Re: aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000

2001-04-11 Thread Tony Sleep

On Tue, 10 Apr 2001 09:04:19 -0400  Dave King ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) 
wrote:

 The other I'll call
 "shark's tooth", and it looks like tiny spikes at regular intervals on
 high contrast edges.

It's a regular, stepped displacement (on the y axis of a landscape scan) 
of pixels which repeats every 4-5 pixels. It is most visible on high 
contrast edges, but occurs throughout the image. You can see it in the 
full res LS30 scan at my site eg the boundary of her chin against the 
black background. ICE was not used for this scan. As you say, this is not 
related to the normal 'jaggie' phenomenon which arises through aliasing. 
Most, if not all, LS30's seem to do it occasionally or always, with 
Nikonscan. As the scanner ages it tends to worsen. I don't know if v3 
helps, VS certainly does.

-

Regards 

Tony Sleep
http://www.halftone.co.uk - Online portfolio  exhibit; + film scanner 
info  comparisons



Re: aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000

2001-04-11 Thread Dave King

  The other I'll call
  "shark's tooth", and it looks like tiny spikes at regular
intervals on
  high contrast edges.

 It's a regular, stepped displacement (on the y axis of a landscape
scan)
 of pixels which repeats every 4-5 pixels. It is most visible on high
 contrast edges, but occurs throughout the image. You can see it in
the
 full res LS30 scan at my site eg the boundary of her chin against
the
 black background. ICE was not used for this scan. As you say, this
is not
 related to the normal 'jaggie' phenomenon which arises through
aliasing.
 Most, if not all, LS30's seem to do it occasionally or always, with
 Nikonscan. As the scanner ages it tends to worsen. I don't know if
v3
 helps, VS certainly does.

Thanks, exact answers are reassuring even when they contain bad news.
g  My scanner doesn't have very high mileage yet, and I'm thinking
of tradin her in on the 8000 anyway.  Further enticement.  Are you
thinking of mounting the effort to get your hands on one for review?
(I hope I hope)

Dave





Re: aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000

2001-04-10 Thread Julian Robinson

I also would like to put a word of support for Nikonscan here.  I use 
LS2000 and Nikonscan 2.5.1.  I have tried Vuescan but just can't get it to 
do anything better than Nikonscan (EXCEPT reduce jaggies) so I continue to 
use Nikonscan.  There has been a lot of negative discussion about Nikonscan 
- I really cannot see why people bag it so much.  I get predictable output 
and generally excellent colour 98% of the time from negs.  I don't do much 
slides, but they were fine too. I certainly get better results colour-wise 
than I could ever get out of Vuescan, and VS was *much* slower.

I do agree that the jaggies is a real problem, and have not been impressed 
by the results of my email discussion with Nikon USA about this. I am about 
to send mine back for "repair" re jaggies - I have little hope but will 
report how it is dealt with.  (remember this is in Australia).  I also have 
troubles with focus depth of field, but that is not a software problem.

re the blown highlights / loss of sky detail comment, my technique to avoid 
this is as follows...

IME NIkonscan default auto settings cut off too much at the high end (and 
maybe the shadows end too), so I use the option - Scanner extras / prescan 
mode / low contrast neutral.  This means I get the whole range of a neg 
into the histogram.  At 16-bit there is no problem re-expanding it to get 
the cut off at the actual tips of the white and black points, then I can do 
whatever contrast enhancement etc I need in PS.

Not sure how this translates to the LS30, but I think it is still valid.

Julian

At 05:01 10/04/01, you wrote:
Rob wrote:

  The detail in the skies tend to "blow out" in Nikonscan with the
LS30 since
  it only works with 8 bit data - this has the side effect of reducing
apparent
  grain in the sky.  Unfortunately Nikonscan is useless for me since I
get
  jaggies with it, so I have to use Vuescan.  I may be able to
"improve" things
  a little by deliberately adjusting the white point, but I don't want
to
  lose too much sky detail.

