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Scanning Techniques for Photography, Art, and Design

Scanning Techniques for Photography, Art, and Design

with Taz Tally

 


Review the scanning techniques graphics professionals and photographers use, while delving into workflow considerations and the advanced image-quality controls available in most scanning software. Author Taz Tally explains the core concepts, such as how resolution and interpolation affect scans; introduces the industry-standard SilverFast scanning software; and shares the settings to achieve the best results from a scan. The course also covers keeping your scanner and its parts clean and free of dust, and includes a variety of start-to-finish scanning tasks.
Topics include:
  • Understanding grayscale values and channels
  • Evaluating and correcting images with histograms
  • Saving to different file formats
  • Managing color
  • Cleaning the scanner and images
  • Reproducing versus assigning colors
  • Recognizing contone versus dot pattern images
  • Understanding bit depth
  • Scanning logos and line art
  • Scanning transparent film, positive or negative
  • Capturing high dynamic range (HDR) scans

show more

author
Taz Tally
subject
Design, Photography, Scanning
level
Intermediate
duration
6h 53m
released
Oct 11, 2011

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Introduction
Welcome
00:04I am Taz Tally and welcome to scanning technique for photography, art, and design.
00:09In this course we'll look at scanning a wide variety of images, including simple
00:14and complex line-art, continuous tone grayscale and color images, complex
00:19images, and documents on a range of scanning devices.
00:23I'll start by showing you the fundamentals of scanning including the types of
00:26scanners and image challenges, linear resolution and bit-depth as well as well
00:30as the characteristics and use of pixel and vector-based images.
00:35We will address how to properly evaluate your images prior to scanning and
00:39discuss some of the particular challenges of tone and color reproduction.
00:43You'll also see how to select and use scanning tools including histograms, color
00:48sampler points and info panels, levels, curves, and sharpening.
00:53Along the way I'll show you how to complete specific scanning tasks, calibrate
00:57your scanner, color manage your workflow, and accomplish entire projects.
01:01So darn those lint-free gloves and gather up all your favorite graphics,
01:05images, and documents and let's get started with scanning technique for
01:09photography, art, and design.
Collapse this transcript
What you should know before watching this course
00:00Let's chat about what you should know before you start taking this class.
00:03First, the good news is, no scanning knowledge is expected.
00:07We are going to start right from the fundamentals and move up from there.
00:10You should know however this course is really optimized for dedicated scanners.
00:14Rather than the multipurpose scanners, printers, and fax machines, a home and
00:19business course is really optimized for that.
00:21So if you're taking this course you should probably have a dedicated scanner
00:24such as the flatbed scanner that you see on the left here that may or may not
00:28have transparency scanning or automatic document feeder capabilities but you
00:32should have a good flatbed scanner with a glass platen or the dedicated film
00:36scanner that you see here on your right.
00:38Having access to basic image editing applications such as Photoshop or Photoshop
00:42Elements and some basic knowledge of how to open images and access menus in
00:47Photoshop or Photoshop Elements is certainly going to be helpful.
00:49And to maximize your compatibility and minimize problems that you might have
00:53with operating your scanner it's a real good idea before you start the course to
00:57go ahead and update your scanner drivers and your software, and here let me just
01:01show you how to do that on a couple of different websites for some of the more
01:04common scanners and drivers and software.
01:07The primary scanning application we are using during this course is SilverFast
01:11software from LaserSoft.
01:12We are using this software for two fundamental reasons.
01:15One is, it's very, very high-quality software with lots of sophisticated
01:18controls, and two, the company that makes the software LaserSoft make SilverFast
01:23for a wide variety of medium -to-high quality scanners.
01:26So it's kind of like the Photoshop of the scanning world if you will.
01:29Gives you lots of controls and it gives you a standard interface.
01:33So if you don't have SilverFast and you might want to go to the site and here's
01:36the website here www.silverfast.com, and if you don't already have it or you
01:42don't have the most recent version, click on the Download button and then you
01:45can click on Demo Versions and you can buy and use the demo version and it's
01:49fully functional as far as manipulating it, you won't get the high-quality scans
01:54without some text on top of it.
01:56And then notice they have a wide variety of different softwares here.
01:58We are using SilverFast for scanners so click on that, and then just select your
02:02manufacturer and here we'll get down and we'll choose Epson.
02:07It's one of the scanners we are using here.
02:09And then the Perfection scanner and we are using the V750 Pro and English and
02:17then choose your Operating System, and we are doing Mac 10.6 on this
02:21particular computer.
02:23And then you want to download either SilverFast AI or SilverFast AI Studio, one of those two.
02:28You can just click on the Download and then you just put in your name and your
02:32country and your email address and tell them, yes absolutely, you want them to
02:36send your emails every single day and then basically you are just adding your
02:40name to their database but I would not check that.
02:42then register and then download the software.
02:45So that's from the SilverFast site and get it for your particular scanner and
02:49you will be glad that you did.
02:51From the Epson site one of the more common scanner manufacturers and we are
02:55using one of their scanners here for this course.
02:57You go to Drivers & Support and then go to Scanners and we will click on Epson
03:03Perfection Series and V750 Pro and then Drivers & Downloads and you can just
03:12click on Macintosh or Windows 32 or 64-bit whichever one you're using.
03:17Then just scroll down once you get to your version of the page and here it's the Macintosh.
03:21You are working on Windows you will get to a Windows list and then just find
03:25your version of the specific version of the operating system that they are
03:28offering here and download the Scanner Driver.
03:31And then there is the Epson Scan Installer.
03:33This is the actual scanning software itself, notice this is 10.4-10.6.
03:39So whichever manufacturer you have it's going to be a similar type of download
03:43circumstance to this.
03:44If you don't have Photoshop or Photoshop Elements I would encourage you to
03:47get one of the other.
03:48There are some really good essential training that's available here on
03:51the Lynda.com site.
03:52Well, let's go scanning.
Collapse this transcript
Using the exercise files
00:00If you are a premium member of the Lynda .com Online Training Library or if you
00:04are watching this tutorial on a DVD ROM, you have access to the Exercise Files
00:09used throughout this title.
00:10You will find these files in the folder labeled Exercise Files.
00:14When you open this up, you will see the Exercise Files folder is divided into
00:19chapters and here we have six chapters in this course and I have provided files
00:23of two different kinds.
