Vuescan raw file compatibility with Photoshop CS?

  • Thread starter Thread starter WD
  • Start date Start date
Any Photoshop version can read them, they are TIFF.
But you probably don't want to.
They are really designed for post processing in VueScan for conversion as
I understand it.

Mac
 
Folks,

Does anyone know if Photoshop CS can read Vuescan raw files?

WD
Click to expand...


Per Mac's response, there is no problem for CS (or any release of
photoshop) reading Vuescan raw file. It's Ed Hamrick's semantics, they
are just tiffs.

I do open them in Photoshop, to do dust and scratch clean-up. Having a
cleaned raw file leaves me completely free to try scan-from-disk with
different settings, without having to re-clean every time.

My scans are (mainly) Tri-X, so ICE wouldn't help, if I had it. Since
they are gamma 1, thus very dark, I do the following, in PhotoShop. It
doesn't change the gamma, just raises apparent brightness. Excerpt
from my log file:

****

Added Working Space: "Vuescan Raw File", with gamma set to .75. This
can be used as custom proof mode, and is primarily useful for editting
Vuescan Raw files. With gamma 0.75, it slightly brighter than Scan
Dual2 (posi input), which I was previously using, and does not have
it's green cast. I used the following steps:

1. Open "Color Settings" dialogue box. It can be accessed thru
pulldown "Edit|Color Settings" or hot key <shift> <ctrl> K.

2. Click on Working Spaces rgb field and select "Custom RGB".

3. Name it "Vuescan Raw File", and set the gamma field to .75, and
click ok.

4. Re-click on Working Spaces rgb field and select "Save RGB".

5. In the file saving dialogue box, type "Vuescan Raw File".

My strategy is to leave Photoshops default working space on "Web
Graphics Default", but make "Vuescan Raw File" my default proof setup.
This can be toggled on and off with <ctrl> Y. To do this, with
Photoshop started, but no files open, select in pulldowns: View|Proof
Setup|Custom, and in profiles field, select: "Vuescan Raw File".

****

Another problem I've had with Vuescan raw files and Photoshop: I use
lzw compression when outputting Vuescan raws, but Photoshop editting
and re-save really increases the compressed file size, sometimes
beyond uncompressed size! So after editting say a roll's worth of
raws, I will re-scan-from-disk within Vuescan, outputting a fresh raw
file, TO ANOTHER DIRECTORY. This gets the file size back down,
signifcantly.

IMPORTANT NOTE, do not ouptut the new raws to the same directory, with
the same name, and as an extra precaution, make sure "warn on
overwrite" is enabled in the prefs tab.
 
All,

Thanks for all the responses. My primary motivation for considering
this was the flexibility of having the entire scan dynamic range
available to me in Photoshop. I guess an alternative would be simply
to set the % white and black point values in Vuescan to 0% (or in
histogram push 'black' pointers all the way to the left and 'white'
pointers all the way to the right). Then simply
save the scan as a 16 bit tiff. It seems that this would accomplish my
goal
without having to deal with the gamma (=1) issue.

WD
 
All,

Thanks for all the responses. My primary motivation for considering
this was the flexibility of having the entire scan dynamic range
available to me in Photoshop. I guess an alternative would be simply
to set the % white and black point values in Vuescan to 0% (or in
histogram push 'black' pointers all the way to the left and 'white'
pointers all the way to the right). Then simply
save the scan as a 16 bit tiff. It seems that this would accomplish my
goal without having to deal with the gamma (=1) issue.
Click to expand...

This is precisely what I do. I also set the color correction to
"none" and my output space to ProPhoto RGB (considerably wider gamut
than Adobe RGB). I then do all of my edits using 16 bit layers in PS
CS.

I do like the earlier poster's suggestion of dust-spotting from the
raw scan file. I do save all raw files along with the tiffs just in
case. :)

Dan
 
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