Creating perfect photos from your slide and negative scans

with ColorPerfect: VueScan Professional

colorperfect.com/scanning-slides-and-negatives/scans/Hamrick-Software/VueScan

Christoph Oldendorf

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In addition to the default sized plug-in made to fit all screens we also offer plug-ins of
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PerfectRAW: 769 Cameras

On May 12th, 2020 we added characterizations for PerfectRAW. We now support 769
digital camera models.

MakeTiff 1.55
MakeTiff was updated on January 30th, 2020. MakeTiff is not yet compatible with
macOS 10.15 Catalina; please ask by email for a workaround.

ColorPerfect 2.25
ColorPerfect 2.25 was updated on November 24th 2019. On modern Macs we now
support all operating systems from Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard through macOS 10.15
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MakeTiff 1.50
MakeTiff was updated on October 19th, 2018. The new version is a lot faster on large
groups of files due to multi threading. With recent versions of Adobe DNG
Converter this is a mandatory update.

ColorPerfect 2.20
We released ColorPerfect 2.20 on December 2nd, 2015. The new version offers a batch
processing workflow for similar images. PerfectRAW is now a separate mode with its
own settings and has built in characterizations for 554 digital cameras and ColorNeg for
over 305 color negative films.

ColorPerfect 2.17
We released ColorPerfect 2.17 on April 6th, 2015. It contains a re-worked FilmType
calibration system. PerfectRAW now has built in characterizations for more than 515
digital cameras and ColorNeg for over 305 color negative films.

ColorPerfect 2.15
We released ColorPerfect 2.15 on September 30th, 2014. It improves numerous things
and adds several completely new features. PerfectRAW now has built in
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compact camera models for which a CHDK hack exists today.

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MakeTiff 1.15
MakeTiff was updated on March 17th, 2014. The new version finally provides full
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ColorPerfect 2.12
We released ColorPerfect 2.12 on March 10th, 2014. It fixes a bug in the FilmType,
SubType, FilmGamma calibration system. PerfectRAW now has built in
characterizations for more than 270 digital cameras and ColorNeg for over 300 color
negative films.

Increase the quality of your slide and negative scans from VueScan Professional with
ColorPerfect! Find out more about how to scan with VueScan. ColorPerfect processes
scans with color integrity and gives unprecedented flexibility in creative image editing.
To harness the full potential of our Photoshop Plug-in it's important to obtain image
data that has been subjected to as little processing as possible (RAW data). The
following tutorial gives a step by step explanation on how to achieve this with VueScan
Professional. Also watch our video tutorial on creating linear scans with Vuescan.

Creating linear scans of slides and negatives with VueScan

Professional

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 Hamrick Software's VueScan
Professional is very well suited to
create linear scans of slides and
negatives since the professional version
of VueScan features a special RAW
output mode. To create suitable scans
you first have to select the input tab
and to choose either slide or color
negative from the media pulldown list.

For both choices a negative is

preserved as such in a RAW scan's
linear output file. The difference
between the two modes in combination
with RAW scans is that for color
negative mode the three color channels
of a scan are being scaled up using
suitable factors to ensure that all of
these use the same range of values.
Since Photoshop actually uses only 15
bit plus 1 value precision instead of the
full 16 bit range used in a linear Tiff file
that kind of scaling can be beneficial. If
you are not using the advanced
techniques of exposure control or
analog gain detailed further down on
this page you should choose color
negative as your medium for negative
scans. When scanning slides this mode
could also be beneficial when scanning
film with noticeable color casts. E.g. a
daylight scene shot on tungsten film
without filtration or vice versa.

Then select the required bit depth

which is controlled by the setting "Bits
per pixel". Set this to "48 bit RGB"
which equals 16 bit per channel. The
resolution of the scan is also being
defined on the input tab. When scanning for archival purposes it is recommended that
you use the full physical resolution your scanner is capable of. In the example screen
shots a Nikon Super Coolscan LS 8000 is used which is able to scan at 4000 dpi. If your
scanner supports multi sampling that may be used to further improve the scan's quality
where needed. You can specify this under the "Number of samples" option which is only
visible if this feature is available for your hardware. Using multi sampling on color
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negatives is generally beneficial since the darkest areas of such transparencies contain a
lot of important detail while any dark areas are especially prone to noise. The noise that
occurs at random in a single sample scan can be reduced by taking multiple samples
because such noise will not occur in the same places between different samples.

Putting out RAW Tiff files

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 Next select the output tab and
deactivate the standard Tiff file output
while activating RAW file output. Both
modes write Tiff files. The normal Tiff
files however are images edited and
gamma encoded by VueScan while
those of the RAW output mode are of
linear gamma and are always
equivalent to the light intensities read
in by the scanner. That is the scan of a
negative always remains a negative in a
RAW output file and is therefore
ideally suited for later conversion with
ColorPerfect's ColorNeg mode or the
original ColorNeg plug-in.

