resolution is only over 35 mm, not the full 4 x 5 inches. Number of bits? Did we forget to mention that the14 bits is internally only? And that the last 2 bits are extrapolated from our 12 bit ADC? Or that the system has so much noise that we could have used a 10 bit ADC? Almost any other spec you can think of. How to lie with statistics. Or ad copy.
RE: filmscanners: Nikon 8000ED
What about the ls-4000? I am waiting for Polaroid (or someone else) to release a 4000+dpi 35 mm slide scanner with ICE^3. Looking at the current prices on the SS4000 ($950 according to CNET) and the $200 rebate currently being offered, I expect something soon. Sorry, I should have made it clearer - from what I have read the Nikons (2000 and 4000) have more noise than the SS4000. I expect (hope?) that either Polaroid or Minolta will come out with a scanner that does what I want in the near future. Minolta just announced a medium format scanner that has everything, when will they do 35 mm version? I am willing to wait another 6 months and see what appears. That will give my credit card time to recover after upgrading my computer system this month. If nothing else appears then I will reconsider the Nikon.
RE: filmscanners: Nikon 8000ED
I would have said the same thing yesterday, but with the cat out of the bag about Polaroid's finances, there might be more of a fire sale going on than a clearance. One can hope - 5080 dpi, ICE^3, and low noise. Let's not forget cheap.
RE: filmscanners: Nikon 8000ED
I'd have bought a Polaroid SS4000 in the blink of an eye if it had the same functionality. I am waiting for Polaroid (or someone else) to release a 4000+dpi 35 mm slide scanner with ICE^3. Looking at the current prices on the SS4000 ($950 according to CNET) and the $200 rebate currently being offered, I expect something soon.
RE: filmscanners: LS-4000ED Dmax 4,2 or rather 2,3?
The pop photo article is on line at: http://popphoto.com/Camera/ArticleDisplay.asp?ArticleID=33
RE: filmscanners: Infrared dust removal accuracy
Silver based black and white film won't pass IR, so there's no way to use IR dust removal with it. Granted that it's not going to be effective for *dust removal*, wouldn't IR still be extremely usefull for a badly-scratched silver-halide neg? ICE depends on differences between the visible and IR transmission to differentiate defects from image. Color slides and negatives are almost completely transparent in the IR while the defects block both visible and IR. The defects stand out and can easily be removed. Kodachrome dyes block some of the IR, making separation of image and defects harder. With BW negatives, visible and IR look the same and there is nothing to distinguish image from defects.
filmscanners: New: Minolta DiMAGE Scan Multi PRO Film Scanner
See http://www.steves-digicams.com/diginews.html Medium format, 48000 dpi, 16 bit A/D, ICE^3, SCSI and FireWire.
RE: filmscanners: New: Minolta DiMAGE Scan Multi PRO Film Scanner
Medium format, 48000 dpi, 16 bit A/D, ICE^3, SCSI and FireWire. Let's see, at 48,000 dpi, my 120 scans would be about 20gb. Damm! I need more ram and a bigger drive. I seemed to have slipped in an extra zero. Make that 4,800 dpi.
RE: filmscanners: Scanner resolution (was: BWP seeks scanner)
printed at a resolution of 2 microns per pixel Just as a matter of interest, how the hell do you do this!? I believe they use some sort of scanning laser device. They being some other part of my company - I don't even know who or where as someone else took care of the details after telling me the service was available. When I examined some prior test slide under a microscope the finest resolution I could detect was around 4 microns. More than good enough for me and the optical system I was testing.
RE: filmscanners: Scanner resolution (was: BWP seeks scanner)
That is what MTFs (Modulation Transfer Function) are for. The MTF for optical systems can be either computed (see Canon's EF Lens Work) or measured. Yes I know this, it is what I was referring to without calling it MTF - and my point was that Nyquist renders MTF incalculable for pixel-based *systems*. It is also difficult to measure sensibly, as the position and orientation of a conventional MTF target relative to the pixel locations affects the amount of aliasing and consequent artefacts. I'm not sure exactly what you mean about the Nyquist limit making the MTF incalculable or why you emphasize systems. One can still measure the MTF for an optical system, even above the Nyquist limit. A straight foreword method for measuring MTF uses a sinusoidal pattern in front of the system and measures its response out the back. If you want to measure the MTF above the Nyquist frequency the only complication is that the output signal is alaised to a lower frequency. You are correct that the phasing of the sinusoid relative to the pixels affects the response of the system. That is why modern MTF targets are slightly tilted. For example, the test target for ISO 16067-2 Photography - Electronic scanners for photographic images - Spatial resolution measurements: Part 2 Film scanners looks like: ISO 16067.jpg The wedge shaped resolution targets are specifically designed for visual estimates of resolution. The tilted edges are used for measuring MTF. As stated in the introduction to the draft: The edge SFR measurement method described in this standard uses a computer algorithm to analyze digital image data from the film scanner. Pixel values near slanted vertical and horizontal edges are used to compute the SFR values. The use of a slanted edge allows the edge gradient to be measured at many phases relative to the image sensor photoelements, so that the SFR can be determined at spatial frequencies higher than the Nyquist limit. This technique is mathematically equivalent to a