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david_mantripp3

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  1. Alex, whick K-M are you using? As far as I know, Silverfast 8 only supports the 5400. Unfortunately SF8 does not support DigitalICE. I don't know how good iSRD is, but certainly ICE on the K-M DSMP is visibly better than Vuescan's IR cleaning. Personally I've been scanning for a very long time, and I can get identical "flat" scans from SF and Vuescan. However I prefer SF, for several reasons. First of all, it is more tightly integrated with the scanner. You might not notice this at first, but apart from stuff like ICE, manual focus is much better implemented. Also SF has a wide range of adjustment tools spefically designed for film scanning, which are far easier to use than the equivalents in Photoshop. It also has the "HDR" worklflow, which I find useful (yes, I know, it isn't HDR HDR, but SF has been using that terminology for about a decade). Of course if you don't want that stuff, it isn't worth paying for it, but if you do, and if you take scanning at all seriously, then investing in Mark Segal's book is well worth the money. Face it, there's not much imaging software that you get the most out of without some degree of 3rd party education, these days. Vuescan has advantages too - you can get insulted by tech support instead of patronised :-) ... also one big plus for me is the option to do a prescan without AF. But although it is better than it is given credit for on the post-procesing side, it is not a patch on SF in that regard. However it's been a life saver for a lot of people, and there's no doubt that Vuescan-centric workflows can be very effective. What I don't really get is the hatred and invective for Silverfast. Lasersoft is a small, independent, niche software company who by some miracle are not only still alive but still developing their products. Yes, GUI design is not their strong point, but they have improved a lot. Maybe people underestimate the investment it takes to develop a UI, and how much it diverts from core features. Ed Hamrick sure doesn't. I also don't get the criticism of their tech support. I file issues with them now and again, and they follow through politely and work hard on solving them. What I do see is a lot of very rude, aggressive flaming on their forum, usually from idiots who wouldn't even be able to recognise a manual, let along read it. Frankly, if I was on the receiving end of some of that invective I'd just delete and blacklist. Here's a useful tip for SF8 - if you really get stuck, and yes, it happens, just click the Service Dialog button on the launch screen, then "reset software" (red button). Works for me.
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