00:24One, such as those files in Chapter 01 you can use to follow along in the
00:28explanations in exercises that I do and that you see on screen.
00:32Others such as you see in Chapter 06 are the results of scanning and editing
00:37that I've accomplished in Photoshop that you can then open and see the results
00:41for yourself and compare with your own results.
00:43Many of the scans that I will perform in this class are on images of course
00:47that you don't have.
00:47So it'd be a great idea for you to follow along with similar kinds of images.
00:52If I'm scanning simple black-and-white line art such as this bicycle, if you can
00:56find a similar file that's simpler, that's an edge-base line art and you can
01:00follow along and perform the same scans.
01:02Similarly, if I'm scanning negative such as this Fireworks file or a continuous
01:08tone grayscale images or detailed line art, if you can find your own examples to
01:12follow along and then you'll have files to actually scan.
01:16You probably don't want to try to print these images out and then rescan them
01:20because you will be scanning a printed version of what was originally a line art
01:24drawing or a continuous tone image and the results will be very different
01:27because your images are going to be constructed out of halftone dots.
01:30Do try to find your own images.
01:31That would be great.
01:32If you are a monthly member or an annual number of Lynda.com you don't have
01:36access to these exercise files, but you can follow along from scratch with your
01:40own assets, so let's get started.
Collapse this transcript
1. Scanning Fundamentals
Scanners and digital cameras
00:00Let's begin our discussion of scanners by comparing them with the technology
00:04that is perhaps more familiar, a digital camera.
00:07For many people scanners are these kind of mysterious black boxes that you open
00:11up, you put in your image or your document, you close it, you click the Auto
00:15button, you are not quite sure what's going to come out the other end.
00:17There is a good historical reason for this.
00:20Prior to the digital age, cameras and scanners had very different technologies,
00:24in fact the imaging product they created were very, very different.
00:27But with the development and evolution of digital imaging technology cameras
00:31and scanners really have blended right together, they really work very much the same now.
00:35Both capture and digitize subjects, both create pixel-based images.
00:40Now of course there is some packaging differences between them.
00:42A digital camera, you can pretty much tell that from across the room.
00:45scanners, not so much.
00:47This is obviously kind of a scanner particularly when you open it up, but this,
00:50not sure what that is, and this, is this a scanner, is it a fax machine, is it a printer?
00:54Well lo and behold, it's all three.
00:57So there are some packaging differences between the two and there are also some
01:01differences in terms of what we use them for in terms of capturing.
01:04Typically, digital cameras we used these for capturing live 3D images, and it
01:08tend to work in a single shot, click, you take the picture all at one time.
01:11A scanner on the other hand, we tend to use them, we are capturing more static
01:15two-dimensional objects such as documents and photographs, and there is a
01:18scanning element that moves back and forth to capture the image, so instead of
01:22taking as a single shot, like a camera, it scans back and forth, hence the name is Scanner.
01:26Now certainly there is some crossover uses, there are some cameras that are used
01:30for capturing large dimensional artwork that's two-dimensional and there is even
01:35some three-dimensional scanners, and there are even cameras that have scanning
01:39backs on them, but for most of us in the graphic arts industry and in business,
01:43we are going to be using our cameras for capturing live three-dimensional
01:46objects and scanners for flat two-dimensional ones.
01:50Now there is also some handling differences.
01:51With a digital camera we can hold it in our hands, we can put it on the tripod,
01:55we can change the position.
01:57Scanners tend to be more static environment, which is actually a good thing.
02:00It means it's easier for us to capture images because they are flat all
02:03the time, very static.
02:05Now there are some control options differences as well.
02:08With digital cameras we control things like shutter speed and focal length, and
02:11f-stop, there is perspective changes and of course enormous lighting changes in
02:15a digital camera environment.
02:16We don't have any of those.
02:18This is a much more consistent environment when we work with a scanner.
02:21This means that things are actually easier with a scanner in a lot of ways.
02:25And I know what you creative people are thinking.
02:26I want creative control of my artwork.
02:29Well, I promise you two things, one, we'll show you how to do plenty of
02:31creative things with your scanner, and I promise you that in the post-scan I
02:35will show you how you can capture images with your scanner and you can have
02:38your creative way with them in your digital imaging editing program such as
02:42Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.
02:44So choose your digital weapon.
02:45If you are capturing three-dimensional scene, digital camera is going to be your weapon.
02:49If you are doing more two-dimensional static art, such as a photograph, then the
02:53scanner is what you are going to be using.
02:55It's nice to have both and to have facility to control both.
02:59On our course we are going to be focusing on two-dimensional line art graphics,
03:02photographs, and scanning and processing documents.
Collapse this transcript
Types of scanners
00:00Let's discuss the kind of scanners you're likely to have access to and to use.
00:04Here before us we see three very common types of scanners.
00:07We have a flatbed reflective scanner, we have a dedicated film scanner, and then
00:11we have a multi-purpose scanner.
00:13There is a fourth kind of scanner called the Drum Scanner, we don't show
00:15you here and that's a very large and expensive scanner that you are
00:18unlikely to encounter.
00:20So we are going to focus on these three scanners here.
00:22Let's break down each one of these three and talk about how they work and what
00:26they are most likely to be used for.
00:28This is the flatbed scanner also known as a Reflective Scanner.
00:31It's called a Reflective Scanner because of the way in which it works.
00:35A Reflective Scanner like this has three primary elements.
00:38It has a cushion top that holds the image in place.
00:41It has a glass platen on which you place your image to be scanned or your
00:46document page to be scanned.
00:47Then there is a scan element that's underneath that glass platen.
00:50And that scan element has two elements to it.
00:53It has a lighting element and it has an image capturing element.
00:56After you place your image on the scanner and you close the top that scan
00:58element moves underneath the image, the light shines, reflects off of the image
01:03and then it's captured by that same element that's moving across, hence the
01:06name Reflective Scanner.
01:08This type of scanner is really optimized for doing this kind of scan.
01:12There are some options that you can get for this kind of scanner to extend its usefulness.
01:17One of those is you've got some film holders, this one holds slides, but you can
01:21also do this with negatives as well and these are holders that you can put
01:26inside and when you use these you take off that from top and then you see that
01:33there is another glass platen up here and there is another scan element.