The trick with the LS-30 is to hardware calibrate your monitor
(PhotoCal/Monitor Spyder is great, and not too expensive), set up
color management in NikonScan using the supplied scanner profile, and
use the excellent NikonScan curves dialogue to tone/color correct
before scanning.  You'll be outputting 24 bit files to PS, but the
corrections are applied in hi bit space.  Then, if need be, apply
tweaks with an adjustment layer before printing.

Nikonscan's CM works as well as possible, with a near perfect match to
the result in Photoshop.  Also Nikonscan does the best color
corrections out of the box of anything I've seen, on chromes and negs.
And, as I noted previously, the sharpening algorithm it uses is very
good.

Dave


Julian Robinson
in usually sunny, smog free Canberra, Australia




Re: aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000

2001-04-10 Thread Rob Geraghty

Julian wrote:
 I also would like to put a word of support for Nikonscan
 here.  I use LS2000 and Nikonscan 2.5.1.  I have tried
 Vuescan but just can't get it to do anything better than
 Nikonscan (EXCEPT reduce jaggies) so I continue to use
 Nikonscan.  There has been a lot of negative discussion
 about Nikonscan - I really cannot see why people bag it
 so much.

My main beef with Nikonscan is the jaggies.  Makes it
useless for me.  Aside from that problem, Nikonscan
works very well, and has a far more usable interface
for meaningfully adjusting scans than Vuescan.  But
we've already established that Vuescan's intention is
to capture the most data possible and deliver it to
Photoshop where it can be edited.

 I get predictable output and generally excellent
 colour 98% of the time from negs.  I don't do much
 slides, but they were fine too.

When I was using Nikonscan, I did get quite good colour,
with the exception of a roll of whale-watching photos.
Nikonscan wanted to change the colour of the photos to
something virtually BW because of the dominance of blue
in the images.  In fairness, the default settings of
Vuescan did the same thing (white balance) but the
"neutral" settings did not.

 I certainly get better results colour-wise than I
 could ever get out of Vuescan, and VS was *much* slower.

Odd.  Vuescan is significantly *faster* on my computer,
especially compard to Nikonscan with ICE.

I suspect you are also getting significantly better results
from Nikonscan since the LS2000 gives you access to the high
bit options.  The LS30 is restricted to 8 bits in Nikonscan
and you have to be careful with adjustments to avoid
posterisation.

 I do agree that the jaggies is a real problem, and have not
 been impressed by the results of my email discussion with
 Nikon USA about this. I am about to send mine back for
 "repair" re jaggies - I have little hope but will
 report how it is dealt with.  (remember this is in Australia).

I'll be intrigued if Maxwell Optics manage to cure the vibration
that causes the jaggies.  As far as I can see it's a design
fault caused by a combniation of hardware and software behaviour.

 IME NIkonscan default auto settings cut off too much at the
 high end (and maybe the shadows end too), so I use the
 option - Scanner extras / prescan mode / low contrast neutral.

If I ever get to use Nikonscan jaggy-free, I'll try this. :)

Rob
(about to travel south to Canberra)


Rob Geraghty [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://wordweb.com






Re: aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000

2001-04-10 Thread Rob Geraghty

"Dave King" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Do you mean jaggies are all through the image, or along the edges?

The jaggies are through the entire image but are most noticeable on high
contrast edges within the image.  By "edge" I presume you mean the outer
boundary of the entire image.  The jaggies are regular slippage of the
scan lines in a sawtooth pattern.  They are apparently caused by the
scanner mechanism moving at a particular speed - one which happens
most often when using Nikonscan that scans in 64K blocks.  Ed has
coded Vuescan to scan line by line with a delay to prevent the
vibration that results in the jaggies.

If you're lucky enough to have an LS2000 you could probably also
eliminate the problem by using the multiscan option since it causes
the scanner to scan each line multiple times, slowing the mechanism
down.  The LS30 doesn't support single pass multiscanning.

Rob





Re: aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000

2001-04-10 Thread Dave King

 "Dave King" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  Do you mean jaggies are all through the image, or along the edges?

