Vuescan scanning techniques

Mahoneyd187

Mahoneyd187

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Danny
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Hey all

So after being less than blown away by my scans I've spent ages looking into different developers, pushing techniques, filters etc. Turns out now, having spent the evening constructively playing with vuescan and researching some techniques, I've found a much MUCH better set up for my own scans.

Previously I scanned 16bit grayscale, b/w negative,tmax 100 .55, auto levels etc etc as I'd read as a recommendation before.

I started to read further tonight and several folks suggested scanning as a colour slide and inverting in PS. So began my evening of testing....

Turns out scanning as a 48bit RGB colour slide,multiple exposure,no level adjustments, blah blah and so on, gives me way better results. Less digital noise, more contrast, smoother transitions in tones etc. Just load the 350mb odd file in ps, invert a curve layer, add a channel mixer layer and tick monochrome, add a levels adj layer and move sliders to taste/and or curves and you're done.

There's so much more detail in the scan it's unreal!

I can get on my mac tomorrow and quote the exact settings if it helps :)

Just thought I'd input something potentially constructive to the forum

Regards

Danny
 
Interesting Danny, I'd like to see a couple of comparisons if you wouldn't mind.

Cheers

Andy
 
Very interesting and would also like to see all your vuescan settings & PS adjustments step by step.

I tried some Rollei IR film last year, and gave up on scanning as was not happy with the end results.
 
I mainly just swear at it. Mind you I swear much less at Vuescan than I did at Silverfast!
 
This could be one of the most useful threads of the year! I'd be very interested in a step-by-step guide...
I've used Silverfast before without much idea of what to do for the best and now I'm stuck with the Epson Scan utility on my v500. Whilst it has good batch scanning abilities, I'm not much impressed with the amount of control one has.


Keep it up, Danny!
 
Right!! Black and White scans...

Give these a go....

Input
Mode-transparency
Media-slide film
Bits per px-48bit RGB
Scan res-3200dpi (I'm scanning 6x7 format)
Number of passes-1
Multi exposure-tick to turn on

Filter
All off/set to none

Color
Colour balance-none
Curve low-0.001
Curve high-0.001
Brightness-1,1,1,1
Slide vendor-generic
Slide brand-color
Slide type-slide
View color RGB

Output
Tiff file type 48bit RGB
Tiff profile

That should get you a nice big ass negative scan.

Load up in Photoshop.

1. Curve adj layer. Grab top right and drag down to bottom right, grab bottom left and drag up to top left, this will invert your image, making it a positive, and making more sense.

2. You'll notice you probably have a strong colour cast, so create a channel mixer layer and just check monochrome.

Voila. Adjust levels and or curves to contrast of your choice.

I'm currently on my phone and don't have time to post examples this evening off my mac tower. Please do post your results though guys and girls, I'd be very interested to see your results, mine were fantastically better
 
I'll have to do some over the weekend I'm afraid I'm away from home now until tomorrow.

One of the biggest things I recommend is making level adjustments manually or not at all in vuescan, do it all in ps. Unless you tell it otherwise, vuescan tries to up the exposure on purposefully underexposed images, bringing the average tonality into the midrange. Thus introducing a hell of alot of noise when you want true blacks anyway
 
I have seen it adjust the exposure up on some images that were unintentionally underexposed. It was a noisy nightmare! I will have to see if PS elements can do all of the inversions as I'm not spalshing out on big boy's PS!
 
Can you use curve layers on elements? If not I'm sure there's another, if less accurate, way to invert. Try ctrl+i
 
Mahoneyd187 said:
Can you use curve layers on elements? If not I'm sure there's another, if less accurate, way to invert. Try ctrl+i
Click to expand...

I will have a look when I get home. I got lightroom just after I got PSE8 and quite frankly haven't touched it since!
 
menthel said:
I will have a look when I get home. I got lightroom just after I got PSE8 and quite frankly haven't touched it since!
Click to expand...

Pretty sure you can use curves in lightroom mate. I only use ps
 
It's a little while since I've done any b/w scanning, but this does ring a bell.

ISTR you might get the best results by isolating the green channel from the RGB image as that's the sharpest.
 
Musicman said:
It's a little while since I've done any b/w scanning, but this does ring a bell.

ISTR you might get the best results by isolating the green channel from the RGB image as that's the sharpest.
Click to expand...

It's a matter of trying each channel as they differ, will depend on a couple of things. When I scanned to grayscale I used the blue channel after checking in PS which was sharpest. I found scanning full 48bit RGB to be better for the negatives I tested, but the same may not ring true for others.

