Anyon else scan Lutz's targets yet?

I finally got around to doing the color slide, and was wondering if

anyone else had? It would be fun to see what others ended up with!

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<img src="http://www.rockgarden.net/download/ED-3-final-800.jpg">

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The full scan is 15x22 346ppi, but here's a smaller one (15x22 180 ppi) in JPEG format if you'd like to play around with it, or print.

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<a href="http://www.rockgarden.net/download/ED-3-final_15x22_180ppi.jpg">Lutz's Bouquet in Color, 15x22 180 ppi file, sRGB JPEG, about 1.2MB</a>

By the way, if you look closely you can probably see where I bumped the scanner... :(

Jan, this sounds interesting. What's the background to this? Does Lutz now offer some kind of reference slide?

Jay, nice. What system, any post-processing?

Lutz posted about these a little while ago, a month or so perhaps. He might have some left still.

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I scanned this on my Imacon Flextight Precision-II, a now 6 year old scanner (I got it used three years ago). It's getting a little worn but is still doing a passable job.

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Since I had never scanned Elitechrome 200 before, the first step was to create a profile for it and set up the white and black points: <a href="http://www.rockgarden.net/download/ED3/ED-3-FCpreview.jpg">Setting up the black and whitepoints for ED-3 film.</a>

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<a href="http://www.rockgarden.net/download/ED3/ED-3-as_scanned.jpg">Image, as scanned.</a><br>

<a href="http://www.rockgarden.net/download/ED3/ED-3-preFM.jpg">Closeup of channels, as scanned.</a>

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Because this scanned curves the film, the different channels are in slightly different register, as can be seen in the closeup above. I found the best way to improve this (although it of course can't be fully undone) is to run Focus Magic individually on each of the three channels.<br><p>

<a href="http://www.rockgarden.net/download/ED3/ED-3-postFM.jpg">Closeup of channels, after Focus Magic.</a>

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Then, basic color correction, tonal adjustments, slight final tweaks of white and blackpoints.

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<a href="http://www.rockgarden.net/download/ED3/ED-3-crop_and_curves.jpg">Image, after crop and curves.</a>

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A little flat in my opinion (but close to the original slide). To pep it up a bit, I create a burn mask by simply painting in some areas with a soft brush in Quickmask mode: <a href="http://www.rockgarden.net/download/ED3/PSCS-subject_mask.jpg">burn mask.</a>

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A little curves to tweak the highlights. Then spot the scan, and dodge the edges slightly to focus on the subject.<br><p>

<a href="http://www.rockgarden.net/download/ED3/ED-3-spotted.jpg">Image, just about finished.</a>

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At this point, all that remains is to clean up grain noise and determine what the maximum reasonable print size for this is going to be (on my Epson 7600 using ImagePrint 6). NoiseNinja works pretty well for the relatively heavy grain on ED-3. But it definitely looks processed afterwards. Not much to be done, it's just a matter of balancing grain vs digital look in print. I find this level works pretty well, but it's really a matter of taste. (Keep in mind that the contrast range of a print is much lower than a screen, so minor noise doesn't show, and sufficiently small artifacts won't resolve. What shows depends on print size.) I also use NN to sharpen for print , usually.

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<a href="http://www.rockgarden.net/download/ED3/ED-3-postNN.jpg">Closeup of RGB composite, after NoiseNinja.</a>

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That's it! Ready to print!