- Messages
- 4,347
- Name
- You can call me Sir.
- Edit My Images
- Yes
I never really get the best out of my scan. Perhaps the negatives aren't very good to start with but there's a part of the scanning software I don't really understand.
In the image below you'll see the familiar levels histogram but below that there's an input/ouput slider. When you do a preview scan it automatically applies the auto-levels to the image but I always go back and manually change them as I find it tends to clip the blacks and the whites.
The first thing I don't get is the output slider. My understanding is that levels slider goes from 0-255 representing the 256 shades from black to white. So why does it automatically change the black point to 18 which I assume means that the other 18 shades from black to grey below it are automatically rendered complete black and the white point goes to 209 which means that all tones from210 to 255 are rendered to complete white.
the other thing I don't get is the input slider. In a normal levels slider, if you move the white slider towards the centre of the histogram then everything to the right of it becomes white. Not so with this thing so what is it about this software that I'm not getting?
I'm sure if I got the scanning stage right then I'd find PP a bit easier but as it stands, once the images are in lightroom it's like trying to polish a turd into a diamond.
In the image below you'll see the familiar levels histogram but below that there's an input/ouput slider. When you do a preview scan it automatically applies the auto-levels to the image but I always go back and manually change them as I find it tends to clip the blacks and the whites.
The first thing I don't get is the output slider. My understanding is that levels slider goes from 0-255 representing the 256 shades from black to white. So why does it automatically change the black point to 18 which I assume means that the other 18 shades from black to grey below it are automatically rendered complete black and the white point goes to 209 which means that all tones from210 to 255 are rendered to complete white.
the other thing I don't get is the input slider. In a normal levels slider, if you move the white slider towards the centre of the histogram then everything to the right of it becomes white. Not so with this thing so what is it about this software that I'm not getting?
I'm sure if I got the scanning stage right then I'd find PP a bit easier but as it stands, once the images are in lightroom it's like trying to polish a turd into a diamond.