Vuescan and Canon FS4000: washed out colors

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rhaytana
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Rhaytana

I started a thread about this on photo.net, but thought I'd bring it
over here, as this seems to be the preferred posting place for tech
support issues regarding Vuescan.

(The photo net thread is here:
http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=008H4w )

I scan Fuji Press 400 and Fuji Press 800 color negative film with a
Canon FS4000 scanner, via a SCSI port in Windows XP Pro. Try as I
might, I can't get Vuescan to yield the colors I take for granted with
FilmGet, the Adobe plug-in that Canon supplied with the FS4000.
Vuescanned colors appear depleted, washed out.

The latest example:

http://www.photo.net/bboard/uploaded-file?bboard_upload_id=18103684

I seem to get my best Vuescan results by:

1) Setting 'Color Balance' to none and making levels adjustments in
Photoshop. I learned this tip from the Dale Cotton tutorial on
Vuescan.

2) Specifying an .icm profile for the FS4000, downloaded from Digital
Light and Color.

3) Using the instructions in 'Advanced Workflow' to scan a black area
in the negative and setting the film base color with it. (For the
Fuji Press 400, that's .947 red, .304 green and .243 blue.)

I also have 'restore color' checked under Filters and Adobe RGB
specified as the output color space. I also have my monitor profile
specified in Color Settings, too.

The resulting scan is very dark, but I can use Levels in Photoshop to
bring it up, and then tweak it by isolating and saturating the
highlights. With this workflow, I sometimes like the resulting scans
better than what I got out of the box with Canon's FilmGet and 'color
matching' checked.

But only sometimes. Often the Vuescan scans still appear washed out
and desaturated. The 'latest example' linked above should show why.

I also have experimented with setting 'White Balance' and 'Manual' in
Color, right clicking a gray area, different brightness settings,
difference negative vendor settings and different negative types. The
next step may be to buy an IT8 target from Wolf Faust to profile the
film; I'm ready to do so, if I think it'll make a big difference.

But I thought I'd first post this message, to see if more
knowledgeable users can suggest what I ought to try next. I certainly
can see the potential in VueScan. Mr. Hamrick seems to have done his
best to provide a remarkably powerful program to the digital darkroom
community at a modest cost. I just need to figure out how to make it
work for me.
 
I started a thread about this on photo.net, but thought I'd bring it
over here, as this seems to be the preferred posting place for tech
support issues regarding Vuescan.

(The photo net thread is here:
http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=008H4w )

I scan Fuji Press 400 and Fuji Press 800 color negative film with a
Canon FS4000 scanner, via a SCSI port in Windows XP Pro. Try as I
might, I can't get Vuescan to yield the colors I take for granted with
FilmGet, the Adobe plug-in that Canon supplied with the FS4000.
Vuescanned colors appear depleted, washed out.

The latest example:

http://www.photo.net/bboard/uploaded-file?bboard_upload_id=18103684

I seem to get my best Vuescan results by:

1) Setting 'Color Balance' to none and making levels adjustments in
Photoshop. I learned this tip from the Dale Cotton tutorial on
Vuescan.

2) Specifying an .icm profile for the FS4000, downloaded from Digital
Light and Color.

3) Using the instructions in 'Advanced Workflow' to scan a black area
in the negative and setting the film base color with it. (For the
Fuji Press 400, that's .947 red, .304 green and .243 blue.)

I also have 'restore color' checked under Filters and Adobe RGB
specified as the output color space. I also have my monitor profile
specified in Color Settings, too.

The resulting scan is very dark, but I can use Levels in Photoshop to
bring it up, and then tweak it by isolating and saturating the
highlights. With this workflow, I sometimes like the resulting scans
better than what I got out of the box with Canon's FilmGet and 'color
matching' checked.

But only sometimes. Often the Vuescan scans still appear washed out
and desaturated. The 'latest example' linked above should show why.

I also have experimented with setting 'White Balance' and 'Manual' in
Color, right clicking a gray area, different brightness settings,
difference negative vendor settings and different negative types. The
next step may be to buy an IT8 target from Wolf Faust to profile the
film; I'm ready to do so, if I think it'll make a big difference.