01:36And the way this works is, when you close this scanner top, both of the
01:39scan elements move.
01:40The top one provides the light and the bottom one provides the capture of the
01:44light, and this allows you to scan film of both positive and negative types.
01:49So the scanner then becomes a film scanner.
01:52It's really not optimized for this but it can be used for that.
01:55Some of these types of scanners you can also get them with a document feeder
01:58option which is similar to the ones that are built into the multi-purpose
02:01scanner, more on that in just a few minutes.
02:03But again, this kind of scanner is really optimized for scanning reflective art.
02:07If you are going to be doing primarily film then a dedicated film scanner is
02:12something you probably want to consider.
02:13As you can see this is a smaller and simpler device.
02:17It works very simply, you put your film inside of a holder like this either
02:21positive or negative, then you slide it inside the scanner and typically fix
02:25into place and then you scan your image.
02:27Even though this is a smaller and simpler scanner, it actually results in
02:30higher quality scans, why?
02:32Because it's a very simple and elegant light path that your light follows, there
02:36is a light source which goes through the film and then it's captured by the
02:40capture device underneath.
02:41Unlike, for instance film scanning with a flatbed scanner like this where the
02:46light has to go through two glass area interfaces, two film area interfaces,
02:50and then two more glass air interfaces, that's a very complicated light path,
02:55and you can get things like dispersions, and reflections and things like Newton
02:58rings, dedicated film scanners typically don't have those kinds of problems or challenges.
03:03So you can't do reflective art here.
03:04This is not a flexible scanner like this one, but it does a very good job of scanning film.
03:09Now the third kind of scanner is the multipurpose scanner.
03:12I call this a Swiss Army Knife of Scanning.
03:15This is actually a modified version of the reflective scanner, of the flatbed scanner.
03:20It has a cushion-top and has a glass platen like this.
03:23Typically, these don't have film scanning options.
03:26they are primary used for reflective work.
03:29But what they are really dedicated for is scanning documents.
03:33That's what they are really optimized for.
03:35You can do an okay job, moderate quality in terms of graphics, but if you are
03:39scanning lots of documents and converting them into the PDFs and managing
03:42those documents that's what this kind of scanner is really optimized for, you
03:46would purchase that for.
03:48So your choices of scanners are basically these three in the graphic arts
03:52and business world.
03:53Which type of scan you get is really going to depend upon your scan challenges
03:57that you have, and of course your budget, that's always going to come into play.
04:00If you primarily need to scan a reflective art, like this, then flatbed scanner
04:05is going to be the scanner for you.
04:06If you are primarily scanning film, then this is the kind of scanner.
04:10If you really want to mostly do documents, then this kind of scanner.
04:13Now most people have more than one thing they need to scan.
04:16So if you are primarily doing documents and modest quality graphics are okay,
04:20you can go with this device, but if you really need high-quality scans of
04:23reflective art, then this is going to be the scanner.
04:26If you need to do good quality of both, then you may really need to get both scanners.
04:31If you can do modest quality on your film, get good results but not the very
04:35best then maybe this is the scanner if you have budgetary issues.
04:38By the way what are these scanners cost?
04:39Well, these scanners, depending upon your options are between $500 and a $1000
04:43for the good quality ones.
04:45The dedicated film scanners are anywhere from like $200-$600 and then the
04:50multipurpose scanners are in the $100 to $200 category.
04:54Now if you are lucky just get one of each and then you have optimized scanning
04:57for all the things that you need.
04:58But otherwise you have to make a choice based upon your budget.
Collapse this transcript
Scanner location
00:00Let's discuss the features of a good scanning location.
00:03The two things we want to emphasize is maintaining high image quality and having
00:07an efficient scanning workflow.
00:09First and foremost we want a good flat, stable surface, and this is
00:12particularly important if you're working with a flatbed scanner that has large
00:16scanning elements that move back and forth, the scanner tends to move a little
00:19bit and if your surface is moving, that in turn moves the scanner and you end
00:23up with lower quality scans.
00:24Secondly, and this is so important, so many people don't do this.
00:27Have a large enough scanning surface for staging your whole scanning workflow,
00:31particularly your images that most of your surface should be of your images, the
00:35scanner is going to take up relatively small portion of this.
00:38Can't tell you the number of times I see people put their scanners on their
00:40roll-around carts which are not stable to begin with, but there's no place to
00:44stage and manage your scanned images.
00:47So give yourself some room here to move out and dedicate that space for your scanning.
00:52Third, and this maybe the most important thing of all.
00:54You want to work in a dust-free environment.
00:57The first thing to make sure that happens is, work on a solid surface.
01:00No cloth, I don't care how bad you think the surface looks, and this one looks
01:03pretty good, but no cloth because cloth gets static electricity and static
01:08electricity attracts dust like nobody's business.
01:11And particularly when you are working with film, you can put that film down on
01:14that cloth surface, boom, the dust jumps on that film and that's it.
01:18That's all she wrote in terms of your scanning efficiency workflow because you
01:21can spend lots of time to clean off that dust and you never get it all and then
01:25when you get it on your scanner it's still going to be there.
01:27All right, so if we want to work in a dust-free environment the first thing is
01:31no cloth, secondly, we want to avoid moving air.
01:34Things like manufacturing and shipping environments where a lot of dust is
01:37generated, you want to stay away from heating and air-conditioning vents,
01:40doorways, open windows.
01:42It's really even worth installing air filter.
01:45They are very inexpensive and they can really keep the dust away from
01:47your scanned images.
01:48I want to emphasize this whole thing about dust.
01:51When you take dust and it gets into your scanner or it gets on your images,
01:54when you scan it, the scanning process is actually going to magnify the impact of that dust.
01:59Particularly if you are starting with a small piece of film like a 35
02:03millimeter slide or 120 film, you have to magnify that a lot in order to get up to a useful size.
02:0835 millimeter, to 5x7 or 8x10.
02:11You are not just magnifying the image, you are magnifying the dust and then when
02:14you go to apply Unsharp Mask, what does Unsharp Mask do?
02:17It enhances high contrast edges.
02:20What is a piece of dust?
02:21The dust is a high contrast edge.
02:23So the process of sharpening your image actually exacerbates the impact of that dust.
02:27So avoid at all cost.
02:30Another issue that you want to address is constant temperature.