 The jaggies are through the entire image but are most noticeable on
high
 contrast edges within the image.  By "edge" I presume you mean the
outer
 boundary of the entire image.  The jaggies are regular slippage of
the
 scan lines in a sawtooth pattern.  They are apparently caused by the
 scanner mechanism moving at a particular speed - one which happens
 most often when using Nikonscan that scans in 64K blocks.  Ed has
 coded Vuescan to scan line by line with a delay to prevent the
 vibration that results in the jaggies.

 If you're lucky enough to have an LS2000 you could probably also
 eliminate the problem by using the multiscan option since it causes
 the scanner to scan each line multiple times, slowing the mechanism
 down.  The LS30 doesn't support single pass multiscanning.

 Rob

I asked because I wasn't sure what you referred to.  The term
"jaggies" is usually used to mean "pixelization", which of course is a
problem of too low resolution for a given output size, and it occurs
in all digital images at some point.

Nikonscan has two artifacts I can see, I believe both related to ICE.
One is the "serrated edge" effect caused by scanning film in mounts,
and it only occurs at the edges of the frame.  The other I'll call
"shark's tooth", and it looks like tiny spikes at regular intervals on
high contrast edges.  I think it only occurs in one direction, going
from memory.  To be clear what we're talking about, do you mean the
tiny spikes?  I'm asking for further clarification because from your
discription, "regular slippage of the scan lines in a sawtooth pattern
through the entire image", I'm not sure my particular scanner suffers
from this problem.

Dave





Re: aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000

2001-04-09 Thread Rob Geraghty

Dave wrote:
I don't see significant differences in grain at the print level
between 100 speed negs and chromes, and print level is all I really
care about.

Really??!  In the scans I see a huge difference between say Superia 100
and Sensia II 100.  There's a *much* bigger difference when you go to Provia
100F.  There is no apparent grain with Provia 100F.  Sensia II shows little
grain.  Superia 100 or Reala shows a lot of ugly grain in highlights - particularly
skies.  I haven't done enough large prints to know for sure, but from the
evidence I have there's a big difference between the quality of prints from
slides compared to prints from negs.

*However* one thing I don't recall you mentioning was what program you're
using to scan with.  Are you using Nikonscan?  If so, I'm not suprised you
have less problems with grain in the sky.  Vuescan seems to increase grain
in highlight areas of negs, and earlier versions put a distinct orange/brown
tint in the image compared to Nikonscan.

The detail in the skies tend to "blow out" in Nikonscan with the LS30 since
it only works with 8 bit data - this has the side effect of reducing apparent
grain in the sky.  Unfortunately Nikonscan is useless for me since I get
jaggies with it, so I have to use Vuescan.  I may be able to "improve" things
a little by deliberately adjusting the white point, but I don't want to
lose too much sky detail.

 I'm scanning a variety of films from my files etc, but
 these days I tend to shoot mostly Fuji Provia 100,
 Astia 100, 64T, NPS 160, and NHG 800.  (I guess I like Fuji :)

I mostly use Fuji as well.  The only non-fuji film I've used much in the
last ten years is Kodak T400CN.  At the moment I generally use Superia 100
or Provia 100F.

My judgement is completely subjective and therefore probably not worth
too much.  (Take with a large "grain" of halide :)  I judged the
distortion by comparing the grain on monitor at 100% to how I think it
would look with no distortion, and to tonal areas in the same scan
with less aliasing distortion.

Ah.  I was wondering whether you were comparing it to grain in a photographic
10x8 print or something.

 My ideas about how grain looks are formed by seeing grain
 magnified in various ways over the years.

The joys of experience. :)  I'm not so fortunate.

Generally, the grain in least aliased areas of 800 speed neg film
looks pretty close to no distortion with LS-30 scans, to my eye.

Meaning the grain is real?  To me, Fuji 800 looks very grainy when scanned.

