Vuescan questions

[Don]

I'm not technical enough to understand the significance between editing
in gamma 1 vs 2.2. But I do notice the bashing Timo took from those who
disagreed with him. Timo always stays with technical discussions, and
never throw a punch back. For that, he gets my respect. Digital imaging
technology, IMHO, is still in its infancy, kind of like before Darwin or
Galileo. It is not surprising for the current vendors and "experts" to
accuse others of heresy.

Yes, exactly. I also like that he stayed above the shouting and only
focused on the facts. Things are in flux and the subject is complex so
either they should ignore his writings on take them for what they are,
i.e. facts. After that it's up to each person to decide if those facts
are relevant to them.

Not quite. I think my raw scans before applying the profile is in linear
gamma. By an *explicit* gamma control, I mean that such a control will
offer options of 1 (and stated linear and hw), 2.2, etc. (sw). Without
such a control, I'm left to yank the curves/level on my own if I want
something other than a linear scan (gamma 1).

I suppose you could try some tests. It's sort of complicated, but if
the profile is applied before gamma (in linear space) the histogram
would end up looking a bit different from a scan where the profile is
applied afterwards.

I would play with both scenarios in Photoshop to get an idea of what
the histograms look like (i.e. what the differences are) and then
compare that to the actual scan to try and figure out which of the two
scenarios are closer to real life (i.e. the scan).

It's messy, but it's a idea...

Don.

 

[Don]

I suppose you could try some tests. It's sort of complicated, but if
the profile is applied before gamma (in linear space) the histogram
would end up looking a bit different from a scan where the profile is
applied afterwards.

I have to apologize to everyone here for being so ignorant and
uninformed. Of course, anyone with any knowledge of ICC
profiles understands how profiles are applied, and what I've
written above is just uninformed nonsense. I'm so sorry.

Profiles transform between one known color space and another.
If you have a gamma 1.0 image and a gamma 1.0 profile describing
it, then you can easily transform to a different color space with
a different gamma.

The actual transform is done in Profile Connection Space (PCS)
which is either XYZ or Lab. It has nothing to do with the gamma
of the source image or the destination image.

Don

 

[Don]

I must respectfully disagree with myself (my meds have kicked in).

Like me, Timo Autiokari is a nut case. For anyone interested in this:

http://www.poynton.com/notes/Timo/Concerning_Timo.html

IMHO (wait - I have only facts, not opinions) - digital imaging
technology is well established, well understood, and isn't very
complex. There's no heresy - this is simple stuff.

Don

 

[theo]

This may be a very good reason for using the film types. But the VS
Guide did not spell it out as such. Did you stumble on how to use them,
or ???

From early days with Kodak's RFS 3570 minilab machine, kept toggling
buttons and pushing sliders among the tabs and then trying to remember
what and where I did after three or four adjustments because I cannot find
a keyboard shortcut for undo -- Ctrl+Z is mapped to another function. But
first worked with the <Input|Lock Exposure> then <Color|Film Base Color>
buttons and values on an unexposed frame for each roll, which should have
been the complete answer -- NOT! -- despite the synopsis in the Users'
Guide.
re. Ralf's comment on currency of film types: because my clients are
providing film strips antecedant to my generation [that means before my
time, that means these are OLD!] I fail to appreciate his concern.

Except for the masochists, we all want to only purchase and use the
tools that suit our needs and budgets.

My audiences are uninterested in paying for nor appreciating the editing
discriminations available thru Adobe PhotoShop's capital and learning
curve commitment as compared to (hypothetically) Ulead Photo Explorer SE;
when the bar is set low, don't need to work so hard with so much to
achieve results which satisfy expectations. Use the tonka toy pickup for
hauling home pallets of baby diapers from Sam's Club, roll the Mercedes
from the garage to entice the 2nd wife-to-be. Choose the tool which
complexity/flexibility/sophistication does not over-complicate its
anticipated task.

The best vendors would go out of their way to achieve this goal for
their customers, so would the best tool reviewers here for those asking
questions.