It is important that you do create

linear Tiff files and not linear DNG
files. It is not possible to open a DNG
file with Photoshop without going
through Adobe Camera RAW which
does not allow linear output. The only
way to open the unaltered linear data
as saved by VueScan with Photoshop is
by use of linear Tiff files. Therefore you
need to make sure that the option
"RAW DNG format" is left unchecked.

If you have created such linear DNG

files with VueScan by accident or in the
past that is not a problem. You can
convert large numbers of such files to
the Tiff format using the freeware
command line RAW converter dcraw.
Command: dcraw -T -4 -D *.dng

Black and white (grayscale) linear scans

To create linear 16 bit grayscale scans generally follow the instructions of the two
paragraphs above but instead of choosing "Color Negative" for the Media setting on the
Input tab choose "B+W Negative". Also make sure that the "RAW file type" setting on
the Output tab is set to Auto or "16 bit Gray". For scanning black and white negatives
ignore the following two paragraphs of this page. In particular make sure that the
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"Infrared clean" feature on the Filter tab is disabled by setting it to None. The
underlying technology does not work for black and white negative film because of its
silver halide clusters being opaque to the infrared light source used - just as dust and
scratches would be.

Removal of dust and scratches and putting out a suitable alpha

channel if desired
If your scanner features a function to remove dust and scratches you can also put out
the alpha channel produced by use of the respective infrared light source. To do so you
have to set the RAW file type to "64 bit RGBI". This kind of alpha channel can later be
used in retouching an image. If you don't need this kind of data set the RAW file type to
"48 bit RGB" instead.

If you want VueScan to remove dust and scratches automatically you can activate the
option infrared cleaning which is located on the filter tab. Simply set this to the desired
strength. To apply such corrections to RAW scans you additionally have to modify the
setting "RAW output with" on the output tab. The default for this is Scan which means
that the RAW data is already being written to file during scanning. While doing so
VueScan does not process the RAW data at all so that any settings you made on the filter
tab are being ignored. If you specify Save instead of Scan the RAW data is written after
the scan finishes and has been processed according to your settings on the filter tab.
This mode is a bit slower but is required if you want VueScan to apply infrared cleaning
to your linear Tiff files before saving them to disk.

Improving quality using exposure control and/or analog gain

The level of detail captured during
scanning is of importance to the final
image's quality. For some scanners
further options that can be of interest
are available on the input tab. This is
the case if your scanner hardware
supports variable exposure settings. If
that is so check the option "Lock
exposure" and create a test scan using
an arbitrary color negative. To observe
the effect of your settings on the linear Tiff file choose slide from the media pull down
list instead of choosing color negative as instructed above. This way VueScan will not
scale the individual color channels and you can easily observe the effect of different
exposure settings in Photoshop. Increase the exposure in a series of test scans and find
the setting for which the data of the red color channel populates half to three fourths of
the red channel's histogram in Photoshop.

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Some scanners like Nikon's Coolscan models allow different exposure settings for the
individual color channels. This is generally referred to as analog gain. With this tool you
can reduce or even eliminate a color negative's orange mask at the time of scanning. In
a typical color negative scan the red color channel is brightest. The green channel
usually is more than 1 exposure value (EV) darker and the blue channel is 1 EV darker
still. Canceling out these differences by suitable adjustments increases the level of detail
captured. In VueScan analog gain values are not specified in terms of EVs but rather as
factors. Start by setting Green to 2.5 and Blue to 4.0 for your test scan. As shown for an
exemplary negative these settings should lead
to roughly equally distributed data in the
individual color channels' histograms. Should
this not be the case find the right factors in
further test scans. It is important that no
clipping occurs at the right of the histograms
and that you do leave some room so that no
clipping will occur for other negatives either. If
a bit of free space in the film holder next to a
negative leads to a white area in your scan that
is irrelevant of course. Populating somewhere
above half of a linear scan's histogram bins is
usually sufficient as the right half of the
histogram represents just a single EV. Once
you have found suitable exposure settings you
can usually use the same settings on all
negatives with a similar orange mask. A
completely unexposed portion of the film base always is the brightest point in any
negative scan. Only material with a significantly different mask will require different
factors than those determined in these initial tests.

For modern scanners with a true 16 bit A/D converter adjusting the analog gain settings
often has little impact on a negative's conversion since there will be enough detail even
without doing this. If you don't use analog gain choose color negative from the media
pull down list after you finish testing. For older scanners with 14 bit precision per
channel or even only 12 bit analog gain adjustments can make a significant difference. If
we consider that the blue channel of a negative scan contains the least detail we can
observe that its precision can be increased to the level found in an unadjusted scan with
2 more bit per channel precision. Something to note in this context is that often the
lamp's brightness can't be increased any further. For the Coolscan scanners the
exposure time is being lengthened instead. It is conceivable that for other scanners the
signal might be amplified electrically which is unlikely to work equally well. In any
event using analog gain will require some tests.

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