learning to scan an image

[Sam Carleton]

For a number of years now I have owned a $150 flatbed scanner with film
attachment. Yesterday I bought a Nikon Coolscan 5000. After a night of
working with it, I am anything buy pleased with me knowledge of
scanning.

Where does one begin learning? Do I first learn about color management
or is there somewhere else I should start? Does anyone know of good web
sites? What about books? I have found a few and have them on my
personal web site and I have the listed in order of what I *think* is
the correct order to read them. Is it the correct order? My ultimate
objective is to be scanning in portraits, manipulating them on the PC
and then sending them to my lab for printing. In other words I want to
be an expert at this stuff. Any and all help will be appreciated!

Books: <http://www.miltonstreet.com/scarleton/photo/books.php>

Sam

 

[lostinspace]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sam Carleton" <>
Newsgroups: comp.periphs.scanners
Sent: Friday, May 07, 2004 2:56 PM
Subject: learning to scan an image

For a number of years now I have owned a $150 flatbed scanner with film
attachment. Yesterday I bought a Nikon Coolscan 5000. After a night of
working with it, I am anything buy pleased with me knowledge of
scanning.

Where does one begin learning? Do I first learn about color management
or is there somewhere else I should start? Does anyone know of good web
sites? What about books? I have found a few and have them on my
personal web site and I have the listed in order of what I *think* is
the correct order to read them. Is it the correct order? My ultimate
objective is to be scanning in portraits, manipulating them on the PC
and then sending them to my lab for printing. In other words I want to
be an expert at this stuff. Any and all help will be appreciated!

Books: <http://www.miltonstreet.com/scarleton/photo/books.php>

Sam
--

http://www.scantips.com/

Every minute you scan there will be repaid a thousand times over in your
scanning.
Pay the 20 whatever and get the full printed version.

Someplace, I have a dot-matrix print from 6-7 years ago which I still use
for reference.

 

[Alan Browne]

For a number of years now I have owned a $150 flatbed scanner with film
attachment. Yesterday I bought a Nikon Coolscan 5000. After a night of
working with it, I am anything buy pleased with me knowledge of
scanning.

Where does one begin learning? Do I first learn about color management
or is there somewhere else I should start? Does anyone know of good web
sites? What about books? I have found a few and have them on my
personal web site and I have the listed in order of what I *think* is
the correct order to read them. Is it the correct order? My ultimate
objective is to be scanning in portraits, manipulating them on the PC
and then sending them to my lab for printing. In other words I want to
be an expert at this stuff. Any and all help will be appreciated!

as the other poster says, a good general start (and a lot of detail too)
is at www.scantips.com

IAC:
Set the scan settings of your s/w to "reset" (for no corrections)
Scan into the s/w
Do, in this order:

--Crop/orient and save as a 1st scan (at max res or half max res)
--spot dust/scratches (if needed, if you use ICE then not much).
--levels (brigtness/contrast
--color, hue, etc if needed.
--Save
--AAA: Resize for display or printing
--USM (Unsharp mask)
--save that version
--reload prev version
--goto AAA for next size. (After any resize down, sharpening needs to
be done for that size..)

Cheers,
Alan.

 

[CCDee]

Different people have different objectives. Mine is speed. I'd rather be at
the beach or the lake than sitting in front of a computer all day waiting
for pictures to come up and then dinking around with the color. Honestly,
you shouldn't have to know much about color management unless it's your job
to know about it (unless you just "want" to know about). Maybe investing in
an established color system would pay for itself.

 

[bmoag]

There are some general articles on the Popular Photography web site about
color management that are a good start.
If you have a scanner this good you should use Photoshop, PS Elements or
Photopaint so that you have some degree of color management: all this means
is that the scanner, the computer program and the printer all set for the
same color space, preferably AdobeRGB instead of sRGB.
Monitor calibration is important but somewhat over-rated: if you can set
your monitor to sRGB or 6500-6800k and use the Adobe applet you should be
ok. If the monitor temperature and brightness are set too high you will
never come close to matching your print to your monitor.
Make few or no adjustments to the original scan in the scanner software so
that you can learn how to do this with your photo imaging program. Scan at
2000-2400dpi for starters and save in TIFF or other lossless format.
For starters on color calibration use an image that has flesh tones, is
evenly exposed and has a good range of intermediate grays. Use the levels
tool/gray dropper and click on different grey areas to see how that affects
overall color balance. Sometimes you have to learn to see what the computer
sees and not trust what you think you see on the monitor.
Printer/paper combinations also are crucial to achieving a final result you
like. Begin with glossy papers made by your printer manufacturer so that the
printer driver has a built-in profile for that paper. Also begin by using
the "ICM" or equivalent setting in the printer driver and use a high printer
dpi. I think in the beginning one should use the color management built into
the image processing program and not make adjustments in the printer
driver. You will quickly see that there is not necessarily a direct
relationship between some of the tweaks you make to image you see on the
monitor and what comes out on the print.
Once you start to "get" it you will not regret the time invested to learn
the basics. You will also realize that it often takes more than one try to
achieve the image you like.