I'm not sure how aliasing distortion could cause color shift, but
since aliasing becomes greater at certain tonal transitions you may be
seeing the additive effect of two problems overlapping.  Does your
printer profile posterize blues?

I'm not using the same printer anymore, but regardless - the colour shift
was in the scanned image.  See my comments above about Vuescan and negs.
 Vuescan does seem to highlight odd colours in blue skies for some reason
when scanning negs.  This may be an old problem though - I'd have to try
scanning the same panoramic frame again with the current incarnation of
Vuescan.
Ed has made a LOT of changes to the colour transformations since I made
the original scan.  Sky grain is still an issue though.

 Jon Cone suggests to avoid overemphasing grain when sharpening scans
 (I suppose equally true for aliasing distortion), never use a radius
 setting higher than 0.8.

This is interesting.  I'll have to check my unsharp mask settings.  Having
said that - I don't always sharpen scans prior to printing.  I imagine sharpening
would be more important when printing to larger sizes as you are.  The largest
I can print at the moment is A3+, and I have yet to try it.  I've only printed
to something a little smaller than A3.

NikonScan 2.5, and it seems about right to me.

I guess this answers my question about what program you use. :)

Rob



Rob Geraghty [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://wordweb.com






Re: aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000

2001-04-09 Thread Dave King

 Dave wrote:
 I don't see significant differences in grain at the print level
 between 100 speed negs and chromes, and print level is all I really
 care about.

 Really??!  In the scans I see a huge difference between say Superia
100
 and Sensia II 100.  There's a *much* bigger difference when you go
to Provia
 100F.  There is no apparent grain with Provia 100F.  Sensia II shows
little
 grain.  Superia 100 or Reala shows a lot of ugly grain in
highlights - particularly
 skies.  I haven't done enough large prints to know for sure, but
from the
 evidence I have there's a big difference between the quality of
prints from
 slides compared to prints from negs.


In general grain doesn't bother me, it's an artifact of silver halide
technology I've grown to accept.  I *do* want to see it in the print,
and I want it to look very similar to how it would in a very good
equal size analog print.  How it looks on the monitor doesn't concern
me really.  When magnified you'll see significant differences in grain
size and structure between various emulsions, yes.  As a general rule,
it's pretty easy to inadvertently overemphasize grain in digital, so I
try to avoid that.


 *However* one thing I don't recall you mentioning was what program
you're
 using to scan with.  Are you using Nikonscan?  If so, I'm not
suprised you
 have less problems with grain in the sky.  Vuescan seems to increase
grain
 in highlight areas of negs, and earlier versions put a distinct
orange/brown
 tint in the image compared to Nikonscan.


I haven't used Vuescan since figuring out how to get what I want out
of NikonScan.


 The detail in the skies tend to "blow out" in Nikonscan with the
LS30 since
 it only works with 8 bit data - this has the side effect of reducing
apparent
 grain in the sky.  Unfortunately Nikonscan is useless for me since I
get
 jaggies with it, so I have to use Vuescan.  I may be able to
"improve" things
 a little by deliberately adjusting the white point, but I don't want
to
 lose too much sky detail.


I see some artifacts from ICE on edges of tonal contrast areas on the
monitor, but again, in print it's a non-issue, so I've been able to
ignore it.


  I'm scanning a variety of films from my files etc, but
  these days I tend to shoot mostly Fuji Provia 100,
  Astia 100, 64T, NPS 160, and NHG 800.  (I guess I like Fuji :)

 I mostly use Fuji as well.  The only non-fuji film I've used much in
the
 last ten years is Kodak T400CN.  At the moment I generally use
Superia 100
 or Provia 100F.

 My judgement is completely subjective and therefore probably not
worth
 too much.  (Take with a large "grain" of halide :)  I judged the
 distortion by comparing the grain on monitor at 100% to how I think
it
 would look with no distortion, and to tonal areas in the same scan
 with less aliasing distortion.

 Ah.  I was wondering whether you were comparing it to grain in a
photographic
 10x8 print or something.

  My ideas about how grain looks are formed by seeing grain
  magnified in various ways over the years.

