Vuescan users, where do you set the color balance when scanning B&W?

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Scanning B&W with Vuescan, my photographs on HP5 and Tri-X have been disappointingly washed out looking. I've had the color balance set on 'auto'. Changing it to 'none' seems to give much more acceptable results. I'd be interested to know what others' experiences and preferences were.
 
Set it to 'neutral', that way only the black and white points are set, and if you go to the 'image' menu and then click on 'graph B/W' a histogram will come up which allows you to set the black and white points using the two markers on it. Turn 'pixel colours' (under the 'colour' tab) on so that you can see if anything is clipping when you adjust the points, try to set them so that nothing is clipping as that way you'll have the most information available from the scan. You'll probably also want to add in some contrast as well (its better to this afterwards in Photoshop though in my experience).

However I usually just tend to set it to 'none', and then just do all of the above in Photoshop etc by setting the levels and then adding in some contrast as it gives me much more control over the final result.
 
Set it to 'neutral', that way only the black and white points are set, and if you go to the 'image' menu and then click on 'graph B/W' a histogram will come up which allows you to set the black and white points using the two markers on it. Turn 'pixel colours' (under the 'colour' tab) on so that you can see if anything is clipping when you adjust the points, try to set them so that nothing is clipping as that way you'll have the most information available from the scan. You'll probably also want to add in some contrast as well (its better to this afterwards in Photoshop though in my experience).

However I usually just tend to set it to 'none', and then just do all of the above in Photoshop etc by setting the levels and then adding in some contrast as it gives me much more control over the final result.

Thank you for this suggestion. I think that 'neutral' does offer an improvement over 'none' as a setting. The difference is small but noticeable. In any case, setting the balance to 'auto' is definitely out of favour with me from now on.
 
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