I downloaded your images to look at in Photoshop. There are a couple of possible reasons for what you are seeing, but they aren't grain, per say.
The main problem seems to be in the green channel and to a lesser extent the blue. It may be that the green channel of this scanner has poorer dynamic range and is unable to deal with the darker areas. The blue channel is also a bit like this. It could also be the way you have adjusted the gamma and black and white points relative to the sensitivity curves of the CCD. You might be able to fix it by trying to scan using different white and black point positions, and then brightening or darkening with levels in Photoshop. Make sure you are scanning in the highest bit depth to begin with, as this can give you a little more latitude is adjusting the image post scan. Lastly, you can sometimes repair or minimize this problem by adjusting individual curves by channel. If you can make a mask that isolates this density step, you might be able to improve it by lightening it slightly, but more than likely you are hitting the limitation of the scanner to capture these darker ranges of colors, especially in the green channel. Art Johnny Zasada wrote: > Hello, > > I own an Umax Astra 4000U flatbed 1200dpi scanner w/tranny lid. The overall > quality of the scans from slide film is not so bad. Unfortunately some areas > of most scans appear to be kind of grainy. These are not really deep > shadows, so I'm not really sure it's noise, though it probably is. Any > variations in the settings of the Umax MagicScan software have not helped > with this behaviour. > > The inkjet printer, an Epson 1200, exaggerates this graininess, it looks a > bit strange having such obviously digital looking areas in an otherwise very > photographic looking print. This graininess or noise particularly likes to > show up in shadow areas of skintones and hair, which is frustrating for me > since I mainly photograph people and portraits, and this really degrades my > digital output. > > I have made up a page with two scans and magnified areas to illustrate the > problem at http://www.geocities.com/johnny_zasada. > > I'd be glad to hear from you if this really is noise or am I doing something > wrong. Are there any tricks to get rid of this? > > Would the Epson 2450 be an improvement, or does it have the same problems? > Most reviews I've read were from landscape photographers. > > Thanks in advance > > Johnny > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
