Scanning Slides

[PD&EBuff]

The UPS man brought me my new Epson 4990 scanner near bed time last night. So of course I stayed up late doing some test scans. I have to say I'm very pleased with the initial results. However, on a couple of slides of locomotives with clean black on white number boards, the software seems to be removing the numbers. I would guess that this has to do with the dust and scratch removal software, but as I've had so little time to play around with it I haven’t determined that for sure. I am sure others have ran across this issue and could save myself and others considerable time experimenting with what works and what doesn’t. Anybody have some suggestins to stop the issue?

Thanks,
Thomas

[keeper1616]

Which software are you using?

[PD&EBuff]

I open up Adobe Photoshop and import the scan from there. At the moment I don't remember if the Digitial ICE was turned off or not last night.

As an aside, I was worried about installing Adobe Photoshop Elements because I already had Photoshop installed. Even though the Quick Guide said I needed to install Elments, I decided not to and worked just fine anyway. For those who'd might be in the same boat...err...cab later.

Thomas

[MikeF]

What kind of slides are you scanning? I've always found that Digital ICE works beautifully with most E6 process (Ektachrome, Fujichrome) slides. Although the marketing people claim the newer versions work with Kodachrome, I continue to get awful results, including a loss of detail like you describe. If you are scanning Kodachromes, turn off the dust removal and you'll probably get markedly better results. Of course, unless your slides are super-clean, you'll have to do some manual dust removal in Photoshop.

[PD&EBuff]

Thanks for your suggestion Mike. Most are Kodachromes, including the two in question. Though numerous other Kodachromes have turned out just fine.

Thomas

[RailBus63]

I've owned a CanoScan 8400F flatbed scanner since July 2005 and use this for my slide scanning. I'm sure there are differences between our two machines, but fior what it's worth, I scan most of my transparencies at a size of 1800 x 1200 at 300 dpi and have not had any issues whatsoever with lost detail. These are mostly older Kodachomes but I have a growing number of more recent E-6's in my collection. I typically use the lowest setting for the dust removal tool at the time of scanning and it seems to do a good job of taking care of minor specks without sacrificing image quality.

Good luck.

Jim D.

[PD&EBuff]

Well I decided to rescan the slides and see if I could come up with the setting that was causing the issue. Only one problem with that, I can't recreate issue. The numbers on the numberboards are coming through just fine now. I've tried numerous scans and the problem has hidden itself.

Thanks to everybody you responded. If it happens again and I can determine the cause, I'll let you know.

Thomas