At the end of the day there is no exact formula, each negative will require individual scan settings to achieve the best scan possible (y)
 
I think I will need to do some experimenting but if one of the above methods gives better, sharper and less noisy scans then I will be happy. I had been starting to wonder if my 9000f was just a bit rubbish!
 
Mahoneyd187 said:
Hey all

So after being less than blown away by my scans I've spent ages looking into different developers, pushing techniques, filters etc. Turns out now, having spent the evening constructively playing with vuescan and researching some techniques, I've found a much MUCH better set up for my own scans.

Previously I scanned 16bit grayscale, b/w negative,tmax 100 .55, auto levels etc etc as I'd read as a recommendation before.

I started to read further tonight and several folks suggested scanning as a colour slide and inverting in PS. So began my evening of testing....

Turns out scanning as a 48bit RGB colour slide,multiple exposure,no level adjustments, blah blah and so on, gives me way better results. Less digital noise, more contrast, smoother transitions in tones etc. Just load the 350mb odd file in ps, invert a curve layer, add a channel mixer layer and tick monochrome, add a levels adj layer and move sliders to taste/and or curves and you're done.

There's so much more detail in the scan it's unreal!

I can get on my mac tomorrow and quote the exact settings if it helps :)

Just thought I'd input something potentially constructive to the forum

Regards

Danny
Click to expand...
That sound like an awful lot of work. I always had Vuescan set to colour negative and scan as 16bit B&W. Just correct the exposure manually on the first frame of the film: tick 'lock exposure' and put the raw curve towards the right of the histogramme. I then let Vuescan set the levels automatically and output as a tiff-dng.

Of course you'll get less noise if you do multiple passes. The multi-exposure is a bit wasted on B&W though -- they are just not that dense.

edit: I should probably mention that I'm using a Nikon LS-30.
 
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Just a quick and dirty test here:

1) My usual scanning settings saved as a tiff. Given -2 exposure in LR and strong contrast added.

Vuescan test-1.jpg by menthel, on Flickr

2) Saved as negative 16 bit greyscale TIFF. Inverted in LR, -0.5 exposure, 100 black added and +50 light -30 dark.

Vuescan test-2.jpg by menthel, on Flickr

3) Saved as negative 48 bit RGB TIFF. Inverted in LR, -0.5 exposure, 100 black added and +50 light -30 dark.

Vuescan test-3.jpg by menthel, on Flickr

4) My usual scanning settings saved as a tiff but with lock exposure set to film base. Given -2 exposure in LR and strong contrast added.

Vuescan test-4.jpg by menthel, on Flickr

5) Saved as negative 16 bit greyscale DNG with exposure lock. Inverted in LR, -0.5 exposure, 100 black added, contrast 100 and +20 light -10 dark.

Vuescan test-5.jpg by menthel, on Flickr

6) Saved as negative 16 bit greyscale DNG with NO exposure lock. Inverted in LR, -0.5 exposure, 100 black added, contrast 100 and +20 light -10 dark.

Vuescan test-6.jpg by menthel, on Flickr
 
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7) My usual scanning settings saved as a DNG. Given -2 exposure in LR and strong contrast added.

Vuescan test-7.jpg by menthel, on Flickr

8) My usual scanning settings saved as a DNG. Given -2 exposure in LR and strong contrast added.

Vuescan test-8.jpg by menthel, on Flickr

Quick and dirty but to my eye the best detail and contrast with the least work is number 6, the greyscale negative DNG with no exposure lock, although 4 is not far behind being TIFF with exposure lock.

I have also tried it scanning as per 6 with the different channels (red, green and blue) and auto came out best.
 
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Have you seen any improvement then over your regular scanning? Even if my settings didn't improve your scans I hope taking some time to experiment has :)
 
Mahoneyd187 said:
Have you seen any improvement then over your regular scanning? Even if my settings didn't improve your scans I hope taking some time to experiment has :)
Click to expand...

I do think 4 and 6 are better. They need a bit more tweaking but I think the dynamic range and contrast possible are better. Not sure which one I prefer yet and will have to do more scanning etc.
 
well - as a totally unscientific test, run with a Mk I eyeball - and without reading your conclusions - purely on how it looked to me, I went for 4 then (marginally behind) 6.
 
TheBigYin said:
well - as a totally unscientific test, run with a Mk I eyeball - and without reading your conclusions - purely on how it looked to me, I went for 4 then (marginally behind) 6.
Click to expand...

Good news and glad it wasn't just me! I could get the others closer but details were lost and noise increased. I think I need to get and scan some more now I have better settings.
 
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