need some guidance on scanner settings please

reddwarf4ever

reddwarf4ever

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Steve jones
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I have a canoscan 9000f scanner, which has an adapter for slide scanning.
I have vuescan software plus silverlight SE which is quite old now I believe as it came with the scanner.


I have read through the vuescan bible and guides and many many articles on scanning and all seem to have different have different opinions.

I have several hundred black and white photos and a box of colour slides to scan and archive at the highest quality.

Some say use RGB others say grayscale....very confusing.

I would have thought 16B grey scale would capture all the info in my collection of 3" x5" b&w photos ( some are a little larger, not sure if should keep the same setting throughout ) but if 48 or 64 bit RGB is considered better I am happy to take the extra time and larger file size if applicable.

the resolution I believe to be best is 1200, although again some say maximum and some lower.....it's generally accepted that tiff is the best file format, where compression is often considered unnecessary, and could cause complications later.

After reading so much about scanning settings I have ended up confused.

If you could kindly comment on the above it would greatly help.

I want to get it right first time and not find out tha different settings would be better when half way through.

I also have a box of colour slides, my scanner has a device for holding these, but I am advised the settings ( apart from obviously transparency ) are completely different
 
I have found from my experience of doing the same that you will get better results from grayscale not RGB. Under no circumstances use black and white.

16 bit should be fine.

As far as resolution is concerned it really depends on what you are planning to do with the end scan. If you are going to print them then 300dpi would do fine but I always prefer to go a little higher and usually choose 600dpi. I personally cannot see any real advantage in 1200 dpi.

Colour is in my view more simple. RGB 16 bit files at 600 dpi is my default. Any changes you want to make to contrast, brightness etc etc can be made in photoshop or Lightroom or an other graphics programme.

Personally I always select TIFF but jpeg should be fine.
 
moved to the Film and Conventional section - where I'm sure lots of Vuescan Users hang out and will be happy to help ;)
 
I don't know your scanner, so I can't comment on its capabilities. But in general:

Yes, tiff is better because there is no lossy compression.

Greyscale would be fine for black and white.

The maximum detail recorded in a contact print (same size as the negative) is 30 lppm (or 30 lpm - I can't recall, so I'll go with the bigger one) and that comes out at around 750 dpi. If you scan at 300, you'll be able to go as big as the original; if more (and all things being equal, which they rarely are) you could make a bigger print than the original.

On colour slides - you may want to make a couple of output tiffs with different settings to merge later to recover shadow/highlight detail.

I'd recommend that you set VueScan to keep the raw file as you can play with that ad infinitum without turning the scanner on, trying different settings until you find the best.
 
Hi
thanks for the comments.
my scanner canoscan 9000f says it supports 32 bit greyscale but vuescan only seems to offer 16bit.

I wish to archive the photos, so need the highest quality possible as do not know what will be done with the scans, as the compete set will be sent to various family members. I thought 1200 res would be best, file sizes not too big from this, but some photos are slightly bigger so not sure if to keep same settings for all photos.

also have a large collection of colour slides, obviously these would need to be blown clear of any dust, before scanning. would like to know if these should be scanned at 64 bit as vuescan adds an infrared scan for dust scratches etc, or should I stay with 48 bit ? also should I keep 1200 rs or go higher.

I have read so much about scan settings, but still need some definitive guidance from someone who knows !!.,

thanks
 
Lossy compression such as JPG is bad if you do it early in your workflow, yes, so scan to TIFF (which will probably compress it, but losslessly)

DPI is a trade-off between image size and scanning time on one hand, and detail captured on the other. If you only want to store/display the images as web-sized shots, 1200 DPI is more than adequate. If you want to print them later, then I'd go higher (I scan at 2400). There's probably little point scanning at 9600 though - it seems the common agreement is that consumer flatbeds that quote higher max DPI aren't really doing much more than inflating the image size for no gain.
 