But I thought I'd first post this message, to see if more
knowledgeable users can suggest what I ought to try next. I certainly
can see the potential in VueScan. Mr. Hamrick seems to have done his
best to provide a remarkably powerful program to the digital darkroom
community at a modest cost. I just need to figure out how to make it
work for me.
Click to expand...

What Color|Brightness setting are you using? A setting of 1 is not
always best. Push it down a bit?
 
Excuse the afterthoughts:

I also resorted to Color Balance none, followed by levels/gamma adjust
in PS, in my very limitted experience with color neg. films.
Frustrating though, to have to do this...

I suspect something has changed within Vuescan of late, my results
following exactly the same workflow/settings yields different color
balance, than a year~ back, from same raw file.

If you get something good following the Col. Bal. none, then ps levels
workflow, perhaps you can reverse engineer: experiment with
red/green/blue brightness settings with Color Balance manual, until
you replicate. This might work IF Vuescan is imparting a CONSISTANT
color cast.
 
I have been using this scanner since shortly after it first came out. I also
have Vuescan, originally purchased for use with another scanner.
I have rarely been able to obtain satisfactory scans of negative materials
using Vuescan on the Canon FS4000. I have tried every imaginable technique.
Vuescan does work well with slide film in my experience on this scanner.
If you have had the scanner for a long time there is an upgraded driver on
the Canon site that slightly speeds up scan times.
I would try either scanning with no adjustments in the Canon software or,
with some images, try using the color matching option in the Canon driver
along with color management through the whole work flow. For most practical
purposes if you are making a scan at 2400 dpi or above I am not sure the
issue of losing bits by making after scan adjustments is a realistic
concern. The printer driver is going to strip out alot of the data anyway
when you print.
Silverfast has a $200 driver for the Canon scanner with a free (watermarked)
demo.
 
Excuse the afterthoughts:

I also resorted to Color Balance none, followed by levels/gamma adjust
in PS, in my very limitted experience with color neg. films.
Frustrating though, to have to do this...

I suspect something has changed within Vuescan of late, my results
following exactly the same workflow/settings yields different color
balance, than a year~ back, from same raw file.

If you get something good following the Col. Bal. none, then ps levels
workflow, perhaps you can reverse engineer: experiment with
red/green/blue brightness settings with Color Balance manual, until
you replicate. This might work IF Vuescan is imparting a CONSISTANT
color cast.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the thoughts, Mendel. Unfortunately, the color cast isn't
consistent; what's consistent are the problems with washed-out color,
per the sample. I have experimented with manual color balance
settings, too.
 
The resulting scan is very dark, but I can use Levels in Photoshop to
bring it up, and then tweak it by isolating and saturating the
highlights. With this workflow, I sometimes like the resulting scans
better than what I got out of the box with Canon's FilmGet and 'color
matching' checked.
Click to expand...
I have the same problems with negatives and my FS4000. I often can fix
the scan in Photoshop but it is a lot of work. I find Filmget produces
a bright, clean scan but I don't like the auto-sharpening.

I now use Silverfast SE ($25) for negatives. This program is inferior
in many ways to VS but the neg scans are good. The SE scans are clean
and as good as I can get a VS scan in Photoshop and also the noise seems
much lower.

However, with positives I find VS much better than SE. I suspect that
SE is doing some kind of noise reduction (e.g. blurring and/or black
point above zero) and although this helps with negs it loses detail with
Kodachromes.

I find that a neg scan with VS is far too dark and wonder if the
resultant contrast expansion is why things look so noisy. Perhaps
Vuescan needs an option to set the manual exposure to its determined
value plus or minus a factor. This could be in addition to the current
choice of fully auto or fully fixed.

-- Steven
 
First, many thanks to all who have taken the time to respond.

I'm not an expert by any means, but I've put in quite a few hours of
experimentation since I posted my first message, and also had the good
fortune to correspond with a gentleman I do regard as expert in all of
this. (One I shouldn't name, alas, as I haven't received consent to
do so.)

My impression now: for the FS4000 owner, at least, Vuescan is a good
choice _IF_ you're willing to do some work on the scan in Photoshop.
With the work, I now usually can get photos that are superior to or at
least equal to what comes out of Filmget. But the work is essential.

