new scanner, old photos...

[ianhl]

i am returning to film photography after many years. i have just picked up a bag of olympus kit on ebay including OM2, OM10 and various lenses. i am running films through them at the moment to make sure they are working ok...results will follow - if they are any good!

i have just sorted out an epson 4490 scanner and am trying to make it work at the moment. i have downloaded vuescan 85 and think it is rather good. not paid for it yet and would like some input as to whether there is something better/cheaper/free that you folk could recommend...

so far i have been trying it out with slides and i am not unhappy with the initial results. bear in mind that i dont yet understand scanners or photoshop here are some scans i did today. dollar signs not-withstanding, i wonder what you folk think...

i took these when i was 12 in the mid 1970's with a praktika(sp?) slr, as part of a series on fishing boats...

i am just wondering if i am working on the right lines with photoshop or if i am miles out with this...

 

[joxby]

They look ok for a dry run.
I had a 4490 and I used the EpsonScan software it came with, it was fairly good.
I've only used VueScan once, so I couldn't say personally if it was any good, but I've only ever heard good things about it.
A few colour balance issues, but these slides are 30-40 years old, they made have faded a bit (depends how they were stored), or they might be perfect and its the scanner missing the colour balance.
I'll just tell you how I scan, its nothing to live or die by, just how I found the best way for me and my gear, you might want to do it differently.
Pre-scan and make all colour & exposure adjustments using the scanner software, scan at max res and save as tiff.
In edit software, photoshop or whatever, clone dust/hairs/scratches, tweak colour/exposure, rotate/straighten/crop, sharpen, save as tiff, save as jpg fullsize, resize to 600 pix on the long side and save as jpg.

 

[ianhl]

thanks. i haven't tried the epson scan software as i cant get it to run on my laptop. spent several days in the registry trying to sort it but it seems that there is a conflict with my firewall/anti virus stuff...well, thats my feeling anyway. think i will splash out on vuescan as it seems to be easy to use.
all i did in photoshop was the rotate/straighten/crop type stuff. i just hit the auto smart fix button and it brightened things up a bit...i need to find an in depth 'how to get started with' for photoshop...

 

[joxby]

I've always found getting the colour and exposure correction as near as possible, in the scanner software, and then just tweaking in photoshop (if it needs it).
You don't need to be a photoshop genius to tweak, but somewhere along the line you'll have to figure out cloning out all the dust/hairs and wotnot.
Not sure how complicated that is, I don't do photoshop.

 

[ianhl]

i will investigate the colour correction in vuescan. just been playing with the cloning thingy...brilliant bit of kit!

what edit software do you use?

 

[joxby]

Nikon Capture 4, NX, Lightroom, and some ancient old Photo Impressions thing.
Photoshop is fine, I just don't need it, and if the Nikon software had a cloning tool, I wouldn't need anything else ,but I think it pulls the best product out of NEF's, so...:shrug:
actually, to be fair, I never use Lightroom, it gets on my nerves

 

[photon]

I often use the quick, simple and effective DCE (Digital Camera Essentials) plugins for white balance and exposure compensation, but for the one above I set the colour temp to 5000K as the white balance still gave too blue a cast for my taste. This was in Paint Shop Pro, with which I also used a contrast mask script, increased the saturation a touch and unsharpened.

There's one approach to scanning where you use ballpark settings with the aim of having the minimum number of scan processes both to save time and minimise any risk to your originals, and then do all the necessary processing to the digital file.

 

[ianhl]

thanks for that, i like the colour alot more now...always good to get different views/methods/ideas. need to find the buttons in photoshop to work on that side of things, seems that it will take time to play with all the various bits...fun though!

 

[photon]

Are you going to try and track these guys down? Even the youngest would be an old sea dog by now.

BTW, Vuescan is highly regarded and regularly updated.

Found at random, here's probably more than you want to know about altering colour in Photoshop: http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=101197

 

[ianhl]

Are you going to try and track these guys down? Even the youngest would be an old sea dog by now.
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the thought had crossed my mind...i reckon if i pitched up on the slip at sheringham and asked the guys with the boats i might get some joy. would be cool to re-take some of these with the current boats and crew...

just playing with some b&w negs...whole new game - lol...

 

[ianhl]

right, gone away and had a play. i have at last got the epson scan software to work! glad i persevered as i like it.

downloaded 'the gimp' and i am giving it my best shot

so heres the thing. i took this picture in 1981 on an olympus OM10 using agfa b&w slide film. i have scanned it, tidied it up a bit with gimp and would appreciate any comments (i think )

thanks for all the help so far...

 

[ianhl]

sorry...posted the wrong one!

here it is...