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Brain hurts: Plustek + VueScan


baci

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I'm hoping someone will read this and immediately (and with perfect clarity) know **exactly** what I'm doing wrong!

 

I'm an occasional B&W film shooter. I enjoy developing the film myself, and have hopeful expectations about the scanning process. I have the Plustek OptiFilm 8100 and I use VueScan to extract files. I'm OK with computer stuff. All good. And VueScan settings don't carry that much mystery for me. Buuuuut....

 

Let me describe what happens. I load a decently exposed film into the carrier. Hit the preview button. The preview scan happens but as the preview image is building line-by-line on my screen it's white - very little actual image content there. Odd. Then once the scanner has stopped making it's mechanical noises there's the circular 'busy' indicator on the screen then, (bang) a reasonable representation of my image. But with blown highlights. 

 

In a previous thread I was extolling the virtue of saving output from VueScan as a RAW file because the RAW file is exactly what the sensor sees. The image needs to be inverted but this I do with ease in PhotoShop. Problem is, the RAW files themselves are coming out almost black - which corresponds to the image, as it is being built in preview, being almost white.

 

So it seems the Plustek is seeing my well balanced negs as dark? Or have I set something up wrong in the software? Or has the Plustek blown a lightbulb? Or do I have a simple VueScan setting wrong?

 

Does this ring bells with anyone? I appreciate your interest.

 

 

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Try adjusting your brightness/contrast/curves/min and max settings in Vuescan. I've had it happen and went mad, but had accidentally clipped the max value.

Do you get the same results saving as a tiff or even jpeg?

Next step is to scan nothing, and look in the side flap. It should be really bright. If not you might have done a bulb, but I think they're LEDs so it might not be that simple to fix...

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Thanks Michael - good ideas. I scanned without the neg carrier in place and looked up at the light source. There's single LED bar that moves slowly. I assume its not meant to be a double bar so I'm counting that as working. When I save as a RAW tiff the negative image is very dark. The actual tiff with the VueScan adjustments is normal - albeit very, very flat. I am wondering whether, given the darkness of the raw file there's not enough latitude in the scanned image to get depth and life-likedness even in post. I did change around some of those settings and it does change the nature of the preview image after the scan has taken place. But as the scan is being written to the preview screen it's still many stops over exposed. I was expecting the preview image as it gets 'built' from the scanner would be much closer to the actual density of the neg. If this makes sense!

 

Thanks again for your reply.

 

Michael

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I've got no real idea as I can't see your settings, but the most common problem is that you are trying too hard.

 

What you want is a flat scan paying particular attention not to clip the highlights or shadows. The aim is to get as much tonal information from the negative that can then be processed in Lightroom or Photoshop to get the final image. Don't try for the final image in the actual scan. So first make sure your clipping points are set low even if it means your whites come out grey. I can't think why you don't simply scan for a positive image rather than a negative image, and I wouldn't save as a RAW file but as a TIFF. But Vuescan is very simple and effective software so I imagine if you are having such catastrophic problems you have a tick box somewhere that needs tweaking.

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On the color setting tab, try to set to generic color for film. Set the adjustment on top to manual, and make sure you have all adjustments set to lowest value, except til exposure off course.... that should be 1. Set output to tiff or jpg. Raw cam be nice but it mess up your head since your adjustment are not shiwn in output file. When preview is done, check for higlight that is blown, and adjust highlight and/or shadow limits on the exposure graph in the bottom som that they are just outside clipping. I have tried several solutions, but for 95% of the time this is my workflow. Choose a film type and Vuescan mess with your file. Could help you on bad exposures, but normally you can do better in post.Hope this helps!

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Under the Color tab, choose a generic B&W film and vendor, eg. Kodak Tmax, then set your B/W Type to, say D76-C1 = .55.

That should give you a wide ranging graph. Vary that setting, either up or down to maximize the span of the graph.

Scan at this setting. The result will be flat  and should only be corrected in software designed for PP. VueScan is brilliant at scanning, but that is all!

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I'm hoping someone will read this and immediately (and with perfect clarity) know **exactly** what I'm doing wrong!

 

I'm an occasional B&W film shooter. I enjoy developing the film myself, and have hopeful expectations about the scanning process. I have the Plustek OptiFilm 8100 and I use VueScan to extract files. I'm OK with computer stuff. All good. And VueScan settings don't carry that much mystery for me. Buuuuut....

 

Just to check, since the subject was not mentioned yet. Are you trying to use automatic dust detection and removal with B&W film?