There is a possible gain though - you can get VueScan to downsample the scan and thereby reduce the effect of noise.
 
reddwarf4ever said:
my scanner canoscan 9000f says it supports 32 bit greyscale but vuescan only seems to offer 16bit.
Click to expand...

16bit will offer 65,535 gradations between black and white. 32bit will offer 4294967296. My instinct says that you won't be able to tell the difference. I'm also pretty sure that if you then save the TIFF to JPG for electronic sharing, it'll be downsampled to 8-bit grayscale anyway. So, 16 bit should be fine, I think, unless you have access to a very specialist printer.
 
first distinction is this...

if you're scanning PHOTO'S from paper prints, then a 300 resolution scan will give you a 1:1 size when printed (without any losses or artifacts) - typically, most prints from BITD were actually contact prints so if you're looking to print them at anything up to 10x8, then you'll need to scale up the scanning resolution appropriately - for 10x8" prints, think 3000x2400 dots - so to get that from a 120 square format print, you'd really be looking at 1200-1500 dpi scans. Of course, if you've already got 10x8" prints, then you can scan them as 300 and get a life-size reproduction, or without pushing too hard, at 600 get 20x16's for the wall...

For scans of Negatives or Slides, then i'd say that 1200dpi is a MINIMUM (unless you're actually in possession of 5x4" camera negatives of course) and I'd strongly advise 2400dpi, especially on 35mm stock.
 
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Having said all of this - try scanning the same neg at various settings. If you're intending to share electronically, see if you can see a difference in the JPGs. If you're intending to print, print them and see if you can tell a difference. If you're planning to archive them and don't care how big the file is, just scan at the highest settings (but those files will be BIG)

Edit: Oh, b****r, I now see it's a "box of B&W photos" and "A box of colour slides", I assumed B&W negs. If they're prints, then ignore the bits above about DPI, because the prints simply don't have that much detail in them AFAIK.
 
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TheBigYin said:
first distinction is this...

if you're scanning PHOTO'S from paper prints, then a 300 resolution scan will give you a 1:1 size when printed (without any losses or artifacts) - typically, most prints from BITD were actually contact prints so if you're looking to print them at anything up to 10x8, then you'll need to scale up the scanning resolution appropriately - for 10x8" prints, think 3000x2400 dots - so to get that from a 120 square format print, you'd really be looking at 1200-1500 dpi scans. Of course, if you've already got 10x8" prints, then you can scan them as 300 and get a life-size reproduction, or without pushing too hard, at 600 get 20x16's for the wall...

For scans of Negatives or Slides, then i'd say that 1200dpi is a MINIMUM (unless you're actually in possession of 5x4" camera negatives of course) and I'd strongly advise 2400dpi, especially on 35mm stock.
Click to expand...

So a high setting dpi for colour slides, but should bit depth be set to 48 bit.....apparently vuescan has a 64 bit option, the other 16bits are infrared for scratches dust, but am told that most photo editing apps ignore this info..

I also assume I should blow the photos and slides to remove any dust, going to look for a hand puffer...is that usual ?
 
I think Keith is right, there's not a lot to be gained from scanning old prints so as to print them much larger. So since printers run a 300 dpi, you should scan the prints at 600 or maybe 1200 ppi if you really feel adventurous. I've only done a bit of scanning of prints; when I started scanning, there was a collection of about 100 prints that I had sent my parents from Oz, which I scanned. Later, I scanned the negatives instead, and the results were very much preferable, IMHO.

Scan b/w prints at 16-bit greyscale, it's fine. Stephen is probably right about saving Vuescan Raw, although I've never done it. Personally, I just save as good quality JPEGs (shock, horror). The last process and scans I had done by FilmDev, they sent 8-bit TIFFs as well. I cannot see a difference, so I only loaded a few of the TIFFs into Aperture. Your 3*5" prints scanned at 1200 ppi and saved in 16-bit greyscale, I make that around 43 MByte uncompressed, or probably 6 MByte or so JPEG. Only you can work out whether the extra storage is worth it. (My guess is that's a relatively easy answer with a smallish, finite collection; for me it's a different answer with several films a month...)