02:33You want to keep your scanner away from heater and air-conditioning vents and
02:36open windows, any place where you've got a lot of change in temperature.
02:39Certainly stay away from south-facing windows.
02:41north-facing windows are okay, but stay away from south facing windows where you
02:44can have temperature changes of 40 or 50 degrees.
02:47The reason for this is that your scanner changes it.
02:50How it performs changes with temperature and if you are calibrating your scanner
02:53which you want to do, you calibrate it in the morning when it's cool and then by
02:57mid afternoon it's 40 degrees warmer in the scanner, your calibration is gone
03:01and the consistency of your scans have changed, all right, completely dissolved.
03:06All right, so just a review, for your scan location, good flat, stable surface,
03:10adequate dimension, nice and clean, no dust, constant temperature.
03:14These are the keys to setting up your scanner for high-quality efficient
03:17scanned workflows.
Collapse this transcript
What scanners and digital cameras create
00:00In this movie, I would like to discussion what scanners, and for that matter
00:03digital cameras capture and create, and hopefully at the end of this video,
00:07you will have removed some of the blackbox effect of what a scanner is and
00:11what a scanner does.
00:12And I will also give you some foundation knowledge, so you will know as you are
00:16selecting various scan modes, what you are actually going to end up with, at the
00:19end of your scan process.
00:21Okay, first step, what the scanners and digital cameras create, what's the
00:24basic building block? It's pixels.
00:27And we see the pixels here.
00:28Pixels are basically square building blocks.
00:30I refer to them as pixel bricks and what a scanner and a digital camera does, is
00:34they construct an image out of these pixel bricks, if you will.
00:37Now depending upon the scan mode in which you are working, you can create
00:41certainly black-and- white pixels to pixel bricks.
00:44When you work in say grayscale scan mode, you capture pixels that have
00:47grayscale values or if you're working in color RGB scan mode, you can actually
00:52create "color" pixels.
00:53We are going to put that color in quotes, because as you are going to see
00:56scanners and digital cameras don't actually capture "color," more on that in just a second.
01:01By the way, the dimensions of these pixels, the size of these pixels is all
01:05wrapped up in a linear resolution of the file which we'll talk about a little bit later.
01:09Okay, let me just reduce the size of this window a little bit, and let's take a
01:14look at some images and some scan modes, and to help us discuss scan modes, I am
01:20going to bring up Channels.
01:21I am also going to introduce another tool we are going to be using throughout
01:25the scanned process and this is called the Info panel.
01:28We are just going to get started with these and that will help us transition
01:31into working with and controlling our scanner.
01:34These are four kind of basic images that we will work with and we capture
01:37images with the scanner.
01:39The first image we see here is a line art image and we are going to zoom in this
01:43line art image, and we are going to see, this is one of the very basic kinds of
01:47images we'll capture with the scanner.
01:49Some images that you capture will just have black and white pixels that we have
01:53here, and notice that there is only one channel in this image.
01:57When we are capturing black and white, are sometimes called line art scan mode,
02:01this is what we end up with.
02:03One other thing to introduce at this point is the actual values assigned to those pixels.
02:08I am going to zoom way in here, and I am going to go to my Info tool, and I am
02:13going to look at the value of the black pixel and the value of the white pixel,
02:17and notice down here in my Info tool, I have K value which stands for black and
02:21notice it's 100% on the black pixel and 0% gray on the white pixel.
02:26That's one way to look at the grayscale value of this image.
02:29There are only two shades of gray here, black and white.
02:31There are two ways to measure grayscale value, and this is another way over here
02:36on the right side of the panel, the RGB value.
02:38I am going to go back to that black pixel and notice the RGB value is set at 0
02:43and the K value is set at 100.
02:45So when I move over to the white pixel, notice how the RGB goes to 255.
02:50Notice those two scales are inverted, this is not my fault.
02:52It's kind of just the way it is.
02:54But you want to get used to and that's why we are starting now talking about RGB
02:58values and they are really grayscale values on the scale of 0 to 255.
03:02So if you are just working with straight black and white images, it's okay to
03:06think in terms of K value, but we are going to be working in the RGB world, so
03:10it's good to start thinking about it now.
03:11So remember a black pixel is 0 and a white pixel is 255.
03:15So that's the simplest image.
03:18Let's move over to our Moose image.
03:20I am just going to move zip over here, I am going to move the Moose back in
03:22here, and let's zoom in on our moose image, all the way in, and notice that
03:28unlike the simple black-and-white image that we have here, this is a
03:32multi-tonal grayscale image.
03:33And notice we have pixels with grayscale values.
03:36But first before we talk about the detail of the grayscale values, let's
03:39look back down here at Channels just like he black-and-white image, where we
03:43just have two shades of gray, black-and-white with one channel, we still have one channel.
03:48But on this channel, we can capture more than one shade of gray.
03:51Let's go back down to our Info panel here and notice that the white pixels, look
03:55at the K value close to 1%, the dark ones are getting up towards 100.
03:58But when we are dealing with multiple shades of gray, again, we need to start
04:03thinking of it in terms of RGB values.
04:05So let's look at the RGB values.
04:07We are looking right here on our RGB value close to 255, whereas the darker ones
04:12are down close to 0.
04:13So these two basic images we can tell our scanner to capture in straight
04:17black-and-white mode, in which we get one channel of pixels that are either
04:20black or white or we can ask our scanner to capture in grayscale mode, sometimes
04:25called a grayscale photo or black-and-white photo.
04:28Different scanners and different software use different terminologies, but the
04:31results are the same.
04:32One channel with multiple shades of gray in our pixels
04:36On an image like we have with Zip here, and let's enlarge Zip a little bit and
04:40zoom in, here we go.
04:42And we see that this image when we zoom way in is still again pixels, and once
04:47again we have multiple shades of gray.
04:49A lot more density of grayscale value, but notice that the lighter pixels have
04:53higher values to them, and the darker pixels have lower values to them.
04:58And then the other and final kind of image that we can capture with a scanner
05:01is an RGB color image.
05:03And boy, this has got a lot of color in it, lots of brilliant yellows and reds
05:07and some blues, but notice the big change here.
05:10Instead of just having one channel, we have got three, but here is the
05:13important point about understanding how fundamentally a scanner and output
05:17devices work with your scanner.
