Silverfast SE - Is It Really This Bad???

CockneyViking

CockneyViking

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Patrick
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I downloaded Silverfast SE with a possible view to buying AI later if I need it....this is what I found:

  1. Could not get the trial copy to work the way hoped. The product has no meaningful email or other support. It has lots of FAQs which don't tell you what you need to know in an attempt to avoid costly human contact. Then signed up for forum to see if I could support there. I still have not got an activation email three hours later. Who would spend a lot on software that is not well supported?
  2. It is not at all intuitive and not well documented.
  3. After a lot of twiddling I got it to scan all 4 negatives as separate images in Preview. Then I found after the preview, you have to scan each one of the four individually. Is there no way to save and scan all four at once?
  4. It does not seem to remove scratches and dust especially well
  5. The save function defaults to a folder I did not select and reverts to TIFF files instead of jpgs. So files frequently get saved in the wrong format in the wrong folder. Does anyone else find this?
I am now sorely tempted to look at an alternative after three hours wasted. The thing is I wonder if the alternatives are any better. I have heard Silverfast AI is very complicated which I think means not intuitive. Vuescan I have heard produces file images which are quite different from how they show in Preview.

I would like something that is easy, where preview is close to WYSIWIG and which corrects dust and marks on the negatives.

Any thoughts ? What are members views on the workflow for Vuescan and Digital ICE?
 
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I'm happy with VueScan. I haven't noticed a difference between preview and final scan, but then I don't worry too much about the preview except for getting the framing. I tick the box to have VueScan save the raw scan data, and I can change settings to my heart's content without a rescan.

I haven't tried Digital ICE with VueScan because the films I use aren't suitable.
 
To be honest the Digital ICE results are likely more down to the individual scanner than the software, some scanners are good at picking up and removing scratches/dust, others are not. Do be aware though that Digital ICE, iSRD etc will only work on colour negatives or slides (excluding Kodachrome slides), it will not work at all with B&W film (except C-41 chromagenic types like XP2) and will cause a massive degradation in quality if you do use it with B&W.

Vuescan is dead easy to use, preview, adjust frame, scan settings etc, scan, save, done. To get the best results though it really is best to do some manual editing of levels, sharpening (the Vuescan unsharp mask is needlessly very aggressive) etc in Photoshop or similar.
 
Patrick, I've used both SilverFast (6.6-ish, you may have 8) and Vuescan. SF is a PIG to learn, and very expensive, and tied to exactly one scanner unless you buy it again. Vuescan is cheaper and supports pretty much any scanner around (get the Pro version if you'll be doing a lot, and it's still way cheaper). The results are always slightly different, but that's probably because of the different ways the curves and levels work. Old SF is completely non-intuitive for a Mac user (and probably a Win user too) as it does everything its own way; I did hear SF8 was more in line with UI standards. Vuescan pretty much has menus as you'd expect. There are still some awkwardnesses; I'm often unsure which menu some of the settings are in, and I'm sometimes caught by a setting that was appropriate for the last film but not this one, that I have forgotten about. But I don't go back to SF now...
 
I tried SF back when I had a Epson 2450?? and didn't like it. When I got the Epson V750 it came with SF. I tried and tried to get used to it but didn't like it. I upgraded twice thinking it would get better, but I could never come to terms with it. Some people love it and do great with it. I'm not one of them. I got Vuescan pro and after a short learning process, love it. I scan as a so called Raw or a neg as a positive and invert in PS. Actually I use colorperfect to invert and the colors are usually spot on and much better than inverting in PS sometimes dramatically so. Basically the Raw is the film without any adjustments allowing you to do your own. I use Vuescan with my Epson, Nikon Coolscan and My Canon scanners, although unless it MF I use the Nikon most of the time.
 
CockneyViking said:
I would like something that is easy, where preview is close to WYSIWIG and which corrects dust and marks on the negatives.

Any thoughts ? What are members views on the workflow for Vuescan and Digital ICE?
Click to expand...

I found Silverfast bloated, confusing, and basically unusable, so I quickly picked up Vuescan. I've had several scanners and it's worked well with all of them. Unlike Vuescan, which works with everything, if you upgrade to a new scanner, you'd also need to get a new copy of Silverfast.

When I scan colour negatives myself, I use a workflow that is very similar to @Ron-M above.

I personally try to retain as much data from the negative as possible until I get it into Lightroom where it's much easier to do any necessary tinkering to the photo. Consequently, I too do a raw scan in Vuescan (just a straight scan of the negative with no inversion or clipping) with ICE set for medium and then I use the photoshop plugin Colorperfect to flip the scan into a positive image. Colorperfect does an amazing job matching the colours to the film stocks, but I still leave the image pretty flat at this point, much like a DSLR raw file, so that I can do the final edits in Lightroom.

I do find the colour negative scanning workflow very tedious though, so I now send out 95% of my film for someone else to worry about it. I do still develop and scan my own B&W and I scan my own slide film, but I don't shoot nearly as much of those as I do C-41.
 
A lot of interesting posts here, many thanks to all. I think I will check out Vuescan and AI. It looks like the no brainer choice may be Vuescan Pro.

Does anyone if Silverfast AI can be sold to new owner without additional charges if I sell the scanner?
 
CockneyViking said:
A lot of interesting posts here, many thanks to all. I think I will check out Vuescan and AI. It looks like the no brainer choice may be Vuescan Pro.

Does anyone if Silverfast AI can be sold to new owner without additional charges if I sell the scanner?
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I believe that Silverfast is specific to the machine its bundled with or bought for, so you could only sell it to someone with a similar scanner.
 
RaglanSurf said:
I believe that Silverfast is specific to the machine its bundled with or bought for, so you could only sell it to someone with a similar scanner.
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I think it might be specific to the actual device in some cases, ie you need to sell the scanner as well as the software? Or am I just making this up?
 
ChrisR said:
I think it might be specific to the actual device in some cases, ie you need to sell the scanner as well as the software? Or am I just making this up?
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No I think you're right, I'm not sure what happens if you buy it as a stand alone piece of software.
 
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