Prescriptive rather than descriptive, but tonight we gotta work wit wot
we gut. So do we curdle, or do we go "...once more into the breach, dear
friends,..."
Regards,
Theo

 

[Ralf R. Radermacher]

re. Ralf's comment on currency of film types: because my clients are
providing film strips antecedant to my generation [that means before my
time, that means these are OLD!] I fail to appreciate his concern.

....which means they have have aged so much that you can forget about
those profiles, anyway.

Would be like trying to put your grandma into clothes that fit her when
she was 18.

Ralf

 

[theo]

aged so much that you can forget about those profiles, anyway.

Would be like trying to put your grandma into clothes that fit her when
she was 18.

Tis true that Grutmutta did not start off at 135Kg and diabetic, but some
of the VS clothes today drape adequately despite not matching the markings
on her sprocket band. As I mentioned earlier, random button pushing got
me more results than the User Guide's suggestions -- or that of any poster
to this NG [rimshot to Don, whichever you are] or the moribund
<alt.comp.periphs.scanners.vuescan>.
Volley: grump on profiles/clothes not in this month's Esquire, grump on
profiles/clothes not in Modern Maturity. I however am still anticipating
that my college era's Nehru jacket will return to The Gap, so I can hide
my sagging chicken neck.
Regards,
Theo

 

[Roger S.]

My audiences are uninterested in paying for nor appreciating the
editing

discriminations available thru Adobe PhotoShop's capital and learning
curve commitment as compared to (hypothetically) Ulead Photo Explorer SE;
when the bar is set low, don't need to work so hard with so much to
achieve results which satisfy expectations. Use the tonka toy pickup for
hauling home pallets of baby diapers from Sam's Club, roll the Mercedes
from the garage to entice the 2nd wife-to-be. Choose the tool which
complexity/flexibility/sophistication does not over-complicate its
anticipated task.

I think this is the advantage of high-end scanners and scanning
software- they produce consistent high quality scans with less user
intervention and are tweaked for thorougput. Vuescan definitely
doesn't fall into this category. If you stick to the defaults and
white balance you might get acceptable results out of the box. I
didn't. For workflow reasons alone I'd suggest switching to digital or
getting a capable lab with good equipment to do bulk scans. Even when
I had film of the types described in Vuescan, they didn't work properly
for me.

 

[vsbiting]

As I mentioned earlier, random button pushing got
me more results than the User Guide's suggestions -- or that of any poster
to this NG [rimshot to Don, whichever you are] or the moribund
<alt.comp.periphs.scanners.vuescan>.

Fill the Superdome with 100,000 chimps and give each a typewriter. Over
time, one of them will come up with "Gone With the Wind".

Perhaps Ed had that in mind with VS and the Guide.

 

[HvdV]

Vuescan should be considered as a program that captures the data.
Everything else it does is post processing and can be done more
flexibly with Photoshop or similar.
If you want comprehensive adjustment capability and the ability
to set up a complicated workflow I suggest using Silverfast instead.
It is designed to deliver scans that need little further correction.
It also has an interface that takes time to get used to and its price
is much higher than Vuescan, but if you do a lot of scanning of images
taken under standardized conditions it will pay for itself in time
saved.

That's what I thought, but for me it rarily works out that way, I found
myself postprocessing most scans anyway. On top of that, Silverfast suffers
from a hideous crash now and then on my G5, after which you need to delete
all kinds of files, loose your preferences, film profiles and *lots* of time.
Despite all the shortcomings reported here (Don!), I found VueScan to produce
scans with less fuss and -so far- no crashes.

Also, unlike Vuescan, you need a different version for each model
scanner.

...and you can migrate to other platforms.

Converted, Hans

 

[HvdV]

There are four pages of film types in the VS Guide. Different
generations of the some film types are listed, and Ed suggested to id
the generation by looking at "the writing on the film near the sprocket
holes". Such descriptions are certainly much more detailed than any
other feature descriptions in the Guide. A reader would assume that Ed
must have put in some great efforts on film types, and they play a
significant role in VS.

As someone noted, the Guide is not updated to reflect the changes of
each revision, and for good reasons (for Ed).

One way to improve the guide is to put it in a wiki. That makes it easier to
update for the author, and he could enable selected fans or just anyone to
add pieces.

-- Hans