New Fuji NPS 160 in Vuescan

How are you folks handling NPS 160 with Vuescan? I think the included

profiles are for the old type, not the new 4-layer films. Vuescan

processes them with a terrible cyan cast and they come out very flat.

 

<p>I normally shoot colour trannies and B&W negatives, but I always

find it best in B&W to work from a negative rather than a positive.

Is there an equivalent workflow in colour negative that I should use?

 

<p>Photoshop CS<br>

Epson 3200<br>

Vuescan 8.1<br>

120 format Fuji NPS 160

I have never found the profiles to do any good in Vuescan for my Nikon LS-4000 or Epson 4990 especially for NPS and NPH. 99% of the time I use Generic for the film for color negs, scan to capture as much range as possible and correct in PS.

I've dabbled a bit with the "lite" version of Silverfast that came with my Epson 4990. It seems to work well with Fuji negative film.

 

There is a trial version available on the Lasersoft web site. Why not give it a go? And it's not too expensive ($49) if it seems useful.

 

http://www.silverfast.com/highlights/en.html

 

Robert

Mike I also have sometimes problems with the NPS profile in Vuescan. It workes ok with the profile but also with Generic if I slightly push say 1/2 stop and if the image is of a high contrast scene , say landscape in bright sun. If the images were taken at normal contrast (of course this film is not intended for such use) sometimes its a real struggle to get anything useful out of it and sometimes its *OK*. In generic setting I sometimes loose some in the shadows even without indication of clipping.I finally concluded that this is a nice film but always good to bring a second body with say reala for scenes with normal contrast.

I am also getting a terrific cyan cast, scanning Fuji Reala with Vuescan, using either the Fuji Reala profile, or generic color negative. White Balance is very poor. Neutral worse. Auto Levels so-so. Manual, right click on neutral grey is not too bad, but too finicky.

 

I've tried Advanced Workflow, both at time of scan an with scan-from-disk. Slight improvement, though not much.

 

I'm thinking to just go straight from my scanner's software to Photoshop, still researching.

Starting with a scan of the negative capturing the entire tonal range, I settled on pressing the auto button in the curves menu, then inverting each of the three colour channels but sliding the left side up to 255 and the right down to 0.

 

<p>That got me most of the way there with a small tweak here and there required in levels or in colour balance.

 

<p><a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00CXgi">Results here.</a>

Nother thing to try: shoot a test roll, in various lighting conditions, log the light/time/weather, and put a grey card in each scene.

Mike, in your last posting are you saying to acquire the scan through Vuescan, but ouput as flat as possible (say color balance "none"), and take over in Photoshop from there?

 

I'm having similar struggle and wondering what is the point of using Vuescan at all. IMHO, it fails at infrared cleaning AND color balancing. This has me wondering, what is the point of using it at all? Perhaps you should try starting with your scanner's proprietary software, and then go straight to Photoshop, leaving Vuescan out of the loop.

Also, have a read through Marco's response here:

 

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00CWmS

 

if you haven't already.

 

Marco's workflow does give nice results (it's somewhat specific to the Elite 5400), but still, I'm not sold yet, I would like to stay true to the colors in the original scene as much as possible (the holy grail), and have consistant color from frame to frame. Regarding his workflow, I'm a bit concerned that with the multiple neutralizing of casts that something is getting lost.

No I scanned the negative with "white balance" selected.

 

IR cleaning works fine with my Coolscan III, not a feature on my Epson 3200.

Mike we are comparing apples (epsons) with oranges (nikons) here not just vuescan with whatever software. The one most important reason for me to use vuescan is that it is close to the hardware and allows me to get what the scanner hardware is capable of measuring and I care less for the convinience. My Nikon driver clips here and there and got too many black boxes I do not want. Your Epson driver my be different. I do not mind adjusting in PS if I know I get the details that are in the negative. But then I do rarely large numbers of images and I only use NPS160 where I think it comes in useful : in high contrast situations. In medium or low contrast I use something else like Reala. Its not really a scanner or software problem its a problem of using the wrong film at the wrong time. But as Mike showed one can get decent pictures even then - just a bit more work. By the way - did you ever try to do "levels" for the colors separately? For me the first thing to do in case of color cast from a scan. Works well most of the time. Curves for separate R,G,B is more tricky though .-)

I do use Vuescan for both scanners. I long abandoned Nikon Scan (banding and other issues) and Epson Scan (already using Vuescan on the Nikon by this point).

 

I shoot very little colour print film, and although the colour correction is tougher than colour transparencies, my Epson scanner handily captures the entire tonal range, unlike say with Velvia 50.

Mike, have a look at my latest essay here:

 

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00CWmS

 

It's specific to Elite 5400, but should have relevance for your situation.