How sharp are your scans?

[jerry12953]

I'm using a Super Coolscan 5000, so mine should be good, but if I blow them up to 100% they look horrible.

I'm wondering if that's the reason my Alamy submission was rejected?

 

[pxl8]

A 100% crop might be useful as an example...

 

[Slapo]

Could you provide more information on the file and scan settings?

My scans aren't sharp at 100% either, but I have a relatively cheap scanner.

 

[Paul-H]

Hi

Do you have any sharpening added by the scanner, this can wreck your scans, are you scanning at full optical resolution and not using any interpolation. Are you making full bit Tiffs or 8 bit jpegs.

All will degrade your scans.

Paul

 

[Irritable_Rabbit]

Of course there are 1001 other reasons to have your images rejected and it may have nothing to do with the scan quality.

Is this your first attempt?

Oh, and my scans on the Coolscan V looked horrible at 100% as well. Anybody used to digital capture would have a baby looking at them! Pictures still looked nice printed though.

 

[jerry12953]

Of course there are 1001 other reasons to have your images rejected and it may have nothing to do with the scan quality.

Is this your first attempt?

Oh, and my scans on the Coolscan V looked horrible at 100% as well. Anybody used to digital capture would have a baby looking at them! Pictures still looked nice printed though.

Re Alamy,

It was my first attempt; it was a while ago now but I did wonder at the time if the QC technician who looked at them just wasn't used to looking at scanned images ... the grain is enormous for a start . But like you say the originals would look really nice printed - subject to normal size limitations. Would you expect to get the same kind of quality from the scan, I wonder, despite the grain and general awfulness?

 

[jerry12953]

Could you provide more information on the file and scan settings?

My scans aren't sharp at 100% either, but I have a relatively cheap scanner.

I'm scanning at 4000 dpi; Digital ICE set at normal; Multisample 1X; bit depth 16; and at the bottom of Tool Palette 1, "Autofocus when film inserted" is ticked.

I'm presuming that the latter over-rides the "Manual Focus Adjustment" just above. Would that be correct?

Unsharp masking is ticked as well.

I'm struggling to work out how to post a crop of the image into a post .....

 

[CT]

Re Alamy,

It was my first attempt; it was a while ago now but I did wonder at the time if the QC technician who looked at them just wasn't used to looking at scanned images ... the grain is enormous for a start . But like you say the originals would look really nice printed - subject to normal size limitations. Would you expect to get the same kind of quality from the scan, I wonder, despite the grain and general awfulness?

The problem with Alamy is they just look at the file at 100% size, and work on the assumption that customers may want anything from a postcard to a huge poster. They make no allowance for how it may look at a smaller print size, and just reject them out of hand if they're unsharp at 100% or show any dust bunnies or obvious signs of interpolation. In the case of negs you'd obviously have to deal with any dust or scratches prior to submission as Alamy do no editing at all on images.

Alamy are planning to start taking images with a limitation on useable file size I understand, but when it's likely to happen I don't know.

As others have said a section of a full size scan may help in looking at your problem, but it could be anything from scanner quality, to the flatness of the neg or the height it sits at when scanning, which isn't always optimal with manufacturers supplied neg carriers.

There are aftermarket neg carriers available which allow you to adjust the carrier height for optimal sharpness.