Optimum resolution for crappish negs

srichards

srichards

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Suz
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I've got a load of old films to scan in. Most of which have been taken by an old p & s. I've scanned some of the slr ones at 5400 dpi (max optical resolution of scanner) and they tend to look very grainy and it accentuates all the bits of hair and dust that jump onto them

Is there a better resolution for poor negs that will minimise the faffing around but offer reasonable archival quality?

I'm using vuescan. What are the best settings for getting the easiest to use neg? My scanner has built in ICE but I have no idea whether vuescan uses this or not.

Alternatively does someone make a batch process de-crappyfier that will process fresh scans and make them look the best they can without me having to spend ages with the clone and heal tools?

I'm actually quite impressed with iphoto's mending brush. I wonder if aperture might be something to process them all with?
 
I dont tend to scan at much more than 2400 Dpi, keeps file sizes more reasonable, scan times quicker and a decent enough resolution :) Vuescan can use ICE i believe, but only use it on colour negatives or slides, it causes softness with black and white negatives :)
Settings wise, it depends on each scanner
 
All the crappish ones are colour. Mostly truprint film so it'll be a challenge to get anything good :)

I wish vuescan had a save to png option. Might have to do them as TIFFs then batch process them into pngs. I don't want to save as jpgs as I they're going to need meddling with and TIFFs take up far too much space.
 
I believe you can compress the TIFF's in vuescan, if you go over to the output tab it should be there
 
You've got the scanner and the negatives in front of you. Try and see! That's surely the best way? And it'll be the best way to work out the best balance between time/speed/file size.
 
I'd say you will be best off making test scans and seeing what is best. If you only have one type of film you may only have to do this the once. Your scanner will almost certainly resolve more detail than the camera/lens would have left on the negative anyway so capturing such detail will be a waste of time. You could always scan them all at a low resolution to save time and then rescan your favourites at a higher resolution. I have a lot of frames that looked fine but on closer inspection were riddled with camera shake and other such technical errors.

It may be worth checking your settings to see how many passes your scanner is making, some have the option of making up to 16 passes which can take an absolute lifetime to achieve. 4 passes is more than enough for me to be used on negatives with a lot of detail (may not be necessary for you).
 
There are several different film types unfortunately. I wanted to avoid experimenting too much as you can spend ages fiddling about with these things.

Might just stick it on half resolution and full ICE and see if it is ok...
 
I would avoid using ICE on the maximum setting as it softens fine detail and it doesn't work at all with B&W film.
With regards to the resolution, try scanning at the maximum optical setting and then downsizing to a more reasonable size. What scanner are you using because flatbeds usually resolve much less compared to a dedicated film scanner.
 
I'm using a minolta 5400 scan elite ii. It's way too much for most negs.
 
I've read a quite detailed review of that particular scanner and when scanning at 5400 dpi it resolves about 4200 dpi which is actually substantially good. Because of this I would scan at 5400 dpi and then resize down to about 6000 x 4000 afterwards. The CCD sensor can actually capture 5400 dpi but the other optics in the pathway limit it, scanning at max optical resolution with most scanners and resizing down will usually resolve more resolution then just scanning at the smaller DPI.

Keep autofocus and ICE (infared clean in vuescan) on (but not on max) and then that should be fine. You might want to try using mutliple passes to reduce image noise but avoid using anything more than about 6 or 8 passes as it will take forever...
 
Thanks for the suggestions, Samuel. Going to try infrared clean on medium and grain reduction on light. Can't see any options for changing the number of passes - ah it's called number of samples I assume. Only ever had it on one. Doubled it to 2 :)

Also ticked restore colors and restore fading as some of the old truprint stuff printed in weird colours when it was fresh so no idea what state 20 year old negs will be like. The later jessops films I have are much better and will probably just need the infrared clean.
 
I believe one option in Vuescan is to scan to RAW, changes can then be made in VueScan without rescanning, not used this feature myself, but may be useful for testing you idea settings.
 
That's a useful feature. Should be a lot quicker to try different things out.
 
I've got it on highest res. ICE on medium. Grain reduction on medium. Colour restoration on and colour fading restoration set to on. Pretty pleased with the results as many of these negs don't have proper plastic sleeves and are just shoved inside the print folder to gather muck. Saving them out as jpgs on default settings so average of 10MB a photo which is ok.

Apart from the odd magenta tint everything has turned out well. I'm amazed how much crud can be removed almost invisibly and without effort :)
 
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