Plustek 120 and Vuescan

[Pete B]

At present I scan B+W as a linear negative using Vuescan, and convert in Photoshop using ColorPerfect and Silver Efex 2. The results are acceptable, but I wonder if there's a less drawn out method? I have two questons:
1) Vuescan gives the option of scanning all RGB channels (which presently I do) or either the red, green or blue channel. Is the blue channel the sharpest channel?
2) How do you scan B+W with Vuescan? Do you output as a Tiff or a DNG and process from there?
Pete

A typical result of my present method:
scan0014PP by Mr Chombee 67, on Flickr

 

[Bob Michaels]

Your scanner will scan the red channel, the green channel and the blue channel no matter what the settings are. This is the way scanners work and cannot be controlled. This unmanipulated data is sent to the CPU.

These three channels are very similar in a b&w negative. Not identical because of the electronic noise but very similar.

Your software such as Vuescan, which runs in the CPU not the scanner, will either output the three channels separately, as in the case of a color neg, or combine then in a grayscale file. Vuescan's default is to give emphasis to the green channel when combining these three channels to output as grayscale. I seem to remember you may be able to control how much emphasis is given to each of these three channels when combining them into one grayscale channel but I have found the default to be as good as it gets in the ten years I have been using Vuescan.

The key point is that these three color channels are so similar with a b&w negative that it makes no sense to try to work with each individually.

edit: I output from Vuescan as a grayscale TIF. This file is never adjusted and permanently saved. Upon loading the TIF into Photoshop, I immediately save as a PSD file. I always save my PSD files with the layers unflattened and unsharpened. That way I can always go back and adjust an adjustment is necessary. I flatten the layers, size, and sharpen each time I print. I also save a small (1024 pixel wide) JPG when I have the file loaded in Photoshop because that takes so little time and the files are so small. That way if I ever need a JPG for web use, it is already there.

 

[Pete B]

Thanks Bob. Why do you choose to save as a Tiff rather than a Tiff-DNG which is very pliable and a smaller file?
Pete

 

[Bob Michaels]

Pete: the truth is that I started saving scan files as .TIFs about 12 years ago and have never seen any reason to change.

The only thing I do with the .TIF file is open it in Photoshop where I make all my adjustments since I can immediately see the result on the screen, they are controllable and reversible. Actually the reason for a .TIF file is so I can always save the original scan without manipulation in case I ever want to start over without rescanning the neg.

I am careful not to use more complex solutions in the belief that they will improve the final output over what can be accomplished by a simpler solution.

 

[kanzlr]

I just output a B+W JPG and open that in Photoshop or Aperture and do a Levels and Curve correction, thats it.

 

[James1]

I found that on my OP120 (like my previous FS4000US), the Green channel was the sharpest (there was a clear difference to the other two using the method below).

My workflow for B&W is therefore to scan as a colour *image* using Vuescan with absolutely no other processing. Then I simply extract the Green channel in Photoline (I presume you can do the same in Photoshop) before inverting the resulting grayscale image using ColorPerfect.

I usally delete the original three-channel scan to save space.

 

[Bob Michaels]

...... My workflow for B&W is therefore to scan as a colour *image* using Vuescan with absolutely no other processing. Then I simply extract the Green channel in Photoline (I presume you can do the same in Photoshop) before inverting the resulting grayscale image using ColorPerfect. ......

I am curious why you do not just set Vuescan to make the b&w from only the green channel. That would eliminate one step and the use of Photoline plus ever dealing with the larger RGB file that you later delete.

And, that eliminates the step for the inversion as Vuescan does that automatically as well when outputting a greyscale file.

 

[James1]

I am curious why you do not just set Vuescan to make the b&w from only the green channel. That would eliminate one step and the use of Photoline plus ever dealing with the larger RGB file that you later delete.

And, that eliminates the step for the inversion as Vuescan does that automatically as well when outputting a greyscale file.

I do this simply because I want to use Vuescan to output a (RAW) file with as little processing as possible. Extracting the of the relevant channel only takes a few moments, so the extra time isn't an issue for me.

Photoline 18 is a full-featured image processing programme (Photoshop-like, though I am not going to compare the two as I am not an expert in either) which runs Phtoshop plug-ins for the, to me, astonishing price of EUR59. Take a look here to see what it does.