LAURIE SOLOMON asked if my digital prints apparently look better "because of their scanning in 8-bit versus 16-bit and not because of some other factor...?" In addition to the hi bit factor, I make serious efforts in color balance, defect removal, perspective correction, and anything else i can figure out how to do.
HI bit technique has some good tutorials. Check the writings of Jeff Schewe, here is his basic tutorial: schewephoto.com/workshop/pdfs/Pro_Workflow.pdf I found a lot of great tips on the digital black & white list on Yahoo, in particular Roy Harrington's posts. These are the guys who are winning fine-art photography print contests with digital prints. "but what are you printing or outputing to?" I am making a master scan on CD. It needs to be able to print on an epson or get sent to a publisher as a tif cd. I know that the next generation of Epsons will be 16 bit, the next version of photoshop will be 16 bit, so I don't want to have to re-do everything every few years. Publishers will do final adjustments to my files, depending on whether they are printing color, halftone, duotone, etc., I have no control. Art directors appreciate a file they can work with. I am doing both black & white and color. Arthur Entlich asked what kind of scanner i use. I have Polaroid SS4000 for slides. I have my own half-glass carriers to keep the film entirely in focus. I always remove the film from the slide mount for scanning. Kodachromes made before 1955 had a varnish on the film that needs to be removed before scanning. My large format negative scanner is a Artixscan 1800. I bought it because it was reputed to have the greatest scan depth of any 8x10 flatbed. Some of the stuff i have to scan is unbelievable poor quality compared to modern professional film. I scan glass plates that are so dense you can't see through them. I scan Autochrome color plates from the early 1900s to 1950s Ektachromes with only the red layer surviving. I do have some programs that fix up old faded color photos. i use them to preview my possibilities for color restorations. After I see these results i have a good idea of what i want to do. Then I do all the restorations manually using curves. Dan Margulis book Professional Photoshop has some of the best color correction info available that i know of. If you get PPI magazine, check the dec 2002 issue for a preview of the book. Tom Robinson ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
