Hi Everyone,
Slipping out of lurk mode. Things are busy these days so I only post
the occasional response to the list, then go back to lurking quietly !
Anyway, I recently bought a Minolta Scan Elite 5400 2nd hand - and very
good it is too. I was hoping it would make scanning less of the
complete and utter nightmare that I have previously found it to be with
my Epson flatbed scanner. So far, it seems to be heading in the right
direction. However, I have a few questions. Well, more of one big
question really.
My plan is to batch-scan all my negs / slides at screen-resolution.
This is to enable me to basically catalogue and see them on-screen.
Then I will spend the time doing "proper" hi-res scans of the shots I
really want to do something with. Same goes for the couple-of-thousand
family slides I have just inherited that my parents would like to view
on their PC / TV.
I guess what I am looking for is the ability to get the scan as close as
possible to the desired result on first pass. My reasons for this are
two-fold - first, less work for me, and second, less manipulation in
photoshop should mean less degradation of image quality. I tried the
Minolta software and, whilst it is better than the Epson software, it
still isn't quite "there" for me. What I am looking for is something
like the function in Photoshop which, when I open a DNG file, allows me
to adjust the white balance by selecting something white and/or black in
the image, then tweaking it slightly if required.
So I downloaded the VueScan demo from the hamrick site. This seems to
be even closer to what I am after. However, I couldn't see a way to
select which area of the photo should be called "white" or "black" as a
reference, as I can in photoshop. Found the manual setting, but what do
I do to select the area I want to be white or black ? Then I noticed in
the help file that you can save the raw ccd data - however I can't seem
to find the option in the downloaded version. Is this disabled in the
demo ? I thought the only restriction was the "$" all over the image
when saved ? And the other question is, I suppose, if I save the raw
ccd data does this then negate the need to do my initial processing
stage in the vuescan software ? ie: Does the raw file data come from
before this stage of processing ? At the moment I am thinking that the
raw file is the way to go as I can then treat it exactly as I do the
files from my e330. Any comments on this way of thinking ?
That's enough for now. I'm sure I'll have more questions once I get
some responses, and once I've had more of a play with VueScan. I'll
email Ed Hamrick as well, but I'd appreciate your collective thoughts
first.
Oh, and OM content - once I am happy with the scanner I'll scan my
OM-Odyssey images !
Thanks,
Jon
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