moving knife edge measurement. About all you can determine easily is the theoretical MTF possible at the CCD, according to the Nyquist limit, which tells you about as much about scanner system performance as an MTF test of film does about a camera/film system. We can't rip the lens out of these things and test them separately either. Again, I am not sure what you mean by this. When we place a test slide in a scanner and measure the scanner's MTF we are measuring the MTF for the entire system - optics, CCD, and electronics. Knowledge of the CCD's MTF provides us with an upper bound for what the MTF can be. There are special resolution targets available for empirical determination of pixel-based MTF - eg http://www.sinepatterns.com/ for targets made for scientific use - but I am not aware of any which are suitable for 35mm or other filmscanners. Sinepatterns would doubtless make one for a few thousand $$, but that is somewhat beyond my means;) Most of the patterns Sinepatterns makes are available off the shelf in 2 inch squares and are suitable for testing 35 mm film scanners. But the costs start around US$700. I have taken their idea for a composite pattern and made my own pattern that can be used to measure the MTF of systems at frequencies from 0.5 lpm up to 220 lpm. Unfortunately the slide belongs to work. :-( However, the same digital pattern can be printed out and used for testing cameras - I have not done this yet but plan to some day. attachment: ISO 16067.jpg
RE: filmscanners: RE: filmscanners: Scanner resolution (was: BWP seeks scanner)
I am sure the Nikon is substantially faster than the Leaf, since the Leaf is a three pass scanner, and the Nikon is one pass, but since the Leaf can do BW in one pass, and has a ND filter for scanning BW, I believe it easily holds its own with any other scanner for BW work. Why would you want to use the neutral density filter when scanning BW? Would it not just decrease the light and require a longer scan time to get back to the same DMax?
RE: filmscanners: Scanner resolution (was: BWP seeks scanner)
Just for clarification. You are speaking of the Minolta Dimage Dual, which is rated at 2450 or so DPI, not the Dual II, which is rated at 2820... is that correct? Art Shough, Dean wrote: This is a very small snippet of a scan taken with my Minolta Scan Dual from the 1951 Air Force test target. The Target is chrome on glass with a maximum resolution of 228 lpm. The maximum resolved pattern is group 5, element 5 which has a resolution of 50.8 lpm = 1,290 line pairs per inch. Various artifacts appear when trying to image the targets finer than group 5, element 1 (32 lpm). Correct - I have the original SCSI scanner rated at 2438 dpi. The theoretical resolution of this scanner is 48 lpm. The apparent resolution in the scan of 50.8 lpm is due to alaising.
RE: filmscanners: Scanner resolution (was: BWP seeks scanner)
OK, I *know* what happens when a very good camera lens does this test--the end of the scale turns to mush. Can anyone say what happens when a CCD does this? My guess would be noise, but I frankly don't know and I've never seen it done. Any comments? I'm reaching. It looks like: Cropped1951.jpg This is a very small snippet of a scan taken with my Minolta Scan Dual from the 1951 Air Force test target. The Target is chrome on glass with a maximum resolution of 228 lpm. The maximum resolved pattern is group 5, element 5 which has a resolution of 50.8 lpm = 1,290 line pairs per inch. Various artifacts appear when trying to image the targets finer than group 5, element 1 (32 lpm). attachment: Cropped1951.jpg
RE: filmscanners: Scanner resolution (was: BWP seeks scanner)
I think there are two issues here. One is that a 4000 dpi scanner doesn't capture 4000 dpi, and I've yet to get a straight answer on what they actually capture. You won't get one - it simply isn't calculable and varies empirically according to subject contrasts, luminance and colour. That is what MTFs (Modulation Transfer Function) are for. The MTF for optical systems can be either computed (see Canon's EF Lens Work) or measured. This can be done taking into account any system variables you want, such as contrast, luminance, or color. Normally MTFs are used for systems that are linear-shift invariant, i.e., they have the same response if you shift the object and if you double the light on the object the image gets twice as bright. But this is not a requirement, it just makes the application of MTFs much easier.
RE: filmscanners: Scanner resolution (was: BWP seeks scanner)
There are two factors that decrease the resolution of the red channel. Smear and bloom. And chromatic aberrations. Especially if the scanner does not properly block the IR light.
RE: filmscanners: Hazy bleed in hi contrast blacks on LS2000
I have posted an image which shows the bleed onto a page on our website - it can be seen at http://www.imagequest3d.com/flaring/ I have experienced the streaking that Harry describes as well - but not since I switched from the Coolscan III to the LS 2000. I will try rescanning the images when I get the time and see whether there has been any change - especially with multiple passes. I have come to the conclusion that it is purely a result of the high contrast levels giving the CCD problems. Regards, Chris I doubt very much that the problem is the CCD. Instead, I expect that light is scattering off dust or oils on the optics. One way to check out the scanner would be to take a completely unexposed piece of slide film (the scraps from the end of roll would work great) and use a paper punch to make a clear area in the middle. If the CCD is the problem, you should see ghosting in one direction only around the hole. If the problem is contamination on the optics the haze should be uniform in all directions.