05:19When we look at these three channels, the red, the green, and the blue, notice
05:23that your scanner can only capture grayscale.
05:25I know what you are thinking, hey, that's color there, but that color is not
05:29actually captured by your scanner.
05:30And here is one of the fundamental truths of working in the digital world.
05:34all colors are created by output devices.
05:36When you capture an image with a scanner or digital camera, what you are
05:39actually capturing is 3 grayscale channels, to which we assign various shades
05:44of red, green, or blue, and then our output devices take those shades of red,
05:48green, or blue in the case of a RGB monitor, paints them with red, green, and blue.
05:52One a printing device you may print them with Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black.
05:57So on a scanner, depending upon which mode we select, we get various number of
06:01channels, shades of gray, and then in some cases multiple shades of gray.
06:06So in black and white modes we get one channel, which is black-and-white pixels.
06:10When we work in grayscale mode, we get one channel, but we get multiple shades
06:14of gray assigned to those pixels on a scale of 0 to 255.
06:18When we scan in RGB color mode, what we end up with actually is 3 grayscale
06:22channels to which we then assign color and output.
06:25And if you're thinking about this, this isn't the first time you've kind of
06:28realized that what we actually capture is grayscale, which by the way is why
06:31they are called digital scanners or digital cameras, they only capture 0s and
06:351s, black-and-white, or shades of gray.
06:37You may be thinking, then how do we actually control the color?
06:41We control the color by controlling the shades of gray in our image.
06:44To remember the fundamental truth, all color is created by output devices and
06:48when you truly understand this, then the desktop publishers lament, make sense,
06:52oh, what I see on my monitor doesn't match what I have on my printer.
06:56What I saw came off my digital camera doesn't match what I get on my printer.
07:00I have two different printers or two different monitors and the color looks different.
07:03Well, it kind of makes sense now, doesn't it?
07:05We have the same shades of gray, but they are all being interpreted a little bit
07:08different, because all color is created by output devices.
07:11One final point to make here is that one of the things we can decide to do is
07:15convert these pixels into vectors, which are the other basic building blocks
07:19that we have with digital images.
07:20More on that later.
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Understanding grayscale values and channels
00:00In this movie I would like to expand our understanding of grayscale values in Channels.
00:05In previous movies we talked about the basic building blocks of a digital image,
00:08what does a scanner or a digital camera capture, we saw that it captures pixels.
00:12We talked about the fact that depending upon the scan mode that you choose
00:16you'll end up with single or multiple channels and you can have black-and-white
00:20simple black-and-white or grayscale values in pixels that your scanner or
00:23digital camera captures.
00:25And what I'd like to do here is develop that whole concept of grayscale value in
00:29channels and that number we actually put in those grayscale values.
00:32So I have zoomed in here on this Blue- Green cape and it's very, very colorful
00:36image, and just to review when you capture a "color image" what the scanner or
00:41digital camera actually captures is three grayscale channels that we call Red,
00:46Green, and Blue, but as we see here they are really nothing, but grayscale,
00:50because that's all a digital camera or digital scanner can capture.
00:53And where does this color come from?
00:55Remember that all colors created by output devices.
00:58In this case the monitor on which you are viewing this image actually applies
01:02Red, Green, and Blue colors to these grayscale pixels and the amount of Red,
01:05Green, and Blue that are size of the pixels depends upon the grayscale value
01:09that's on the Red, the Green, and the Blue channel.
01:11So let's take a look at an individual pixel and here I am going to use my Info
01:15tool in Photoshop, that's the I for Info tool, and I am setting a Point Sample,
01:20so I am just measuring one pixel at a time.
01:23Normally when we're scanning or correcting images we'll do an average number of
01:26pixels, but in this case I just want to look at individual pixels.
01:29So I am going to zoom in just a little bit more.
01:32I see you can really see that we're just looking at one pixel.
01:35Now look at the grayscale value of that pixel, we'll do that by looking at
01:38their, remember, "color image" RGB values that we see over here, so when I look
01:42at the Info panel, the Red is 115, the Green is 140, and the Blue is 137.
01:47Now with these grayscale values going to scale of 0 to 255 where 0 is Black and
01:54255 is pure White, and we look at the ratio of these numbers, look at the Green
01:58and the Blue is higher than the Red which certainly makes sense, right, because
02:01this is a Green, Blue cape if you will.
02:03But what do these numbers actually mean?
02:05I am going to go through these three channels.
02:07I am just going to do it from my keyboard shortcuts.
02:09I am going to use Command or Ctrl+3, 4, and 5, as you see in the Channels panel,
02:15so that I don't move my tool from looking at that one pixel.
02:17So I am going go to the Red channel and look at the Red value in the Info panel right after.
02:22It's at 115.
02:22Notice when I activate just the Red panel notice the number is 115.
02:26Let's go back to the RGB.
02:29Now the Green Channel is 140, so if we activate the Green Channel it's 140,
02:33back to RGB view, Blue is 137, guess what, when we go to just the Blue Channel everything is 137.
02:39So when you're looking at the Red, Green, and Blue values what we're really
02:44seeing is the grayscale value in each of those channels.
02:46The reason why this is so important to really understand is that when we're
02:50going to be controlling our scanners, we're actually going to be controlling the
02:53grayscale values that make up these RGB images on each of the three channels.
02:58So this is on a scale of 0 to 255 where 255 is pure white, 0 is pure black,
03:04means the absence of that color.
03:06In as we have here in this Green, Blue image, the Green, Blue values will be
03:09higher than the Red because there is more Green and Blue than there is Red in this image.
03:13So it's all grayscale values that we're going to be capturing, editing, and
03:16manipulating during the scan process.
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Understanding pixels and vectors
00:00Welcome back to Scanning Fundamentals.
00:02In this section I'd like to talk to you a little bit about the difference
00:05between pixels and vectors, and one of the reasons for this is at the very
00:08beginning of your scanning process one of the decisions you want to make is, do
00:11I want my image to actually end up as a pixel or a Vector-based image?
00:15The reason why you make this decision early on is that how you scan your
00:19image, well in some case it would be very different if you're scanning for pixels or vectors.
00:22Now understanding the characteristics of pixels and vectors of course is
00:26critical to understanding how you are going to choose one or the other.
00:29Here up on screen you see two different versions of the same image.
