Posted by Filemon Lopez on January 22, 2007 at 11:30 AM
I am in the process of scanning hundreds of slides using a Nikon Coolscan IV. Can someone suggest a work flow as well as settings they have used for optimal quality? Also, what is the bit rate that you have used. Thanks
The standard advice is to scan at as high a resolution as you can, since it's much better to downsample an image to the size you want rather than upsample a tiny image.
As you are scanning so many slides, automation is obviously giong to be key. Get your scanner profiled and then scan with all image adjustments set flat. After scanning, simply assign the scaner's profile to each image. This will minimize the amount of post-scan work you need to do. ICE, if your scanner supports it, will also help remove dust and scratches automatically but at the cost of increased scan times.
A cheaper alternative to scanner profiling is to use Joseph Holmes's ChromeSpace colourspace, which is optimised for chromes and does a very good job of colour-correction but not quite up to the standard a good custom scanner profile can achieve.
I agree with Julian's advice. This will give you the best starting point and you can then fine-tune things later on when you're preparing to print the individual files.
If your slides are Kodachromes, leave ICE turned OFF. It doesn't work with Kodachromes (or traditional--silver--B&W films), and image quality will be seriously degraded. If you have Kodachromes, you just have to do the dust removal manually.
-Paul
Posted by Brent Murphy on January 25, 2007 at 6:20 PM
I am in the process of scanning all my slides. I use a Coolscan V. Basically, the reason I'm scanning is in order to have a digital master of every one of my slides, and the slides become backup copies in my file. Because of this, I scan every image with as high a quality as possible. 4000dpi, no image correction, 16-bit (actually 14-bit, but who's counting?) I also have Digital ICE set to Normal. In Photoshop, for the majority of my slides, I just do a quick Levels adjustment layer to get the look I want. Other images get additional tweaking as necessary, of course.
Posted by Filemon Lopez on February 1, 2007 at 6:44 AM
Discussion
7 repliesGuy
As you are scanning so many slides, automation is obviously giong to be key. Get your scanner profiled and then scan with all image adjustments set flat. After scanning, simply assign the scaner's profile to each image. This will minimize the amount of post-scan work you need to do. ICE, if your scanner supports it, will also help remove dust and scratches automatically but at the cost of increased scan times.
A cheaper alternative to scanner profiling is to use Joseph Holmes's ChromeSpace colourspace, which is optimised for chromes and does a very good job of colour-correction but not quite up to the standard a good custom scanner profile can achieve.
I agree with Julian's advice. This will give you the best starting point and you can then fine-tune things later on when you're preparing to print the individual files.
Guy
-Paul