RE: filmscanners: Sprintscan 120 and new negative proile scheme
I now think a lot is possible here, having had to eat my words some months ago when I was arguing that manual corrections to colour neg appeared mandatory, and could never be done in software because human judgement and intent were involved. Just to make me look maximally silly, Ed Hamrick went and added some rather smart correction routines based on white point, which generally work extremely well and save me a lot of time. I think I missed this. What settings do you use to access this type of correction?
RE: filmscanners: Fast, decent, low res scans
There is no need to buy an expensive UltraSCSI PCI card for use with a scanner. Try the Adaptec 2906 for under $50. Works great for me with my Minolta Scan Dual on both my old PowerBase 180 and on my newer G4/500. Scanners use the original narrow and slow SCSI protocols. The only reason to buy the fast, wide, LVD SCSI cards is if you want to set up a RAID array of SCSI disks - but then you don't want to put the scanner or any other narrow, slow devices on the same card.
RE: filmscanners: LS4000 slide removed from mount
24.1 x 36.0 mm as I measured it. Extra 0,5 mm will be useful - it is rather difficult to position the film precisely From the LS4000 pdf file: Scanning area (max.) 25.1 x 38mm (3,946 x 5,959 pixels) Effective area SA-21: 23.3 x 36.0mm (3,654 x 5,646) (size/pixels) MA-20(S): 25.1 x 36.8mm* (3,946 x 5,782) FH-3: 24.0 x 36.0mm (3,762 x 5,646) IA-20(S): 16.1 x 26.9mm (2,525 x 4,219) SA-30: 23.3 x 36.0mm (3,654 x 5,646) SF-200(S): 25.1 x 36.8mm* (3,946 x 5,782) FH-G1: 22.9 x 35.0mm (3,591 x 5,488) * Actual effective size depends on slide mount aperture size.
RE: filmscanners: VueScan 7.0.18 Available
What's new in version 7.0.18 * Changed processing to do infrared dust removal prior to restoring colors I know that your algorithms are different from what ASF does with ROC and ICE, but it looks like ASF does their ROC first, and then uses information from ROC to improve GEM. Part of the ROC algorithm identifies what portion of each pixel belongs to each dye layer. When the scan includes IR, this information can be used to help separate the RGBI layers. Using this should help isolate dust from actual image content. Does anybody have a Nikon scanner and could they check to see if ROC+ICE actually does better than just ICE for removal of dust? Or is this just something that was mentioned in the patents and never implemented in the commercial software? If fully implemented, it might allow reasonable dust removal from Kodachrome slides.
RE: filmscanners: Cleaning slides (PEC tips)
However, I wonder how ICE can compensate for fingerprints that are in the shape of the emulsion: I thought it just detected opaque material. One of the subtle points about ICE is that it works with defects that block just a portion of the IR light. From the patent, ICE measures the amount of IR that is transmitted through each pixel. It scales the RGB according to how much of the IR was blocked, using different scaling for each color to account for how much of the IR each dye blocks. For pixels where too much of the IR was blocked, indicating that the RGB data is invalid, a separate routine is used to fill the bad region using the surrounding good RGB values. Thus, fine scratches, dust spots and semi-opaque fingerprints are restored to their original color, although with increased noise. Big, opaque splotches are first filled in around the their edges - where their is still enough RGB information to estimate the correct values. The central core, where there is no valid RGB information, is filled in from the previously restored boundary.
RE: filmscanners: Cleaning slides
Can I ask members to detail the way they go about cleaning slides. Canned air PEC-12 solution on lintless cotton for removing anything from the emulsion surface. No canned air for me. I much prefer a hurricane blower (no built in brush) where I just squeeze the bulb. I can use this a much as I want with no additional cost.
RE: filmscanners: FW: Dual Scan II - striping
I want to clarify if the striping I am seeing is what Vlad is speaking of, and if anyone else sees what I am. I am seeing a couple of bands of darker sky. They start at the left side and go toward the right. One, for instance, goes right through the Rooster weathervane on top of the roof. Another wider one ends a bit above the rooster's head and goes up toward the top edge of the image. They are more obvious on the left side and fade out as approaching the right. I see the same striping that Art sees. For those not seeing the broad stripes, do a histogram equalization (optional - just makes the effect much more obvious) and look at the separate color channels. No stripes are visible in the red or green channels but they are quite visible in the blue. My first impression was that the stripes were due to saturation of the bright weather vane but I don't think this one image is enough to determine the real cause. They are definitely not JPEG artifacts.
RE: filmscanners: ColorCorrectionLink
I used to write patents, and my group used to use what we called the "mother test"; you should write the patent application in such a way that you could read it to your mother, and she would understand the basic point of the invention. If you could do that, there was a good chance that even a patent examiner could understamd it. I have never seen a patent that was understandable - even (especially?) those where I was a co-author! Something about the legalize and claims and ... Pretty soon I'm asleep and have to start all over again. After enough iterations it starts to make sense.
