Archiving family photos using Epson V500 and Aperture 3

[bmichel]

<p>I have a mix of prints, 35mm color film and 35mm slides. These are generally of not high quality to begin with. I hope to be able to get satisfactory results using the Epson. I have experimented with the Epson holders and the Epson 'Professional' settings. I expect to scan to TIFF files and then import into Aperture. I am reasonably competent with Aperture, so I don't need to have the scanner or its software do too much regarding the images. Dust / scratch removal during scanning would be most useful. </p>

<p>A few questions:</p>

<ul>

<li>My reading of other posts indicates that I should not go over 2400dpi for this scanner. Is that even more than needed? </li>

<li>Would 24-bit TIFF be adequate? </li>

<li>Would Vuescan be advantageous? Silverfast is too expensive considering my objective and equipment.</li>

<li>Any advice about using the Epson software? I am running OS X 10.6.7 on an iMac 24.</li>

<li>How and when should sharpening be done?</li>

</ul>

<p>I will need to experiment but would appreciate feedback on some reasonable starting points.</p>

<p> </p>

[robert lee]

<blockquote>

<ul>

<li>My reading of other posts indicates that I should not go over 2400dpi for this scanner. Is that even more than needed? </li>

</ul>

</blockquote>

<p>You need to scan at 4800dpi to get around 2000dpi of real resolution. Down sample in post to 2000dpi. </p>

<p>Scanning at 2400dpi won't get you there. It's easy enough to test. Try it both ways.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<ul>

<li>Would 24-bit TIFF be adequate? </li>

</ul>

</blockquote>

<p>No. Scan to 48bit TIFF. You'll have much more margin for the inevitable adjustments in post.</p>

<p>Scanning is horribly time consuming. It's not something you want to repeat.</p>

<blockquote>

<ul>

<li>Would Vuescan be advantageous? Silverfast is too expensive considering my objective and equipment.</li>

</ul>

</blockquote>

<p>Don't bother with either. Epsonscan is fine.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<ul>

<li>How and when should sharpening be done?</li>

</ul>

</blockquote>

<p>Other than down sampling the 4800dpi scan to 2000dpi don't change it in any other way. This is your new "negative." Work on a copy of this to get it in shape for printing.</p>

 

<ul>

<li>My reading of other posts indicates that I should not go over 2400dpi for this scanner. Is that even more than needed? </li>

<li>Would 24-bit TIFF be adequate? </li>

<li>Would Vuescan be advantageous? Silverfast is too expensive considering my objective and equipment.</li>

<li>Any advice about using the Epson software? I am running OS X 10.6.7 on an iMac 24.</li>

<li>How and when should sharpening be done?</li>

</ul>

 

[andrewg_ny]

<p>Bruce, just a quick clarification, pretty sure the discussion on resolution is relevant for negatives/slides but that would be overkill on the prints.</p>

<p>Vuescan is easy to try though you'll need to buy (inexpensive) to get rid of watermarks. </p>

<p>Generally-speaking, best to do output sharpening late in the game, preferably as one of the last steps after your image has been resized for printing or web display.</p>

[aaron_dohrn]

<p>Vuescan is a better written program than what epson ships. It will speed up the scanning process considerably. I have used it with an Epson v700 and Nikon Coolscan 5000 and have been very happy. <br>

It is lacking in the manual area. Another problem you will find in the forum is that most people are talking about using vuescan to do post processing. Since you will be doing the post processing in Lightroom the important setting are as follows.<br>

<strong>Input tab</strong>:<br>

Task: Scan to File<br>

Mode: Transparency<br>

Media: Color Negative<br>

Bits per Pixel: 48 Bit RGB<br>

Preview Resolution: 100 dpi makes things faster<br>

Scan Resolution: For medium format I would do 3200dpi, but for 35mm you I would try 4800dpi. The scanner scans a specific increments so using a dpi in between doesn't make any sense. What your doing is having the inexpensive scanner software resize the image for you. Use lightroom to resample to 2000dpi. use bicubic sharper.<br>

<strong>Crop Tab</strong><br>

Buffer % 15 <br>

<strong>Filter Tab</strong><br>

Infrared clean: none to medium depending on the needs, Since your scanning bulk use it. I have used medium a far bit without noticing a significant amount of softening.<br>

<strong>Color Tab</strong><br>

Color balance: None or Neutral, Be aware that neutral sets the white point to 1 which is way to high and will blow out a significant amount of highlights. Set the white point to 0 to .3. leave curve and brightness settings at default either way.<br>

Negative vendor: Generic<br>

Negative brand: Color<br>

Negative type: Negative<br>

Scanner color space: Built-in<br>

Printer color space: sRGB<br>

Film color space: Built-in<br>

Show IT8 outline:<br>

Output Color Space: Adobe Rgb This is about as safe as it gets. You just need to convert to SRGB to print. Easy to do in lightroom. If you really want to get lost start reading up on color spaces. One real advantage you will find with using adobe rgb is that you can easily correct slides that have turned yellow, green, blue, red without posterization. If you stick with srgb it will be almost impossible.<br>

Monitor color space: srgb<br>

View color: RGB<br>

<strong>Output Tab:</strong><br>

Printed size: Scan size</p>

<p>The other options should be pretty self explanatory.<br>

One other thing you could try would be to use vuescan advanced work flow. With this you scan a piece of the film base and lock the setting making general corrections in lightroom easier. This would require that the slides not be jumbled together and that they were sorted by manufacture and film type.<br>

Anything you read about targets I would just ignore. Built in is fine considering the quality of machinery your using.<br>

There are many different approaches to sharpening. Take your pick. Just remember that your image needs to be resized to the resolution it will print or displayed at before its final sharpening (300dpi for a lot of printers). </p>

<p> </p>

[mwmcbroom]

I suppose that if you use VueScan enough you get used to it. Me, I don't get any better scans with VS than I do with Epson Scan. And I still haven't been able to figure out how to adjust the exposure settings for individual slides when doing batch scans with VS. So, I just stick with Epson Scan, and I've generally been satisfied with the results.

 

I'll second most of what Robert wrote. But I'll add a bit:

 

I have an older Epson 4990, which was the immediate predecessor to the V7xx series. I've just recently discovered, thanks to a thread here at photo.net, in fact, that my scans are better at 4800 ppi then downsized to 2400 ppi than if I just scan at 2400 ppi to begin with. This despite the evidence that I've assembled which indicates that my scanner seems to top out at about 2000 ppi. Somewhere between 2000 ppi and 2400 ppi is actually typical max resolution for most good flatbed scanners -- despite what the manufactures claim. However, addition information is extracted at the scanner's highest optical setting that doesn't seem to show up on the test charts.

 

Because of the size of the 4800 ppi tif files, I no longer use the TWAIN driver and have the scanner software open within my image processing software. I run Epson Scan in standalone mode and have it save the images to files one at a time. No memory constraint worries that way (this machine has "only" 3 gigs of RAM).

 

As for sharpening, recently I've been trying several different options. I tried several different combinations of sharpness and grain reduction (because sharpening usually increase grain visibility), ranging from none with the scanner and none with the software to using sharpening routines and grain reduction from both ES and the software. With my 4990, I have found that I get the best sharpness and least amount of sharpness-induced graininess by setting Epson Scan's sharpness to "high" with no grain reduction, and then using the grain reduction command in my image processing software. Now, I am not saying that you should do the same. What I am saying is that you should try out the various permutations and combinations and based on your own results, scan accordingly.