The Photoshop editing that's made the difference for me is to enhance
contrast with the curves command. (In Real World Photoshop, Fraser
and Blatner warn against using the Brightness/Contrast command for
doing this -- instead, they suggest using curves, and this has worked
splendidly for me.) I also adjust levels, of course, and use masks on
duplicate layers so I can saturate colors selectively.

Mr. Hamrick is obviously dedicated to his product -- he posts frequent
updates, answers many questions in this forum (although not this
one!), and allows unlimited updates for a one time registration. But
I do think Vuescan has a glaring weakness: documentation. If you're
going to make that kind of power available to users, I think it's
worthwhile to take the time and trouble to tell them how to use it --
or to hire someone who will. I think the documentation at
http://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/html/vuesc.htm can be expanded and
improved upon.
 
First, many thanks to all who have taken the time to respond.

I'm not an expert by any means, but I've put in quite a few hours of
experimentation since I posted my first message, and also had the good
fortune to correspond with a gentleman I do regard as expert in all of
this. (One I shouldn't name, alas, as I haven't received consent to
do so.)

My impression now: for the FS4000 owner, at least, Vuescan is a good
choice _IF_ you're willing to do some work on the scan in Photoshop.
With the work, I now usually can get photos that are superior to or at
least equal to what comes out of Filmget. But the work is essential.

The Photoshop editing that's made the difference for me is to enhance
contrast with the curves command. (In Real World Photoshop, Fraser
and Blatner warn against using the Brightness/Contrast command for
doing this -- instead, they suggest using curves, and this has worked
splendidly for me.) I also adjust levels, of course, and use masks on
duplicate layers so I can saturate colors selectively.

Mr. Hamrick is obviously dedicated to his product -- he posts frequent
updates, answers many questions in this forum (although not this
one!), and allows unlimited updates for a one time registration. But
I do think Vuescan has a glaring weakness: documentation. If you're
going to make that kind of power available to users, I think it's
worthwhile to take the time and trouble to tell them how to use it --
or to hire someone who will. I think the documentation at
http://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/html/vuesc.htm can be expanded and
improved upon.
Click to expand...


As a very satisfied FS4000 / Vuescan user, though only at a low usage
rate, I find that I just do a scan in Vuescan, and *all* processing,
adjustments, etc in Photoshop. The only parameters I adjust in Vuescan
are the film type, and IR cleaning.

AS for documentation, the Help file is a well organised HTML document,
that lists every item in the menus, and certainly has provided enough
information for my usage.

cheers
Klaas
 
For what it's worth, I, too, have resigned myself to some level of
post-processing to obtain the contrast and saturation I would like to
see in my scans of negatives (I use an Epson Perfection 2400).

And I would second the motion for an improved user manual. The
existing one leaves far to much to be desired. I know that VS has
many many hidden talents and capabilities that I've yet to tap, but
the user manual will not get me there.

Bill
 
Im Posting von Rhaytana said:
I also have experimented with setting 'White Balance' and 'Manual' in
Color, right clicking a gray area, different brightness settings,
difference negative vendor settings and different negative types. The
next step may be to buy an IT8 target from Wolf Faust to profile the
film; I'm ready to do so, if I think it'll make a big difference.
Click to expand...

No need to do that, you wont have any success as long as you don't know
how vuescan works.

Take a grey card and a piece of white paper and shoot it (expose for
the grey card) in bright afternoon sun (would be good to have clouds to
minimize blue sky light).

In Vuescan do advanced Workflow, this provides good black. Then preview
the neg and crop to have no border from the scanner or film holder in
the area (best to the card and the paper only). Set whitepoint % and
black point % to 0.0. Right click on the paper in the image to set
neutral values.

Open Preveiw Histogram. You should see a high peak for the grey card.
Adjust brightness red and brightness blue in order to have the peaks
for the three color channels one over the other in the same place in
the lower histogram.

Note down all color related values in the color tab for future use,
especially white and black point values, brightness and film base color
values. Do your scanning with the same exposure you determined for
advanced workflow, locked film base color and locked image color.

have fun
 
Thanks, Erik, I'll give it a try.

I'm assuming that I should photograph the gray card and white paper in
the same frame ... e.g., with the two side by side.

Also, do you think it would be valuable to shoot them in other
lighting conditions in which I frequently photograph?

Thanks again.
 
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