00:33On the left-hand side here you see in Photoshop a Pixel-based version of the
00:37image, on the right-side and I'll click over here to activate that we're now
00:40working in Illustrator, and this is a Vector-based version of the image.
00:44So as I go click back and forth here I am moving back and forth in Photoshop to
00:48Illustrator from Pixel to Vector-based image, and you'll notice that over in the
00:52left we have the Photoshop tools and over on the right side I have moved my
00:55toolbar for Illustrator.
00:57I have just set it up this way so you can see both applications and both
00:59versions of the image at the same time.
01:02First let's zoom in to the Photoshop or Pixel-based image and take a look at
01:06that edge and we take a look and we see that our edge is made up of this
01:11stair-step of pixels.
01:13Not a bad looking edge and I am going to show you how to scan lighter on images,
01:16you get a good-looking edge like that.
01:18Now let's pop over to Illustrator when I click over on this side and I am going
01:21to do the same thing I am going to zoom in on this edge and look at the
01:24difference between these two.
01:25When you zoom in on an Illustrator image no matter how much you zoom in, and
01:29notice if you look at down in the lower left-hand corner here in its 6400%, I
01:34notice how very, very sharp that edge is, because this a Vector-based edge.
01:38Instead of being made up of building blocks what I call Pixel Bricks like the
01:42Pixel-based image in Photoshop is, and a Vector-based image instead of being
01:45built up like that you instead have these paths connecting one point and
01:49another, so no matter how much you zoom in you're still going to get that nice
01:53hard edge and this is called a Resolution-Independent Edge.
01:56That is, the resolution of this edge is not defined in the actual image it's
02:00determined when you actually output it.
02:02Whereas in Photoshop the pixels are a specific size and the resolution of the
02:07image is determined by the size of the pixels, and in this case if we go into
02:11the Image Size dialog box we see this is a 600 pixel per inch image, so each of
02:16these pixels is one-600th of an inch on the side, this is a
02:19resolution-dependent image.
02:21The reason why it's important to know this is that some images are really,
02:24really good in capturing, in editing as vectors, whereas others really require
02:28pixels and we're going to move into more that discussion in the next section.
02:32Right now I just want to kind of cover the difference between pixels and vectors.
02:35So you can see Vector-based images are very, very sharp whereas Pixel-based
02:39images are kind of stair- step, or you might think, oh!
02:41I always want vectors, hold your guns.
02:43In the next video we're going to talk about the difference between those
02:46two types and how we would match them up with various kinds of images, but first watch this.
02:50Let me show you one of the differences between pixels and vectors.
02:52I am going to do a selection here, like this, and I am going to do a transform
02:57and I am going to take this image, I am going to scale it down and I am going to
03:00deform it as you can see here, and then I am going to take this and I am going
03:03to rotate this image.
03:05And then I am going to deselect that and I am going to zoom back in on this edge.
03:08Remember that nice, beautiful, stair- stepped edge we saw where everything
03:12was kind of nice and even, notice how that edge is starting to break up and fall apart.
03:16That's due to interpolation more on interpolation later.
03:19This is what happens when you scale, skew or rotate or apply any kind of
03:22dimensional change to your image if it's a Pixel-based image.
03:25The edge quality is going to degrade.
03:27Now let's pop over here to Illustrator and do the same thing, let's scale this
03:31puppy down and distort it and then we'll actually rotate it as well, no matter
03:36what we do, how many times, in what ways we do this, I am going to click and now
03:40I am going to zoom back in on that edge, look at that.
03:42It's just as sweet as it was to begin with.
03:44With a resolution-independent edge it's made up of vectors, remember there is no
03:48resolution to actually output the image.
03:51So there is a difference between those two images, pixels versus vectors.
03:55In the next section we're going to talk about which kinds of images you'd like
03:57to use for vectors and which kinds you'd like to use for pixels.
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Choosing pixels or vectors
00:00In this movie I'd like to discuss which kinds of images we're going to convert
00:03and edit as pixels and which kinds of images we're going to convert and edit as vectors.
00:08In the previous movie we talked about the fundamental differences between Pixels
00:12and Vector-based images.
00:13If you have any questions about that go ahead and refer to the previous movie.
00:16Here we're going to move on and look at a couple of different kinds of images
00:19and see which ones lend themselves best to saving as vectors and editing as
00:22vectors and which one to saving and editing as pixels.
00:25Let's start with the bicycle image that we used in the previous movie, I am
00:28going to zoom in here and just as a quick review I am going to zoom in on that
00:32edge remember Pixel-based images are made up of pixels.
00:35Whereas and let's move over to Illustrator and the Vector-based images are made
00:39up of edges, where you don't have any of that stair-stepping.
00:42You can see the quality difference alone just looking at this.
00:45In the previous movie we discussed how the more you edit a Pixel-based image
00:49particularly, dimensionally scale, skew and rotate the lower the quality that edge gets.
00:53When we're working in Pixel-based images if we know we're going to be doing a
00:57lot of editing we know that edge quality is going to be degraded, whereas, if we
01:01have that same kind of image and we're working in a Vector-based image we know
01:04that we can edit that image to our hearts the light and the edge quality is
01:07going to remain the same.
01:08Now notice with this bicycle-based image this image is defined by the edge, so
01:13if we have edge-based images in typically logo, line art, type that simple then
01:18it's going to behoove us to convert it into vectors and then to our editing,
01:21because then we're not going to have any degradation of our image.
01:24On the other hand if we have an image like this Moose that we see here, this is
01:27also a line art image, but it's a detailed line art image, and notice as we zoom
01:32in here we see lots and lots of detail.
01:34If you can imagine and try to convert this into a Vector, couple of things would happen.
01:37One is, the very detailed nature that you see in this image would be lost,
01:41because everything would be converted into vectors.
01:43Secondly, it would be enormously complex who achieves the basic nature of the image.
01:47Let's take a look at another kind of image that has detail, a continuous tone image.
01:51Here is a picture of my buddy Zip, and as we zoom in on a Pixel-based image we
01:56see a lot of detail there as well.
01:58And here we begin to see a real fundamental difference between the kind of
02:01images we want to capture and save as Pixel-based images and edit them as
02:05pixels and those we want to capture as pixels as we have to in the scan and
02:09convert to vectors.