RE: filmscanners: Kodak Q60 Calibration
| I won't disparage Timo's wwwsite either. No doubt he's trying to be | helpful and there is good information there. Although somewhat | off-topic, if you are at curious about the controversy regarding this | guy, there is a very interesting and informational debate going on | between Timo and Bruce Fraser at the Adobe "color managament" forum. | It will give you insight into Timo's character and argumentative | style, which is what most people have a problem with ... he is simply | argumentative. | Sorry I don't have a URL for the forum ... it seems to be broken this | morning ... go to the Adobe wwwsite = tech support = forums = color | management (you will have to register). There are two subjects, and | you can spot them easy ... each have approximently 50 posts. Try http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx.fcgi?[EMAIL PROTECTED]^0@14%40.eea5 b31 to get to all the color management posts. Link vrrry slow.
RE: filmscanners: AcerScanwit but also generic calibration
I had assumed that VueScan and other scanner software already did black and white point compensation, but I think you may be right that they do not do black point compensation. I have done BW compensation for area CCD cameras I use at work and it greatly improves the uniformity.
RE: filmscanners:Focusing film flatness
So the question is, are the lenses in film scanners flat field, or are they slightly dished to accomodate film curvature? Or are some small apeture, high depth of field lenses working with more sensitive ccds. Kodak and others used to make projection lenses with field curvature designed to match the expected curvature of cardboard mounted slides. Worked well unless the slide was reversed or mounted in glass. It would be worthwhile to reverse the film in a scanner showing insufficient depth of field (a.k.a. the recent Nikon 4000 review). If the field curvature of the lens looks like ) but the film looks like ( then reversing the film would make both look like ).
filmscanners: Dust removal flatbed scanners.
And here's their new 2400dpi flatbed/tranny scanner http://consumer.usa.canon.com/scanners/csd2400uf/index.html Interesting that they list FARE as a feature on this flatbed scanner. FARE is the name they gave to their IR defect removal technology in their 4000 dpi filmscanner announcement. However, this flatbed doesn't say anything about IR and it would be a first (I believe) in a flatbed. The ASF patent for ICE briefly mentions application to scanning prints, as does the ASF web site. But as far as I can tell the Canon is the first flatbed scanner to implement IR dust removal. I have also seen a patent by HP that uses appears to sidestep the ICE patent by using "dark field illumination". In the ASF patent (actually issued while Edgar was at IBM) the IR and visible light follow the same path while the HP patent make a point of describing the two paths as being separate.
RE: filmscanners: negative and skin tones
Mike: Thanks for the color setting information for the skin tones, especially as it related to the print. Actually, it reminded me of a print (pre digital) that nearly drove me crazy. I had photographed by roommates girl friend against an off white wall. When I corrected the color so that the wall was correct, her skin had a green cast that just could not be correct. When we made her skin look correct, the wall was way off in color. It wasn't until we physically had the wall and the girlfriend back together that we realized why some people are said to have an "olive" complexion. Never noticed her skin color before or after that, but the correct print never did look right.
RE: filmscanners: File format
Your results will vary depending on the image you use. I hope this data is useful. Your conclusions will vary depending on your needs obviously. I did a similar test using a 1k by 1k piece out of the PhotoDisc test image. The original image is extremely sharp and contains nice flesh tones and high contrast, fine details. I compressed the image using Photoshop and Boxtop's ProJPEG software. For each save, the ProJPEG settings were 50% and no smoothing. After each save the image was closed then reopened. From my original 1k image I will show a 128 by 128 pixel crop, picked because it had the worst JPEG artifacts. The image is mostly fine black hair against a white background, compressed using the 50% settings: OriginalImage.jpg Looking at the difference between the original image and the first compressed image reveals mainly noise. The level of the noise increases in areas where the original image had fine detail. The following image was generated by using Photoshop's "Apply Image" command with the blending set to "Subtract", the scale at 1 and the offset at 128. I then used the levels command with the levels set to 102 and 152 to increase the contrast so that the difference could be seen. DiffOrig-01.jpg Repeating this for the difference between the first and second compressed images produced NO differences in most areas with a few blocks containing low frequency, low amplitude differences: Diff02-01.jpg Repeating yet again for the difference between the second and third image produces a similar image with fewer block being different and the differences being smaller: Diff03-02.jpg Somewhere between the third and tenth image the differences completely disappeared. The difference between the original image and the 10th image is hard to distinguish from the first difference: DiffOrig-10.jpg
RE: filmscanners: Printing A3 from a 2700dpi scan
I think every reference I've seen regarding noise is scanned images identifies the Blue channel as being the most noisy. I have never seen an explanation of why this is so, but does not appear to be dependant on the light source or specific scanner. Maybe the noise isn't coming the film? Typical CCDs are less sensitive to blue light than red light.
