J
JeffOYB
I have a bunch of slides to scan to make JPEGS that I'm going to place
as images in a Pagemaker file for printing as a book.
These are 35mm slides and the desired output is mostly B&W about 3"x4",
but sometimes it's CMYK color at up to 6"x7".
To do this job I bought a Nikon Coolscan IV. It has Nikon Scan 3.1
software that works with my old Mac OS 8.6. I also mostly use the older
Photoshop 3.0.
The process seems easy... : ) ...just push the button.
But are there a few basic tips I can use to get better scans?
Is there a website where someone gives a quick walkthru? : )
Well, here are my details...if anyone has some good tips...
I'm a small press publisher and have had moderately good results from
flatbed scanning of prints. I've recently learned more about curves and
dot gain. I've found that I get pretty darn good results for B&W on
50#offset paper by using these steps for post-processing images in
Photoshop 3.0: *I set the blacks at 85% and the whites at 5%. *I put
some curve into the curves to flatten/gray the midrange contrast. *I
add some unsharp mask sharpening.
But I'm confused with this scanner. Should I just leave the settings at
default then do my usual post-processing in Photoshop? I had a brief
tutorial last year and I vaguely recall that I should do a pre-scan to
get the histogram of the slide then adjust the curves to fit the main
part of the image registration before making the final scan---and that
this results in better detail in the final scan.
But with the Nikon Scan 3.1 software I'm having troubles and doubts
about all the settings.
*The image size, resolution and crop settings seem hard to manage. It
seems to be hard to just type in 300dpi then the final desire image
size---each parameter changes as I chase it down. If I change the
output size then the rez changes or the scaling. It's like herding
cats. With color scanning I end up with a 24mb scan just trying to get
a 6x7 300dpi final image. It's hard to explain, but frustrating.
*With the curves there are values on both axes. I'm not sure which ones
I should be adjusting. For B&W scans I end up moving the vertical
sliders to make the whites less white and the blacks less black and
then I curve the curve a bit to flatten the midrange. But for color
scans the sliders start working all differently and I end up using one
vertical slider and one horizontal. Seems nutty.
*I haven't done any trapping or limiting of the sliders around the
histogram before the final scan, but I recall that maybe I should be
doing this. ??
*The sharpening function in Nikon Scan 3.1 seems to use different
values compared to Photoshop 3.0. Mostly the difference is that the PS
first setting of "Amount" goes up to 400 or so. But in NS it's called
"Intensity" and it goes to 100. It seems like a common PS unsharp mask
setting to buff up a decent image is, say, 50 out of 400. But for NS it
seems like all images look best at the full 100 out of 100 Intensity
setting!
as images in a Pagemaker file for printing as a book.
These are 35mm slides and the desired output is mostly B&W about 3"x4",
but sometimes it's CMYK color at up to 6"x7".
To do this job I bought a Nikon Coolscan IV. It has Nikon Scan 3.1
software that works with my old Mac OS 8.6. I also mostly use the older
Photoshop 3.0.
The process seems easy... : ) ...just push the button.
But are there a few basic tips I can use to get better scans?
Is there a website where someone gives a quick walkthru? : )
Well, here are my details...if anyone has some good tips...
I'm a small press publisher and have had moderately good results from
flatbed scanning of prints. I've recently learned more about curves and
dot gain. I've found that I get pretty darn good results for B&W on
50#offset paper by using these steps for post-processing images in
Photoshop 3.0: *I set the blacks at 85% and the whites at 5%. *I put
some curve into the curves to flatten/gray the midrange contrast. *I
add some unsharp mask sharpening.
But I'm confused with this scanner. Should I just leave the settings at
default then do my usual post-processing in Photoshop? I had a brief
tutorial last year and I vaguely recall that I should do a pre-scan to
get the histogram of the slide then adjust the curves to fit the main
part of the image registration before making the final scan---and that
this results in better detail in the final scan.
But with the Nikon Scan 3.1 software I'm having troubles and doubts
about all the settings.
*The image size, resolution and crop settings seem hard to manage. It
seems to be hard to just type in 300dpi then the final desire image
size---each parameter changes as I chase it down. If I change the
output size then the rez changes or the scaling. It's like herding
cats. With color scanning I end up with a 24mb scan just trying to get
a 6x7 300dpi final image. It's hard to explain, but frustrating.
*With the curves there are values on both axes. I'm not sure which ones
I should be adjusting. For B&W scans I end up moving the vertical
sliders to make the whites less white and the blacks less black and
then I curve the curve a bit to flatten the midrange. But for color
scans the sliders start working all differently and I end up using one
vertical slider and one horizontal. Seems nutty.
*I haven't done any trapping or limiting of the sliders around the
histogram before the final scan, but I recall that maybe I should be
doing this. ??
*The sharpening function in Nikon Scan 3.1 seems to use different
values compared to Photoshop 3.0. Mostly the difference is that the PS
first setting of "Amount" goes up to 400 or so. But in NS it's called
"Intensity" and it goes to 100. It seems like a common PS unsharp mask
setting to buff up a decent image is, say, 50 out of 400. But for NS it
seems like all images look best at the full 100 out of 100 Intensity
setting!