 

Because you can not do that scanning silver B&W film. The dust detection sees every silver particle (grain) as a dust speck, and removes all or most of your image.

 

You must turn that OFF (via Vuescan controls) when scanning B&W film (except Ilford XP2, which has a dye image, like color film, not silver grains). And then remove any dust specks afterwards by retouching with Photoshop or whatever.

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Hi all - thanks so much for your input. It's great to have a community like this to be able to share problems with. I've tried everything (pretty much) discussed here and it's given me a finished image that is **OK** but not great. (Automatic dust removal not used because yes – it's B&W film, but a good thing to check!)

 

I know when adjusting M9 files that have not been appropriately exposed there's only so much latitude you can get out of the file. A well exposed file can be finessed, a poorly exposed file (one where there setting white and black points involves an excessive amount of moving sliders) always results in a poorer final image. 

 

A little while ago I was annoyed by the lack of detail I was getting in the blacks in my scanned film images. There seemed to be almost posterisation happening and I wondered if it was an artifact from the file conversion process. I started using straight RAW tiff file as an output and that improved the finished image noticeably. The RAW file is the scanned data straight from the scanner head and should reflect the quality of the negative without any kind of adjustment or normalisation. I noted that the RAW files tended to be dark (signifying an overexposed negative) even on well exposed frames but didn’t think that much more of it.

 

Coming back to scanning yesterday it became apparent that the scanner was reading the negative as much darker (or overexposed) than it actually was. Sure, I could bring out some of the missing detail by adjusting the parameters on the “Colour” tab in VueScan but I was concerned that the base image file was so extreme as to be giving me bad results. The RAW image files are very, very dark with just about everything appearing blown out when viewed as positives. I can recover detail, but that detail was in the neg to start with so why isn’t it in the output of the scanner.

 

I realised this morning that the document scanner in my desk can also scan negatives so I popped in the carrier and did a cheap and cheerful scan and the results are great – the appear to represent pretty accurately what’s on the negative. So that’s telling me somewhere or somehow there’s an issue with the Plustrek scanner. Someone said words to the effect of don’t overthink it – it should just work. And it isn’t. So I’m going to go off to the Plustek folk to see about a service/checkup.

 

I’ll give you an update when I have news. Thanks all for your contributions. Really appreciated. And if anyone knows anyone associated with Plustek in AUS please let me know! I'm pretty sure it's out of warranty by now.

 

Cheers

 

 

Michael

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I have the very same Plustek 8100, and agree, it could be better but man oh man it's perfect for what it is.

Vuescan and Silverfast are what I use, I don't have a preference, and use either as the whim takes me. I am not overly smart with settings though, but am happy with my scans thus far.

I see from opening my Vuescan there is "Default Options" in many/most of the tabs used to work your settings. I'd be selecting the default settings to start with given your lack of fun up until now.

Like Steve says, maybe you're trying too hard?

Gary

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A little while ago I was annoyed by the lack of detail I was getting in the blacks in my scanned film images. There seemed to be almost posterisation happening and I wondered if it was an artifact from the file conversion process. I started using straight RAW tiff file as an output and that improved the finished image noticeably. The RAW file is the scanned data straight from the scanner head and should reflect the quality of the negative without any kind of adjustment or normalisation. I noted that the RAW files tended to be dark (signifying an overexposed negative) even on well exposed frames but didn’t think that much more of it.

 

 

 

The posterisation you see is clipping, hence the advice to set the clipping points at there lowest setting. But you continue to want to scan as a RAW file without trying to do something 'normal' to check the output in different circumstances and rule out your weird workflow. And now the scanner must be broken..................should have seen that coming :rolleyes:

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Crikey! Sorry if I've offended you. Both clipping points were set at the extremes. The histogram sat within upper and lower points.  I figured I'd take the data straight from the sensor and post process in Lightroom which would have better quality algorithms. Checked out the RAW file.  It looked considerably different to the negs. I assume there's something wrong with the hardware. Because that's what's giving me the RAW file. Again, awfully sorry about my "weird workflow". I'm obviously not as advanced as you but I'm seeking to learn. 

All the best

Michael

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Don't worry Michael, most of us are here to help.

 

I should say I don't know this scanner but I do know Vuescan fairly well. Andy Piper asked you above about whether you have ICE turned off - just be sure to check that.

 

I occasionally have bizarre effects whereby a preview or a scan even would look very odd. The preview might not draw, or draw badly with full of colourful pixels everywhere, or the scan itself will be very dark. In such situations I've reinstalled Vuescan or updated if that is possible and that has solved the problem. I'm not sure if this applies to you but I thought I should mention it.