RE: filmscanners: scanning/photoshop workstation (long)
Basically the new 4000 dpi m/f scanners will output such large files that handling them demands a new ball game in desktop systems: files of 500 to 700 Mb will be common at 4000 dpi, (in 16bit), and no doubt 6000 dpi will come along soon for 35mm. If you do 5x4" - god help you. I think it comes down to what resolution you need for the intended purpose. I think 300 ppi for an 8 X 10 is sufficient for my Epson 1200 printer (2400 X 3000 image size). I can not discern any improvement with higher resolutions - not that I would turn down a 4000 or 6000 ppi scanner if I could afford it and I do work with image files much larger than this. But 2 1/4 inches times 4,000 ppi should create a 37.6 inch print at 240 ppi. Just about perfect for an Epson 9500 printer. Someone shooting medium format and contemplating this type of system may very well be interested in this size prints. Even if smaller images are desired, it is best to scan at full resolution and later reduce the size in Photoshop. Processing power is not the problem, a high end Mac, P4 or AMD Athlon, will all do the job well. All of these have enough power/ MHz. The issue seems to be the memory handling of these large files: Now, the rule of thumb is that you need 3 to 5 times the RAM as your file size for efficient PS handling, so... this means maximum RAM on the machine: I have worked with files that are 16k by 16k, BW, 16 bits per pixel,512 MB file size with no problem. Slow to open (80 sec), even slower to save(200 sec), but quite usable(an unsharp mask took 90 seconds). This is on a stock G4/500 running Photoshop 5.0.2 (no altiVec support) with just 256 MB of real memory and lots of other applications running and a fragmented, nearly full disk (512 MB file written into 124 fragments!). Everything was limited by disk access. Anybody know what the image size limits might be for Photoshop under the various operating systems? Photoshop itself limits the dimensions ( http://www.adobe.com:80/support/techdocs/1454e.htm ) to be less than 30,000 pixels and 417 inches. A related page ( http://www.adobe.com:80/support/techdocs/100d2.htm ) seems to indicate that Windows may have a limit of 1GB per file (95, 98, and or 2000? also this may be a limitation of the MCI/Video player) and that the Mac has a limitation of 2GB per file.
RE: filmscanners: OT-ish Epson 1270, was Repro house..
A4 is 8.3" x 11.7" A3 is 11.7" x 16.5" For size (and weights) of paper in other sizes try http://www.tssphoto.com/sp/dg/weight.html (also a good site for printer info and output comparison).
RE: filmscanners: GEM the LS2000
is GEM available only at the hardware level? or is there a way to do GEM post scan? more specifically will i ever be able to take a raw scan (RGBI) from the LS2000 and do GEM processing on it? From postings I have seen from ASF, the official answer is that ROC and GEM require ASF to characterize the scanner, but... In the ROC patent (which should be very similar to how GEM operates) they discuss how to calibrate the system. Calibration eliminates certain off diagonal elements from a response matrix that is central to their technique. These elements result from non linear characteristics of the scanner and film. Their preferred calibration method starts with a scanner having a known spectral response, but they also talk about calibrating a system starting with a known film and deriving the scanner properties. From this it looks like ASF should be able to specify a calibration slide (Kodak Q60 should work) and derive the scanner properties required for ROC and GEM. Doing it this way would probably result in lower quality results since there is one extra step in the calibration sequence. It may be that the processing contained in the shipping versions of ROC and GEM contain proprietary algorithms not covered in the patent that require direct knowledge of the scanner.
RE: filmscanners: GEM the LS2000
GEM doesn't use the IR channel nor is it dependent on any hardware. However, when I asked ASF about their plans for a Photoshop filter plugin for grain removal, they did imply the algorithm needed to be tweaked specific to the scanner used ... and I can't imagine why it would not need to be tweaked for the film as well (... apparently not, but I'd certainly like to know why film characteristics can be generalized while scanner characteristics cannot ...) They prefer to characterize the scanner a priori and then they derive the film properties from each scan by looking at the noise properties o the film grain.
RE: filmscanners: Color Calibration
What I would like to know is your opinion of Vue Scan as the medium for controlling the linear or raw scans into PShop instead of my Minolta software.. I have been too busy to take the time to figure out VS for my purposes... I typically use VueScan to send a high bit file to Photoshop. Works quite well, unlike the Minolta software that came with my scanner. I try to use natural elements in my pictures to set the BW points. BW cards should work better except they will now correspond to dark/light neutrals.
RE: filmscanners: Vuescan
I propose that we return to using this forum for filmscanners and stop flaming people. | i agree about ed. on top of that he is almost rude if you are not good with | software and e-mail him personally with questions. vuescan is a difficult | programs with daily updates and i wish i had gotten silverfast. joanna I agree totally that the flaming should stop, but I don't see this as flaming. It's flaming to start calling fellow posters crude names or using personal attacks. Calling a company "almost rude" or its product "difficult" is neither. I think vendors are in a different category and their products should come under greater scrutiny. I _want_ to hear both the good and the bad about products. I am not surprised about this comment about Ed. From his emails I expect him to be rather brusque and almost rude. He as neither the time nor the patience for anything except a short, well thought out query. What Ed needs is someone to write his documentation and to screen his email. But, this would probably require raising the price of VueScan and eventually becoming just like most other software developers. Which do you want? I would rather Ed consecrate on software development and forgo the hired help.