The slides... depends on whether they are Kodachrome. Since they were always scanned by Kodak or a franchised lab, the mounts will generally tell you if they are. If there is nothing on the mount, assume they are not Kodachrome. It matters for two reasons: Kodachrome can be much harder to scan, liable to show colour casts, and you can't use infra-red dust removal features on Kodachromes, as they are based strongly on silver. (In fact, you CAN use infra-red dust removal on Kodachrome in some cases, if you use SilverFast and use a mask to apply the dust removal only to sky areas... but it's a PITA.... BTW SilverFast also has a special Kodachrome scan mode that does seem to work.)

Always blow your slides with a rocket blower; I usually have a good look at them after that, and occasionally use a lens brush to try to get crud off. Sometimes, if rarely, I've resorted to Iso Propyl Alcohol, but only as a second scan (some of my fathers early DufayColor 6*9 slides had what appeared to be glue on them!).!

There's a thread here about calibrating your scanner. I'll try to link it in an edit. Worth a try if you're unhappy with the colours you're getting. There's also a Vuescan thread.

I scan relatively junk images that I'm keeping just for the record at 1200 ppi (about 2 mp). Reasonable looking ones I scan at 2400 ppi ( nearly 9 mp). Ones I really fancy I scan at 3600 ppi. I generally use multiscan (2 or 4 passes), and have also tried scanning at twice the resolution and downsampling; couldn't see any difference between downsampling and two pass scans. I also often use multi-exposure if there's a huge dynamic range; Vuescan does another pass at a higher exposure to try to get a bit more out the shadow areas. Depends if your scanner supports it, and whether Vuescan is feeling nice today!

EDIT: Don't use Vuescan's sharpening, do it yourself in PP later. It will likely need a bit of sharpening. /EDIT

Again, saving 48-bit Raws is probably a good thing. You'd save the 64-bit Raws if you thought you were going to try some different dust removal back in Vuescan. I just use reasonable quality JPEGs.

When I was using SilverFast, I tried saving 16-bit JPEG 2000 files. Aperture doesn't support them, so that was a waste of time!

Oh, BTW, if you're on a reasonably current Mac (Yosemite or later) and your SilverFast is version 6 or earlier, then forget it, as it no longer works. You'd need SilverFast 8, which at least has the advantage of being a more conventional interface. The upgrade would cost a loadamoney; spend less on Vuescan Pro, whcih will get you more features and upgrades forever, as far as I can see.

But, keep at it. I found it a lot of fun, and very revealing about things in the past I'd quite forgotten about. And I had a few adventures using folk on the web to help me identify mystery locations as well. Good luck, and if you can share some results with us, please do.
 
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but if they are wet prints won' the effective resolution be much higher than the 300dpi of an ink jet?
/Cat amongst pigeons
 
See also http://www.scantips.com/basics08.html for some good background...

EDIT: Steve, he addresses that point, suggests that perhaps b/w prints might but colour prints probably don't yield much better resolution than 300 dpi...
 
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RA-4 paper resolves 65 lpm = about 1625 dpi.

8 bits limits us to 256 different tonal values. Our eyes (depending on the lighting) can distinguish 250-350 tonal values. Any editing of levels or curves type reduces the number of tones in the digital file.
 
Hi
want to proceed with my scanning soon ands imperative that I get the settings correct at the start, finding out the settings could have been better part way through will be devastating.
to summarise for archiving pictures at the highest quality for future indeterminate use.

From what I am advised.

black and white photos 3"x5" 16 bit greyscale 1200-2400 dpi tiff files uncompressed, preferably no processing within vuescan, to be done afterwards in specialist photo editing software e.g. Photoshop
35mm slides 48 bit 4800 dpi again with unimpressed tiff

just found a review on photo.net which didn't have much nice to say about transparency scanning on the canoscan 9000f
 
Fine so far as it goes, but there are lots of other settings that you can get wrong - black and white points, film type (VueScan has lots of presets built in, and there's no guarantee (in my experience) that specifying the film that you're actually scanning will give the best result) to name but three. Which is why I always recommend saving the raw file, because when you do find after the first half dozen films that you could do better, you can just reprocess the raw files without rescanning.
 