 

I do agree one should go for the flattest possible scan because that retains the most information in the file which helps post-processing. 

 

To help further it would be useful to see a scan or two and if you could post screenshots of your settings.

 

Br

Philip

 

 

 

Crikey! Sorry if I've offended you. Both clipping points were set at the extremes. The histogram sat within upper and lower points.  I figured I'd take the data straight from the sensor and post process in Lightroom which would have better quality algorithms. Checked out the RAW file.  It looked considerably different to the negs. I assume there's something wrong with the hardware. Because that's what's giving me the RAW file. Again, awfully sorry about my "weird workflow". I'm obviously not as advanced as you but I'm seeking to learn. 

All the best

Michael

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Hi Philip - thanks for your suggestions. Yes there's no ICE. Most of my photography is B&W and I knew it was not compatible so I bought the base model scanner without the ICE function. Thanks for the idea about updating Vuescan - the updates are frequent(!) and I am up to date. 

 

Good idea about the sample image - I've attached a JPEG of the positive that comes directly from the RAW file. The neg is absolutely properly exposed. Now, when I process this file I get contrast and detail and it's not an unpleasant result, but I figured the starting point should be more representative of the original negative - hence my original post.

 

Anyway, I reached out to Plustek's tech support people and to their credit they got back to me within a day or two identifying it as a hardware problem and giving me the contact details for the local agent. I just sent them an email so we'll see what happens from here.

 

Again, thanks for your thoughts.

 

Cheers

 

Michael

 

 

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Hi Michael

 

Apologies for the delay in writing back. A pain if it's a hardware problem but I am happy Plustek are helping you. I've heard they have good customer care.

 

That image looks really overexposed but I know that scans sometimes come out that way, and seemingly for no apparent reason. For certain images, in my experience at least, Vuescan will produce really odd-looking scans but when one begins to process them, they suddenly appear normal.

 

I opened the file you posted in Adobe Camera Raw and pressed Auto which showed that there is quite a bit of information in the file. With a bit of further pulling in the various sliders (esp exposure down by 1,2 stops and shadows and blacks down quite a bit), I also got it to look good (it's a good shot, btw).

 

So I am wondering if it might not be, simply, a properly flat scan, just as it should be to retain the most amount of image data, that is just rendered a bit 'light' or 'bright'. But it's probably good also to check the hardware side of things, to be sure.

 

I only scan RAW when I scan colour negs (to get linear scans for use with ColorPerfct); slides and B&W go directly to TIFF. I don't believe there is much, if any, info lost in scanning as TIFF. At least I haven't noticed any difficulties in post-processing such scans. So you could try if TIFF would make a difference on this frame.

 

br

Philip 

 

 

Hi Philip - thanks for your suggestions. Yes there's no ICE. Most of my photography is B&W and I knew it was not compatible so I bought the base model scanner without the ICE function. Thanks for the idea about updating Vuescan - the updates are frequent(!) and I am up to date. 

 

Good idea about the sample image - I've attached a JPEG of the positive that comes directly from the RAW file. The neg is absolutely properly exposed. Now, when I process this file I get contrast and detail and it's not an unpleasant result, but I figured the starting point should be more representative of the original negative - hence my original post.

 

Anyway, I reached out to Plustek's tech support people and to their credit they got back to me within a day or two identifying it as a hardware problem and giving me the contact details for the local agent. I just sent them an email so we'll see what happens from here.

 

Again, thanks for your thoughts.

 

Cheers

 

Michael

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Thanks Philip - it's interesting (and I agree) that there is information there. I had considered a flat scan would be low contrast rather than over exposed? Not sure! This started with these blocked blacks that I talked about a couple of posts back, there was just no detail there. Even though I was saving as tiff I wondered whether compression/conversion artefacts might be what I was seeing. Which is why I thought I'd see just what was coming off the scan head. My logic might have been a little screwy but by going the RAW route the blacks were better, but that's when I noticed how out of character the scan was with the actual neg it was based on. While a lot of information is certainly still in the file I wonder how much latitude I miss through having such an off-balance starting point. And it's every neg scanned, too. 

 

I did some scanning yesterday and coincidentally did as you suggested - just went straight to tiff using one of the generic profiles and ended up with some quite OK results. Anyway, we'll see what the Plustek folk say.

 

Thanks again for your continued interest (and for the kind words about the shot!)

 

Cheers

 

Michael

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