RE: filmscanners: Re: Vuescan
BTW, yesterday scanning news groups didn't carry any of Ed's replies. So, maybe he's out of town? Or maybe he working on version 8? ;-) I am sorry to see him go and hope he returns to filmscanners soon. I think he contributed a lot to this group and hopefully he learned from us. I know its not easy listening to users complaints and suggestions, but I think that is part of what makes VueScan such a good program. When was the last time you thought Nikon heard what you were saying, let alone modified their software because of it?
RE: filmscanners: Grain removal and aliasing
My main area of concern (like Lynn Allen) is in the related area of grain-aliasing problems. I think most 2720 dpi users will have encountered problematic negatives (OK Lynn - and *slides* as well!) where the aliasing effect becomes horribly obvious. Whereas blurring techniques and GEM-type software may help with 'normal' grain, I haven't yet found anything that helps much with aliasing. For those blissfully unaware, the sort of effect I am talking about is seen as VERY large grain-like structures, often with rainbow colors, and usually but not always in the 'thin' areas of negatives. I can post (on the web, not to the list) some really awful samples if anyone wants them. While I have seen a number of discussions about techniques to help, they are almost always labour-intensive. But I am looking for a simple solution. It may be a pipe-dream, but I figure that as *I* can easily recognise and describe the difference between grain-aliasing and real image information, there should be a way for a programming technique or plug-in to do likewise. The examples of GEM that I have seen are nothing short of amazing in how well they reduce grain with minimal reduction in sharpness. However, they were fro the Minolta Multi II at 2820 dpi (55 lpm) and should have a hard time differentiating between grain and image detail. I expect the new Nikons with 4000 dpi (79 lpm) to do much better. The main thing that distinguishes grain from image is the multi-colored nature of the grain. Each grain in each color layer is independent, random, and has high spatial frequencies. The image tends to not be random (hopefully!), have lower spatial frequencies and little or no content at the highest frequencies. As I understand GEM, they are using ROC to identify the individual grains in the digitized image, which are then removed from the image. I looked at Minolta's web site for specs on the Multi II ( http://www.minoltausa.com/main.asp?productID=662whichProductSection=1which Section=2 ) and noticed something interesting - the when removing grain the processing time increases if ROC is turned off. I suspect that they are performing ROC on the image, removing the grain, and then undoing ROC to produce the final image.
RE: filmscanners: Vuescan grain removal idea
I am surprised that some of the quotes I included from the ROC patent did not generate more response. I want to comment on some portions of ROC (or at least the patent that ROC seems to be based on). "The infrared scan is used to detect imperfections in the film medium itself. As discussed in ... US Pat No, 5,266,805 ... Unfortunately, in the infrared scan, there can be cross talk from the red sensitive, cyan forming layer which would be identified as defects. The present invention can be used to correct for the red crosstalk in the infrared scan. This implies that the combination of ICE and ROC/GEM should be greater than the individual components. By using ROC, the influence of the red channel can be eliminated from the IR channel. Net result should be a clearer separation of defects from image, particularly the red dyes in slides and negatives. The patent shows the absorption of the red dyes in negatives extending further into the IR than slides, so the improvement should be more pronounced for negatives. Do any users of ICE see strong red colors in their negatives fooling ICE? This would probably show up in the virtual negative as a brighter red and in the reversed image as a darker cyan (compared to the scan with out ICE). The coupling of ROC and ICE may be enough to allow ICE to work with Kodachrome. It will be interesting to see if the new Nikons actually use this coupling and if the instructions remove their prohibition against Kodachrome. Unfortunately this will not help true BW film. "There is virtually nothing above about 40 line pairs per millimeter spatial frequency recorded with today's lenses and film from real world images. This cutoff corresponds to a 2000 by 3000 pixel scan of 35 millimeter film. Conversely, the grain noise begins with flat spectrum and is attenuated only at very high frequencies by grain size and dye diffusion as discussed above, which have an effect above 100 line pairs per millimeter. I really thought that this statement would get a few comments. If true, this would explain the Canon D30 reviews that indicate its image quality is greater than or equal to that of film. Probably true for the vast majority of images, even those shot using prime lenses with the camera on a tripod. The patent author points out that for real images the DOF severely limits the high spatial frequencies. For example at 100 lpm and a FOV of 12 by 18 inches the depth of field is just +- 2 mm at F/2.8. You focus on the models eyes, but her eyelashes are out of focus. "A practical solution first isolates frequencies around 40 line pairs to eliminate those parts of the image in which the energy seen at these high frequencies is predominately from grain noise, and prunes out or emphasizes those where the high frequencies also contains image detail. For example, a sky, a blurred background, ... Because the noise is a constant across the image, a region that contains more high frequencies than elsewhere in the image is more active because o image detail... This portion of the patent indicates that even if images are limited to less than 40 lpm, a scanner that can read at higher frequencies will have advantages when used with ROC and GEM. The higher frequencies will clearly separate the image from the grain noise, allowing better noise removal without affecting the image. It also indicates why reviewers think that GEM removes image detail - it does! However, I expect the authors would argue that the detail removed was not real, rather it was an artifact of the grain noise increasing the apparent resolution.