 The joys of experience. :)  I'm not so fortunate.


Or perhaps you are g.


 Generally, the grain in least aliased areas of 800 speed neg film
 looks pretty close to no distortion with LS-30 scans, to my eye.

 Meaning the grain is real?  To me, Fuji 800 looks very grainy when
scanned.


"Real" is a relative term.  Aliasing is a "reaction formation" to real
grain, to varying degrees of visual distortion.  If the distortion
artifacts don't obliterate the grain structure completely (and to my
way of looking at it they don't), then at *lower magnifications*
(prints) the essential qualities of the original are more or less
intact.

Fujicolor 800 looks relatively grainy because it is.  But it has a
smooth structure, and looks great in large prints.  Wouldn't shoot
architecture on 35mm with it :), but for personal work I love it.
Sometimes it "packs up" on smaller prints (don't know better way to
describe it), to me it looks better at bigger print sizes oddly
enough, but I don't mind it small either, it does what it does.  So
much improvement in high speed neg films in the past couple of years.
I wouldn't have considered an 800 speed neg film years ago except in
"emergencies".


 I'm not sure how aliasing distortion could cause color shift, but
 since aliasing becomes greater at certain tonal transitions you may
be
 seeing the additive effect of two problems overlapping.  Does your
 printer profile posterize blues?

 I'm not using the same printer anymore, but regardless - the colour
shift
 was in the scanned image.  See my comments above about Vuescan and
negs.
  Vuescan does seem to highlight odd colours in blue skies for some
reason
 when scanning negs.  This may be an old problem though - I'd have to
try
 scanning the same panoramic frame again with the current incarnation
of
 Vuescan.
 Ed has made a LOT of changes to the colour transformations since I
made
 the original scan.  Sky grain is still an issue though.

  Jon 

Re: aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000

2001-04-09 Thread Dave King

Rob wrote:

 The detail in the skies tend to "blow out" in Nikonscan with the
LS30 since
 it only works with 8 bit data - this has the side effect of reducing
apparent
 grain in the sky.  Unfortunately Nikonscan is useless for me since I
get
 jaggies with it, so I have to use Vuescan.  I may be able to
"improve" things
 a little by deliberately adjusting the white point, but I don't want
to
 lose too much sky detail.

The trick with the LS-30 is to hardware calibrate your monitor
(PhotoCal/Monitor Spyder is great, and not too expensive), set up
color management in NikonScan using the supplied scanner profile, and
use the excellent NikonScan curves dialogue to tone/color correct
before scanning.  You'll be outputting 24 bit files to PS, but the
corrections are applied in hi bit space.  Then, if need be, apply
tweaks with an adjustment layer before printing.

Nikonscan's CM works as well as possible, with a near perfect match to
the result in Photoshop.  Also Nikonscan does the best color
corrections out of the box of anything I've seen, on chromes and negs.
And, as I noted previously, the sharpening algorithm it uses is very
good.

Dave




Re: aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000

2001-04-09 Thread Rob Geraghty

Dave wrote:
Nikonscan's CM works as well as possible, with a near perfect match to
the result in Photoshop.  Also Nikonscan does the best color
corrections out of the box of anything I've seen, on chromes and negs.
And, as I noted previously, the sharpening algorithm it uses is very
good.

Er, but as I noted previously, Nikonscan is *useless* for me as it produces
jaggies.  Vuescan is my only option.  Yes, I really like the colour adjustment
facilities in Nikonscan, but they're no good to me if the output is garbage
due to a bug.

Rob


Rob Geraghty [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://wordweb.com






Re: aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000

2001-04-09 Thread Dave King

 Dave wrote:
 Nikonscan's CM works as well as possible, with a near perfect match
to
 the result in Photoshop.  Also Nikonscan does the best color
 corrections out of the box of anything I've seen, on chromes and
negs.
 And, as I noted previously, the sharpening algorithm it uses is
very
 good.