02:11If our image has a lot of detail in it we're going capture it as pixels and keep it that way.
02:16If the image on the other hand is an edge -based image such as our bicycle, we're
02:20going to capture it as pixels because that's the way a scanner works and then
02:23we're going to convert it to vectors before we do any editing to it.
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Resolving resolution
00:00I would like to address what is probably the most confusing area of digital
00:04imaging that ever was and that is resolution.
00:07What is the Resolution of this image?
00:09Well, you can get all sorts of answers about that depending upon who you talk to.
00:12And that's one of the challenges.
00:13various people use various types of terminology.
00:16Some people would use DPI, Dots Per Inch other use PPI, Pixels Per Inch, still
00:21other will use res or 640x480 and some people have been using Megapixels to
00:25discuss Resolution and none of them are wrong necessarily, but they are coming
00:29at Resolution from slightly different orientation and that some people even use
00:33file size to discuss resolution.
00:35So I would like to try to clarify this and at the same time discuss which
00:39Resolution values are so important when you're setting up your scanner to
00:42do scan of an image.
00:43So to help us understand Resolution, we're going to go up underneath image
00:47where in Photoshop.
00:48I am going to go to a dialog box called Image Size.
00:50I don't particularly like the title Image Size, I would rather it be Image
00:55Dimension, and typically the way it's set up in Photoshop by default is like
00:58this, where kind of everything is turned on, the Resample, the Constrain
01:01Proportions and all these numbers are here.
01:04Now for a lot of people when you look at this dialog box, you think, oh, my gosh!
01:07Quick close that before I hurt myself, right, because there are so many numbers in here.
01:11But what I would like to do is breakdown this dialog box for you and at the same
01:15time really gives you an understanding of how to discuss and understand
01:18Resolution and how to use that to give you better quality scans.
01:21To want to be clear about discussing Resolution, do two things.
01:24One is Resolution terminology that matches the building block into your image,
01:28and secondly, separate Input Resolution from Output Resolution
01:31I am going to click OK, because I want to zoom in our image just to remind us
01:35what are the building blocks of our image, and when we zoom way in here, we
01:41remind ourselves, this image is made up of pixels.
01:45So when we go back to our Image Size dialog box, we see that Adobe in Photoshop
01:49gets it right, they use pixels, not dots, because there are no dots here.
01:53Using DPI to describe the Resolution of this image is not just wrong,
01:57it's really confusing.
01:58So we're going to use pixels.
02:00These first two numbers up here, 2200x3000, what this means is if you were to
02:05measure this image in pixels and just count them all the way across
02:09horizontally, you would count 2200 pixels.
02:12If you count out the same number of pixels vertically, boom!
02:14You would get 3000 pixels, so this is Pixel Dimensions.
02:18You may be more familiar with terms like 640x480 or 1024x768.
02:23It's the same thing, it's Pixel Dimension.
02:25So when I am having a discussion about Resolution with somebody or with myself,
02:29I am very clear, are we talking about Dimensional Resolution, which gives me the
02:33Dimensions of the image in this case, yes.
02:35So let's just click OK and go back up, we now know this image is 2200 pixels
02:40across and 3000 pixels down.
02:42That's the Dimensional Resolution of this image.
02:45Back into Image Size.
02:46I want to skip the Width and Height and go right to this number down here.
02:51Notice this number is 300, and when we look at the units, it says pixels/inch.
02:55What does this mean, 300 pixels/inch?
02:58Let's zoom in on our image just once more, and if we were to look at 1 inch
03:05of this picture across, see there is 4 inches and coming down here all the
03:11way we come to 3 inches.
03:14That mean if there's 300 pixels/inch, what's the significance of this number?
03:19Well, various kinds of output devices need different densities in terms of pixels/inch.
03:24A high quality printing device such as a Commercial Printing Press, generally
03:27requires 300 pixels/inch, whereas, say a Web image, 72 or 100 pixels/inch is
03:33all you really need.
03:34The point being is you want to pay a very close attention to this Linear Resolution.
03:38Now I am adding a new term here where it says, just Resolution, which is not a
03:42very good term all by itself, Linear meaning in a straight-line pixels/inch, 300
03:45pixels in every horizontal and 300 pixels in every vertical.
03:50So when we're setting up for a scan, we want to set our Linear Resolution for
03:55the highest quality output device we're going to be printing to.
03:58If you're printing to one device and you set up for that device.
04:00If you're going to be outputting on multiple devices then you'll choose the
04:03highest quality output device for your Linear Resolution, and typically 300
04:07pixels/inch is about the highest that you need to go for most high-quality say
04:11Commercial Printing Presses.
04:13Next, let's come down here and turn off this little Resample checkbox,
04:16because its an important little checkbox particularly in Photoshop unless
04:19when we turn this off the number of pixels in the image are frozen, which
04:24means that no matter what you do down here, the number of pixels in your
04:27image will not change.
04:28That is that there's no interpolation, and we're going to discuss a lot more
04:31about interpolation a little bit later.
04:33But what's important here is notice that at 300 pixels/inch, we can print a
04:38high-quality image at 7 inchesx10 inches.
04:41If on the other hand, we go up to 100 pixels/inch for the Web or even 72
04:45pixels/inch, notice the Dimensions in inches, which is the Output Dimensions,
04:50goes all way up to 30 inches x 41 inches.
04:53If we go to 100, it goes to 22 x 30 inches, we're not changing the number of
04:58pixels in the image, we're changing the Output Dimension of the document size,
05:02by changing the Linear Resolution.
05:04This would be fine for a Web image, but not good for Commercial Printing.
05:08For high-quality inkjet device that prints photo quality inkjets, 240
05:11pixels/inch, and by changing that with Resample turned off, we know we could
05:16print a 9 inch x 12 inch image.
05:18So when we set this up in a scanner, we want to make sure we have the proper
05:22Linear Resolution set for the highest quality output device.
05:25We also want to make sure that we have the proper Output Dimension.
05:28Okay, one other thing to discuss here and hopefully this brings everything back
05:33to center and kind of wraps a bow around all this is what is the relationship
05:37between the Pixel Dimension and the Output Dimension?
05:40So let's go back to our 2200 that we see here.
05:432200 pixels across, notice if we divide that by 100 pixels/inch, if you remember
05:47back to third grade, they said, well, if you divide pixels by pixels/inch, the
05:53pixels cancel out and you end up with inches and that's exactly what we get.