RE: filmscanners: Vuescan grain removal idea
Maybe Ed or someone else has a better idea about how the Vuescan grain removal option could be expanded and in a practical sense work even better. If you do then please give us your input. I don't know about VueScan, but I did read through US Patent 5,673,336 which seems to be the basis for ROC and probably lead to the idea for GEM. One of the inventors is Albert Edgar, now with Applied Science Fiction. The basic idea in the patent is that the grain in each layer of color film is independent of the other layers. Thus the grain noise in each color layer is independent of the grain noise in the other layers. This agrees with your observation that the grain noise shows up a multi colored noise. A more technical excerpt of the patent follows: " ... the present invention corrects for the interaction for the dye layers in the film and the scanner spectral sensitivity as well as correcting for the changes in the dye layers in the film with aging. "The invention is based on the observation that as each dye layer is deposited separately in the film, one would expect that the "noise" from the grain boundaries in one layer to be independent from the "noise" due to the grain boundaries in other layers. If there is correlation in the noise between color scans, it is because the scanner is measuring the grain boundaries in more than one layer in the color scan. "To measure the noise, the image and noise must be separated... "The infrared scan is used to detect imperfections in the film medium itself. As discussed in ... US Pat No, 5,266,805 ... Unfortunately, in the infrared scan, there can be cross talk from the red sensitive, cyan forming layer which would be identified as defects. The present invention can be used to correct for the red crosstalk in the infrared scan. "FIG. 5 shows the process by which the correlated noise is separated from the scanned image. "Once the invention has removed the effects (sic) to dye color changes and retrieved the pure separate color images, the effects of aging from the pure separate color images can be removed using the changes common to black and white images in particular contrast stretch between black and white points in the images. It should be emphasized that applying this contrast stretch works well only after the invention has separated the color records. "There is virtually nothing above about 40 line pairs per millimeter spatial frequency recorded with today's lenses and film from real world images. This cutoff corresponds to a 2000 by 3000 pixel scan of 35 millimeter film. Conversely, the grain noise begins with flat spectrum and is attenuated only at very high frequencies by grain size and dye diffusion as discussed above, which have an effect above 100 line pairs per millimeter. "A practical solution first isolates frequencies around 40 line pairs to eliminate those parts of the image in which the energy seen at these high frequencies is predominately from grain noise, and prunes out or emphasizes those where the high frequencies also contains image detail. For example, a sky, a blurred background, ... Because the noise is a constant across the image, a region that contains more high frequencies than elsewhere in the image is more active because o image detail...
RE: filmscanners: analog gain
AFAICR Ed mentioned a while back that he stopped showing the results of the filters (including clean, sharpen, restore colours) in the preview to speed up the preview. This is IMO a problem since you can't see the difference between the different filters until you do a full scan. I'd have to try some filters to be sure - I'm only using the "light" setting. I would be very surprised if the filters worked (or at least was close to accurate) for anything except the full resolution scan. If you need to see the effects of the filters, use the scan from memory function after turning off storing a file. When you are happy with the results turn on the file output of your choice and rescan from memory. On the other hand, exposure and color correction should be accurate in the preview and ought to be implemented. This includes my main suggestion, correctly displaying the images using color profiles for the display.
RE: filmscanners: analog gain
When you're satisfied, change the resolution back and reinsert the "Viewer" line instructions for the real scan. I expect that the filters are very sensitive to resolution and that if the resolution is changed that the effects will change dramatically. The IR cleaning may be similar at different resolutions but I expect the VueScan equivalents of GEM, ROC, and the non IR ICE to produce quite different results. From my reading of the ROC patent and what I can deduce about GEM, neither will work very well with a low resolution scan. It would be very interesting if someone would verify this. If I have time, I will try it out this weekend.
RE: filmscanners: Need feedback on VueScan Improvements
I had understood that grain removal was a by-product of the ICE-type cleaning and therefore could not be separated. If it can, certainly I agree that should be an independent option. Not sure about VueScan, but ASF's GEM and ROC do not depend on ICE. Two separate sources for this statement: 1) Minolta's medium format scanner has GEM and ROC but not ICE and 2) the patent that appears to be the basis for ROC (#5,673,336). The patent states that an IR channel is not necessary for the removal of color crosstalk but that the process of removing crosstalk improves the IR detection of defects.
RE: filmscanners: RE: Photo quality printers: Hewlett-Packard
Anybody give me hint on why when I print form Photoshop to my Photosmart printer, I get a cross hatch pattern? Not in all photos. Did these images come from an unregistered copy of VueScan? It's possible that when you downloaded a new copy of VueScan that you forgot to copy over the .ini file or to reenter the registration number. When VueScan is not registered it embeds a "fish net" (let's not go there again :-) ) pattern into the image that might not show up on screen.
RE: filmscanners: Vuescan
but I went to the website and was hoping to see some screen shots or something... any chance you could add some? I think it would improve the html manual if it included screen shots of both the menus and the tabbed regions. Somehow having a picture to look at clarifies things for me. I did this for myself (way back at version 6.0?). Did not take very long nor did it add much to the size. Helped me quite a bit. All I did was place an in-line image within the page describing each tab. The image was a simple gif screen capture for the tab or menu.