Since the scanner quoted is presumably a flatbed, I've a couple of thoughts. And is your version of Silverfast of a vintage that's actually up and running on your operating system? Presumably there's also a native Canon scan software?

For scanning such smallish prints, I'd say that results are limited by the resolution of the prints rather than that of the scanner. Thus 300ppi probably enough, and 600ppi max. You're not going to be able to enlarge them much without image degradation anyway. You would of course physically dust prints pre-scan, but some dust artefacts will be embedded in them and need retouching out.

In these circumstances, bit-depth is hardly crucial. For best results, whatever the scanning software, choose a mode that gives greatest control (eg 'expert', or 'advanced', with curves / levels adjustments) - this should allow you maximum control of the tonal range as it comes from the scanner so that any post-scan adjustments (in Photoshop etc) are minimised along with any resultant image file degradation.

35mm slides? Well a flatbed isn't the choice, really. Whatever the maker's blurb says, the potential in the originals will most likely outpace the scanner's capabilities.

To sum up, the maximum quality of your resulting image files will be limited by the print sizes in the first instance (which you can't do anything about), and by the scanner limitations in the second instance (which may be overcome by jobbing that side of the project out).
 
Just a brief additional note:

For your colour slides, if you're using SilverFast, then use their 'multiple exposure' scan (I can't remember the precise name of it) - it takes longer but you then get the full dynamic range of the original, especially any shadow detail you may wish to bring out later.
 
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Hi
thanks for all the advice....

it's been mentioned to adjust scan settings to reduce the need to post scan adjustments.

I had always thought its best to scan with as little optimisation in the scanner and leave this to post scan software, although I could be wrong.

Also RAW scanned images would need to be processed with software other than the scanner software is this correct ?

I want to produce a set of scanned images for several family members, if I present them with RAW images they won't know what to do with them, ai don't have the time to prices hundreds of RAW scans.....so the two optuons are to scan ' normally' or scan ' RAW' and only process the individual pictures that are important to the family for keeping or printing. unless of course I dust them down and scan at 600dpi 16 bit greyscale, so they are all reasonable and again post process the ones that are important to the family....

thanks
 
If using VueScan, you use VueScan to process the raw files. Conceptually (at least) VusScan drives the scanner and gets the information from it (the raw file) and then applies your parameters to give the final result. Just as a digital camera would get the information from the sensor, and then use your settings to produce a jpg. What VueScan allows you to do is to save the raw file, and then use that as the input to its settings rather than data directly from the scanner. As if a digital camera let you change the jpg settings and then reprocess its raw file to give a different jpg. You set the source of input in VueScan to the raw file, not the scanner for later corrections.

If you're using a camera, you'll probably use the raw file and process it as you would a negative in making a print. With a scanner and VueScan, you're getting the time consuming step out of the way, and then playing with VueScan's settings to get the best scan. You'd never pass the raw files on.

That said, you can get a .dng file out of it if you want, and use that as if it came from a camera. But the main point is that you can make very rapid adjustments to the settings to get the best possible scan. My first scans were terrible, and with the computer I had at the time, each bad scan (and some were beyond the possibility of Photoshop fixing them) meant a four hour wait (the scan time) to see if the change I'd made to the settings was an improvement. Naturally, I'd stop when I thought I could get away with it, not when I'd done the best I could. I recommend saving raw files because it makes it easy to try again.
 
Thanks, that's makes it a lot clearer, the problem is I need to show family members the images to see which ones they want enhanced, without putting all the pictures through to be scanned twice.

wouldn't the raw files be OK to show who is in the picture and if it is wanted for keeping or printing, then I could just process these raw pictures only, keeping the others safe to process at my leisure.....

just never used raw files before, just assumed they could still be viewed normally......if not, I will just have to process them all, as slow as that would be...

thanks
one last thought is it better, easier to process the raw files within vuescan than with say photoshop.....
 
