Many many times in a lifetime things just get complicated and/or overcrowded. Looks like that the very same situation happened to the blog's authors as well (albeit to each one due to different circumstances, but personal issues anyway). It thus became to us (Matjaž and me) a bit difficult to keep the blog running in the same manner as we have been for a few months so far. No, we are not shutting down the blog, only the posts will be updated somewhat less regularly as they have been so far. We hope you understand. But we also want to thank all of you who have participated so far-it was really a refreshing experience!
Oh, about the new scanner I got more than a week ago: yesterday I finally unboxed the whole thing...and tested a few mounted slides, but without playing aruound with the adjustments (in the scanner software). Below, there is a scan from a Kodak Elite slide (not Extra Color) made at 3000 dpi, slightly sharpened with unsharp mask (and reduced red saturation) in Gimp. Clearly, there is a lot of room for improvement in the scanning approach with this Plustek. Reportedly, the scanner does its best when scanning at the maximum 7200 dpi, then resizing down to 3200-3600 dpi. Trouble is, if you own a 5-year old computer like mine, it's just too slow to do the job done in a reasonable amount of time. So for now, I am just bound to use that scanner at some low to mid point of its performance- until I get a new PC.....yes, this IS consumerism!
Maybe cheaper solution is to check some batch-resizing software - i.e. directly let the software resize them smaller. Not that different resizing methods have day&night difference in results. Myself I never liked Gimp's resize engine - it renders resized image oversharp. Photoshop has HQ resizing (it has 5 different methods for resize), but even the older version PS licenses can be expensive to buy, but worth considering.
ReplyDeleteSharpening is always a big Q for me as well since film is SOO different in it's fine structures than digital. I always use Bicubic (Best for Smooth Gradients) resizing method. Then I preserve the excellent tonal scale of the original image, losing some sharpness but for me it's the real "film-look", film is never as harshly sharp as digitally shot image, IMHO at least. FIlm has the tonality and character and Bicubic Smooth resizing method takes the best out of this part if you look the resized image down 100%.
On Epson I found the fine structure too harsh if I scanned on maximum resolution (on mine it's 4800dpi) - even if I resize it's too "harsh" for my eye. If I look 100% zoom (pixel-per-pixel) those scans are too "digital" - it tries to draw out straight lines on film emulsion which just aren't there. One step below maximum res seems to be the "good-spot" to have enough resolution yet it's not "harsh". The 3200dpi I also resize smaller.
Maybe check your scanner as well? At 100% zooms at different the top resolution steps (ie scan images 7200/4800/3200dpi and compare them @ 100% level details and their nuances)
Only the drum scans don't need reizing - the 100% zooms look perfect down to grain level and raw detail.
IT8 is worth a fuss if you shoot negs/positives occasionally and the software supports IT8 calibration. For an affordible IT8 targets I can recommend Wolf Faust targets:
www.targets.coloraid.de
Those are high quality targets at multiple times less price than Silverfast or others.
I bought the kit from Wolf and my cheap CCD scanner got a whole lot cleaner scans (no more annoying color-biased shadows that took ages of separate work to sort out since the rest of the image was more or less ok color wise, but I never could manage 100% correct colors) and the drum scanner improved a little too, altough not as drastically as the CCD.
The problem with the IT8 kit is you also must have good monitor calibration to "back it up". Newer Apple displays are OK most of the time and OSX has a fairly good manual calibration built-in to double check it, not sure about Windows but cheaper PC-displays tend to have horrible colours rendering IT8 useless if you can't reall judge it correctly (those monitors definitely need a machine calibration such as Spyder which can be bought s/h from fleaBay). Now that's consumerism!!! :)