Coolscan 8000 dark scan & color tint

It appears my scanner is scanning my images a little too dark and a

little on the blue side. I have been able to correct it with analog

gain or curves, but what would you suggest to make it that all initial scans come up on the screen correct to begin with, since this is a consistent pattern. I have color calibrated my monitor, and after I color correct the images on my monitor, the images on my monitor match the original and match my print output fine. It's just that the scanned image comes out too dark/blue to begin with.

I would never suggest "to make it that all initial scans come up on the screen correct to begin with". The scanner software is never as precise, flexible or powerful as something like Photoshop and trying to do too many corrections at the scanning stage risks clipping highlights, shadows or other color information, which once you scan that way, is lost forever in your file. Best is to scan for a fairly correct color base and at a flatter contrast than ideal to make sure you scan for a good, wide histogram and then correcting in PS. It will not look great off the bat but you will be better off when you go to correct in PS using levels, curves, whatever. Also better if you ever decide to convert to B&W as the more info there the more potential and flexibility you have overall. That said Nikon Scan is awful for color management and I use Vuescan almost exclusively with my Nikon scanner.

It is true that Vuescan is much better than NikonScan. The most likely culprits:

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<ol>

<li>You did a poor job of calibrating your monitor. Use a hardware device.

<li>You have a poor scanner profile (unlikely if your canned LS 8000 profile is as good as my canned LS 4000 profile).

<li>You set up color management in NikonScan incorrectly.

</ol>

Hi Dana,

 

I have an 8000 also but have not experienced this problem.

 

If I had the problem though, here is how I would troubleshoot it:

 

1. reset all the default settings from the menu in Nikon Scan.

 

2. turn off everything so it reinitializes both the computer and the scanner.

 

3. Hopefully there was just garbage stored somewhere by accident and now it is cleared out by the re-initialization.

 

4. rescan one of the slides that was giving you problems.

 

5. if it is still dark then maybe the area used to compute the exposure includes a lot of the frame, not just the image. I use Vuescan, so I'm not sure how to check this on Nikon Scan.

 

Note:

 

1. Be sure you are using 14 bits not 8 bits if there is a lot of shadow detail that you want.

 

2. Shadows in general have a lot more blue in them because the only light in the shadow is reflected light from the sky which is blue not warm light that is direct from the sun.

 

3. If it is only a particular slide giving problems, i.e. a problem slide that is very dark to start with, sample at 8X or 16X not 1X and rescan. This will give you another bit of depth, revealing more detail in the shadow. Maybe the blue you see in this case is noise.

 

If you want better control and visibility to what is happening, buy Vuescan. It is only $40 for life, can be downloaded from www.hamrick.com and works great. It also has a lot of features for batch scanning that are excellent.

 

Hope this helps. I didn't have a lot of background so maybe you are already aware of all this. If so, sorry to waste your time.

 

If all this fails to help, write Nikon by email, they will respond within four days.

 

Mike

I think it's just that the scanner can see data in the highlights that will necessarily be clipped once you adjust the contrast to your liking. It defaults to offering you to include all the information from the slide but that usually looks too dark. Nonetheless, at least on my LS-4000 & N.S. 3.1.2, the settings (including curves adjustment) from the previous scan are saved and so it suggest the same adjustment for the next slide. So, you can just make whatever small modifications to the levels from one image to the next.

 

I'm not sure whether it is better to make the modifications in the scanner or in Photoshop; it seems likely that you'd get better data if you make the modifications in the scanner software but obviously this depends on the hardware and software used.

Also, I got too blue scans by using Nikon CMS. I turned it off and make my image editor assume the file came from a device with Nikon's supplied color management profile. No more blue scans. I think I'm getting VueScan as people seem to rave about it.

Thank you everyone. First, I feel the monitor is reasonably

callibrated because I get a good workflow and results from input to

screen appearance to printing that all match rather well using my agfa

scanner. I will probably break down at some point and buy a hardware

calibration device, but right now I have a simple workflow on a single

platform and get terrific end results. It is consistant with all

scans. I have set everything to Nikons original defaults. I'm trying

to create a "master file" on cd's of my images, and from what I've

read here at photo.net it seems like I will retain the most amount of

information in my master tiff file if I do little or no tweaking in

the Nikon scan mode. I really was just hoping to have the image a

little brighter to start with. I agree Richard on not doing much or

any tweaking at the scan level due to loss of information as you said,

but i read somewhere here where adjusting the analog gain did not

cause information loss, where as adjustments to curves and levels at

the initial scan can result in some loss of information to my

"master"? I certainly don't want to lose any information, and prefer

to adjust my curves and levels in photoshop, with no effect to my

master scanned file. Emre, I am using the Nikon scan defaults and I

am unsure what set up in Nikonscan color management I might be missing

to have it correctly set up? Am I missing something? It really seems

that everyday I read about the pros of Vuescan and I'm sure I'll have

to get around to buying it. Mike, yea I think I'll zip off a quick

letter to Nikon too, see what ideas they have. Have you found any

drawbacks or hinderances at all using Vuescan with the 8000? Thanks,

your time and assistance is

A comparison between analog gain vs. Photoshop levels adjustment (for the similar Nikon LS-4000 scanner) is found in:

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http://www.lumika.org/gear_digital_editing.htm

<p>

The site also has a comparison between levels adjustment in Photoshop and Nikon Scan, and the conclusion seems to be that <B>if you scan to 48-bit files</B>, it's best to leave levels adjustment to Photoshop.

I was referring to the Color Management settings under Preferences. Ensure that the proper monitor profile at desired RGB color space are selected. Also try disabling color management for comparison.

Ilkka, thanks for the reference site. Since I don't want to lose any

information, I won't use the analog gain in NikonScan at all. Yes,

Emre it is a great improvement turning off Nikons color management.

Still a bit dark, but much better, and the blue cast is virtually

gone. I'll check the RGB monitor set up in NikonScan too and see if

it finishes the job. Much thanks again.