FDanB@aol.com
Date: 10/30/01-08:59:11 AM Z
Hi Judy,
First off, bite the bullet and download Polacolor 4.5. Then burn the
download onto a CDR in case the software disappears from the web in
months to come.
If memory serves, the SprintScan Plus, though a 12 bit scanner, can only
send 8 bits to Photoshop. This means you should indeed try to make as
many tonality adjustments as possible in the Polacolor dialog boxes.
(With scanners that support exporting 10, 12, 14 or more bits to
Photoshop, there are real advantages to doing unadjusted scans and just
taking all the raw data to Photoshop where you can bend tones with
abandon with little fear of posterization.)
Make SURE you have all sharpening turned off in Polacolor. When you were
scanning slides, any sharpening would have been gentler on the dye clouds
in the color material. Now that you're scanning b/w negs, the software
will see your silver grains as important detail and try to amplify
it...exactly what you don't want. Besides, you can sharpen with much more
control later in Photoshop.
Polacolor 4.5 does provide for scanning in b/w, though as others have
pointed out, there are advantages to scanning in RGB and then examining
the color channels in Photoshop to see which one(s) are the least noisy.
Yes, it's a little bit more technical to scan in RGB and then use the
Channel Mixer but you will witness better quality if you take the time to
learn this technique.
I found (with the 4.5 version of Polacolor on a SprintScan 4000) that the
Raw Color Negative setting worked best when scanning Tri-X and similar
emulsions. Because the scanner is expecting an orange mask color with
this setting, you should go to the Color tab in the Polacolor software
and remove the cast with the eyedropper tool.
Hope this helps,
Dan
You said in your message...
>The software program (I'm still using Polacolor Insight 3, resisting
>another download, I confess) has a bug... won't scan in black & white
>then bring into Photoshop.... you have to scan in "color", bring to
>Photoshop in color, & THEN switch to b&w. Could something in that be the
>problem? Or maybe new bug since last use ?
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