 Er, but as I noted previously, Nikonscan is *useless* for me as it
produces
 jaggies.  Vuescan is my only option.  Yes, I really like the colour
adjustment
 facilities in Nikonscan, but they're no good to me if the output is
garbage
 due to a bug.

 Rob

Do you mean jaggies are all through the image, or along the edges?

Dave





aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000

2001-04-08 Thread Rob Geraghty

Dave wrote:
It seems to me from eyeball guessing that my LS-30 is resolving grain
in 100 ISO films at roughly 40-80% distortion, which looks pretty bad
on the monitor at 100% view.  800 speed color neg film does much
better at what I would guess to be roughly 25% distortion.

I presume you're comparing 100ASA print film with 800ASA print film?
(as opposed to 100ASA slide film)
Out of interest, exactly which brand/types of film are you using?
How did you judge the distortion?  Compared to what?

The silver lining to this cloud is aliasing distortion (with the
LS-30) looks worse on screen than print, IMO.

I'd agree with this, although in some cases the amount of distortion
(aliasing, grain, whatever you want to call it) is ugly at much lower
print sizes.  I have a panoramic print on my wall at work on Epson
Panoramic Photo Paper - the ocean and beach looks fine, but the sky
has an ugly brown discolouration caused by grain aliasing.  The film
was either Fuji Superia 100 or Reala.

Generally however, the printer does tend to be more fogiving than the
monitor - the "grain" usually ends up less intense in a print.

Rob


Rob Geraghty [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://wordweb.com






Re: aliasing was Re: filmscanners: Review of the Nikon CoolScan 4000

2001-04-08 Thread Dave King

Rob wrote:
 Dave wrote:
 It seems to me from eyeball guessing that my LS-30 is resolving
grain
 in 100 ISO films at roughly 40-80% distortion, which looks pretty
bad
 on the monitor at 100% view.  800 speed color neg film does much
 better at what I would guess to be roughly 25% distortion.

 I presume you're comparing 100ASA print film with 800ASA print film?
 (as opposed to 100ASA slide film)
 Out of interest, exactly which brand/types of film are you using?
 How did you judge the distortion?  Compared to what?

I don't see significant differences in grain at the print level
between 100 speed negs and chromes, and print level is all I really
care about.  I'm scanning a variety of films from my files etc, but
these days I tend to shoot mostly Fuji Provia 100, Astia 100, 64T, NPS
160, and NHG 800.  (I guess I like Fuji :)

My judgement is completely subjective and therefore probably not worth
too much.  (Take with a large "grain" of halide :)  I judged the
distortion by comparing the grain on monitor at 100% to how I think it
would look with no distortion, and to tonal areas in the same scan
with less aliasing distortion.  My ideas about how grain looks are
formed by seeing grain magnified in various ways over the years.
Generally, the grain in least aliased areas of 800 speed neg film
looks pretty close to no distortion with LS-30 scans, to my eye.

 The silver lining to this cloud is aliasing distortion (with the
 LS-30) looks worse on screen than print, IMO.

 I'd agree with this, although in some cases the amount of distortion
 (aliasing, grain, whatever you want to call it) is ugly at much
lower
 print sizes.  I have a panoramic print on my wall at work on Epson
 Panoramic Photo Paper - the ocean and beach looks fine, but the sky
 has an ugly brown discolouration caused by grain aliasing.  The film
 was either Fuji Superia 100 or Reala.

I'm not sure how aliasing distortion could cause color shift, but
since aliasing becomes greater at certain tonal transitions you may be
seeing the additive effect of two problems overlapping.  Does your
printer profile posterize blues?

 Generally however, the printer does tend to be more fogiving than
the
 monitor - the "grain" usually ends up less intense in a print.

Jon Cone suggests to avoid overemphasing grain when sharpening scans
(I suppose equally true for aliasing distortion), never use a radius
setting higher than 0.8.  That's the way I tend to work editing Agfa
T-2500 scans, but I usually turn on ICE and sharpening together in
NikonScan 2.5, and it seems about right to me.

Dave