RE: filmscanners: Problem with the pre-release Photoshop upgrade
I had installed the "unofficial" release of the 6.01 upgrade on three computers. Two had no problem but on the third, my fastest and most powerful, I was unable to access the color picker in the text dialogue menu. The text was only red, as in the "quick mask" red. I therefore had to uninstall and reinstall the original PS6. This new official upgrade installed flawlessly. This isn't to say that there was a problem with the original file (it could have been anything, it's Windoze). But I wanted people to be aware in case you run into something unexplainable. The Windoze version did not change while the unofficial Mac version is different from the official Mac version. This is according to Adobe.
RE: filmscanners: Grain aliasing webpage
I looked at the page on Grain alaising. I decided to do a patent search at http://www.delphion.com/advquery using "Applied Science Fiction" as the Assignee. This found 7 patents, but none related to grain or noise. After looking at a couple of the patents, I decided to search on the common inventor, "Edgar; Albert". Bingo! See US5673336:Automatic cross color elimination. The abstract read: Color crosstalk is determined between layers of an image storage medium based on the cross correlations and autocorrelations of noise in the grain pattern in each layer of the image storage medium. Rather than relying on prior measurement under laboratory conditions, the invention scans the storage medium in a plurality of spectral bands to derive the record stored in each of the dye layers. A computer derives the autocorrelations and the crosscorrelations of a group of pixels between the plurality of color records of the scanned images each of which corresponds to one of the spectral bands. The invention is based on the observation that as each dye layer is deposited separately in the film, one would expect that the "noise" from the grain boundaries in one layer to be independent from the "noise" due to the grain boundaries in other layers. If there is correlation in noise between separate color scans, it is because the scanner is measuring the grain boundaries in more than one layer in the color scans. Dean Shough [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: filmscanners: Need feedback on VueScan Idea
I'm sure we're all using at least 1280X1024 and so there is enough real-estate so that the tabs won't overflow. When I read this, I thought it must be tongue in cheek.
RE: filmscanners: Need feedback on VueScan Improvements
Speaking of which ... is there any chance we'll see the next version of VS present the scan properly in "monitor space"??? To reiterate ... if you ask for AdobeRGB color space, Vuescan will show you AdobeRGB data in monitor space ... and your scans will appear under-saturated in Vuescan, but fine in Photoshop. I think this will be the most important improvement you can make to the user interface.
RE: filmscanners: Vuescan feedback - zoom (was: Need feedback on VueScan Improvements)
With all due respect, for some of us a more precise crop will help a lot with limiting white point determination and constraining color adjustment calculations to the desired crop areas. For now we can fuzz that with the buffer (and border) controls; but a precise crop is definitely worth something. I am always confused by VueScans crop, buffer, and border controls. Can Ed clarify what each control does and how to use them? It would be great is the preview window could graphically display each and we knew which was which.
RE: filmscanners: Need feedback on VueScan Improvements
Ed - I hope you _really_ wanted all of this feed back. :-) It sure beats talking about CD-Rs and printers. Most of my comments just reiterate what others have already told you, but it never hurts to repeat good ideas. I think your rearrangement of the options is a very good idea. I am always having to hunt around in order to find out where I need to set a particular option and it is never clear which options affect the raw scan and which ones only apply to the post scan processing. It looks like your rearrangement separates the device options (affecting the raw scan), the color and cropping options (affecting the image appearance), the file options, and the miscellaneous options. I would put the tabs containing the options on the left side and the image tabs on the right. Actually, why are there two sets of tabs? Is there much loss if the options and image are not visible at the same time? This would let the image fill more of the window. In addition to zooming in and out, I think you need "Actual Pixels" and "Fit Image" buttons. The buttons could be quite small and just labeled "---", "-", "+", and "+++". I hope you realize that this will create more pressure on you to color correct the displayed image. Identical to the way Photoshop will display the image (i.e., embedded color space -- monitor color space) should suffice. :-) I like the idea of having a grabber to move the zoomed image around. When the cursor is near the crop box, it should change to "|", "_", "|_", etc. Any other time it would be available for moving the image around. If you implement the ability to auto focus within a region, the cursor should also change near the focus box. Any time the cursor is within the image I would like to have a read out at the bottom displaying the XY position and the RGB value.
RE: filmscanners: VueScan USB support on Mac OS
I just thought I'd drop a quick note to let the Mac users on this mailing list know that I now have VueScan working with USB scanners on Mac OS. I'll release this in the next 24 hours as VueScan 6.7.3, but I thought people would like to know the good news. Great news, now for some questions: 1) Do the problem scanners (w/button polling) present the same problems under Windows? If not, why not? 2) Is FireWire next? Especially for the Mac? This would open up the new Nikon and various flatbed scanners. 3) Does VueScan function under MacOS X. As a native application or under compatibility mode? Are you waiting for a carbon version of cross platform windowing library or is the problem with accessing SCSI/USB/FireWire under MacOS X?