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StephenM said:
IAs if a digital camera let you change the jpg settings and then reprocess its raw file to give a different jpg.
Click to expand...

Fuji X cams do just this, AFAIK.

reddwarf4ever said:
Thanks, that's makes it a lot clearer, the problem is I need to show family members the images to see which ones they want enhanced, without putting all the pictures through to be scanned twice.

wouldn't the raw files be OK to show who is in the picture and if it is wanted for keeping or printing, then I could just process these raw pictures only, keeping the others safe to process at my leisure.....
Click to expand...

I think the point is you don't need to scan them twice. Workflow would be (and Stephen will probably correct me):

a) Scan image with Vuescan, save raw, repeat until batch scanned.

b) Read raw into Vuescan, make obvious adjustments (which may be none), save JPEG, repeat until batch prelim adjustments done

c) show JPEGs to family, choose those they are interested in

d) Read those raws into Vuescan, spend some time with adjustments until you get a good scan, save JPEGs (or TIFFs?), repeat until selected batch done

e) finish post-processing in favourite editor, eg for dust-spotting, scratch removal, etc.

You only scan them once, so you only handle your film or prints once (unless of course you decide you need to do some better dust removal on the source material).

Does that make sense?
 
I should add that if you do ever decide to re-scan and then compare the old and the new, it's a PITA. The two scans are never quite the same crop or the same angle, and you can never remember quite what settings the scanner used in either one (*). Stephen's approach gets over that problem.

* One issue with Vuescan, which is helpful most of the time, is that it "remembers" settings from scan to scan and across sessions (although settings for black and white, C41 and transparency are "remembered" separately). Since the settings are spread across multiple tabs, it's easy to scan a lot of frames with slightly inappropriate settings. Stephen's approach gets round that, too.
 
That's about it. ANY output from VueScan should show what's on the negative (or slide), even if it's so far off optimum as to be uncorrectable. VueScan can output raw, jpg and tiff all at the same time. You can show the jpgs round, and then go back and get the best scan. Typically, I find that it's the tonal range that varies most, and some of my early scans are simply beyond my skill to fix in Photoshop. Conventional wisdom has it that if you get it right in the scanner, you get a fully populated histogram; expanding the tonal range in Photoshop leaves gaps that come degrade the final image quality.

I don't want to make it appear difficult to get the "best" settings for a scan, but in my experience different negatives from the same film stock developed in the same developer can need to have different settings applied - even for the film type!

I work differently because as a large format film user, I have fewer negatives to scan in a year than a 35mm photographer would get from a single cassette. OK, I have come back from two weeks in the Scottish Highlands with almost 20 negatives, but even so...
 
ChrisR said:
I should add that if you do ever decide to re-scan and then compare the old and the new, it's a PITA. The two scans are never quite the same crop or the same angle, and you can never remember quite what settings the scanner used in either one (*). Stephen's approach gets over that problem.
Click to expand...

If it matters - or you want to make notes - I find that the easiest way (as a Windows user) is to use the snipping tool to capture an image of the VueScan settings for later reference. Not relevant here, but I've done to same to capture curves adjustments in Photoshop as well.
 
I save the settings for different film types and formats within Vuescan. The next time I use a particular type of film I load the saved file, saves much faffing about. Also save raw an jpg files at the same time and use the jpg for quick prints to select any frames to do more work on, like a contact sheet.
 
thanks everyone, some things to think about, didn't realise vuescan could save a raw and jpg at the same time, this will be handy.

was considering scanning raw only, then batch processing in Photoshop with generic settings to get a set of ' proofs' as it were to show family, but scanning both at he same time will be easier I am sure.

Didn't quite realise what a project I was taking on.

but hopefully now I am much better prepared, the snapshot of the screen to capture settings is a good ideas, may use the free monosnap for this.

thanks again
 
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