05:562200 divided by 100, lo and behold this 22 inches.
06:013000 divided by 100 is, you get it, 30 inches.
06:05That's the relationship between these numbers in this dialog box.
06:09Coming back to the discussion specifically of the scanner, when we set up a
06:13scanner then, we want to make sure that we set the proper Linear Resolution for
06:16the highest quality output device that we're going to printing to, and make sure
06:20we get the document size, the Output Resolution properly, and we want to try to
06:24minimize the amount of Resampling that we do to our images, which is why we want
06:27to capture them with a proper Linear Resolution and Dimensions to begin with.
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Working with interpolation
00:00Here I would like to discuss the difference between and the significance of
00:04Optical Resolution versus Interpolated Resolution.
00:07I've opened up an image of an O that I've scanned with my scanner at a
00:11resolution of 1200 pixels per inch.
00:13I chose 1200 pixels per inch for two reasons.
00:16One, it gives me enough detail that I can get a really sharp consistent edge as
00:20we'll see, but I also know that this is the optical also known as hardware
00:24resolution of the scanner.
00:25What that means is that the scanner is actually set up to actually physically
00:29capture pixels at one- 1200th of an inch on the side.
00:33So this is going to capture 1200 pixels in every inch horizontally and 1200
00:37pixels in every inch vertically.
00:39The reason why this is important will become clear in just a moment.
00:42So this is a 1200 pixel print scan and I'm going to zoom in on this so we can
00:46take a look at these two edges right here and you'll notice there is a real
00:49consistency to the placement of pixels.
00:51There is a little missteps every once in a while, but in general this is very,
00:55very consistent edge and the same thing on the inside.
00:59What I'm going to do now is I'm going to make a duplicate copy of this image and
01:02I'm just going to label this 1700 and we're going to convert this image from a
01:081200 pixel per inch image to a 1700 pixel per inch image in Photoshop.
01:14Notice a couple of things, one is, by default and I'm leaving it that way I'm
01:18re-sampling this image, watch what happens when I resample this image from the 1200.
01:23The original pixel dimension is 540x442, when I go up to 1700 the number of
01:29pixels goes from 765 to 626.
01:32We're adding pixels, we're adding them by interpolating, by using the pixels
01:36that are already there to create more pixels, this is what interpolation does.
01:40I'm going to click OK and then I'm going to reposition this so we can see these
01:46pixels in the same place that we see them here.
01:49Now let's compare and in fact contrast these two different edges.
01:52Look at this very, very nice smooth consistent edge and look what's happened to
01:56this edge, do you see how much rougher it is?
01:58It's even worse on the inside, and that's just one step of interpolation from
02:021200 to 1700, we haven't rotated or skewed or done anything.
02:06And what this demonstrates is that if you interpolate your image either during
02:10the scan or in the post scan you're going to lose edge quality, the quality of
02:14your image is going to go down, because new pixels are created from old pixels
02:18and they're never as good as the original ones.
02:20This is particularly important if in the very beginning phases you decide oh I
02:25want this line art image, in this case this O to be converted into vectors.
02:29When we do a conversion of vectors the vectorization software loops the
02:33consistency of this edge and the smoother and more consistent the edge is the
02:37higher the quality of the vector the smoother the vector is going to be.
02:40But the same thing is true for continuous tone images, the more you resample
02:45them the lower the quality they're going to be, they're going to lose sharpness,
02:47they're going to lose definition.
02:49So our general rule of thumb is we want to avoid interpolation whenever
02:52possible, and what this involves is scanning, using the optical resolution of
02:57the scanner whenever we can.
02:58And in the case of vectors and we'll return to this later wait until you've
03:02converted your images into vectors before you do any geometric manipulation of them.
03:06Because remember as long as you've got pixels and you're doing geometric
03:09manipulation the quality of your edges are going to be lost.
03:13There are some cases where you actually can embrace the enemy where you've got
03:17damaged images, where you can actually use this interpolation to your benefit to
03:21kind of smooth out some of the damages, but as a general rule we want to avoid
03:25interpolation whenever possible and as far as scanning goes that means setting
03:28the proper resolution to begin with.
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Understanding the effects of compression
00:00Previously we discussed the evils of applying interpolation to your image and
00:04the benefits of minimizing the amount of interpolation.
00:06Here I would like to visit a similar related topic and that is Compression,
00:10and where we want to avoid it and particularly if you're trying to maintain
00:13maximum image quality.
00:15What we have on screen here is two images.
00:17The one on the left is saved out as a . PSD, a native Photoshop file coming right
00:21from a RAW file, no compression.
00:23On the right is another version of this file.
00:25It's saved out instead of .PSD as a level 4 JPEG, so fair amount of JPEG
00:31compression has been applied to.
00:33When you look at these two images, as you can see here we're looking at them at
00:35100%, the image quality is fairly similar although the more you look in some of
00:41the details here you can see that this doesn't have quite as much detail.
00:45But you know what at a cursory inspection both images look okay.
00:48So you know maybe saving it out as JPEG is not so bad.
00:52But now let's zoom in and let's take both images up so we're comparing exactly
00:56the same view to 250%.
00:57We'll take the one on the right to 250 as well, and let's orient them just about
01:05the same on the screen and now look at there detail.
01:08Couple of different places here, take a look at down in this area where you have
01:11the big indent in through here and compare the same area, see how broken up.
01:15You can see these blocks of pixels that are created by the JPEG compression.
01:18What's going on here is that this is a lossy type of compression which means
01:22that data in the image is averaged and then re-created so you end up with losing
01:27a lot of sharpness and a lot of detail in your image.
01:29And look along this one vein here and up in this area where you see lots of
01:33fine detail, all of that detail is completely lost up in here because of the JPEG compression.
01:37Now if you're viewing this on screen at 100%, in particularly even smaller,
01:41not a big deal, if you're printing to a low-quality printing device doesn't
01:45show up nearly as much.
01:46But when you're printing to high-quality devices that really do show the detail,
01:49such as a very high-quality inkjet printer or a commercial printing press you're
01:53really going to see the differences in image quality, sharpness, and detail.
01:57In addition to avoiding interpolation we want to avoid compression as much as
02:01possible if you want to maintain maximum image quality.
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Evaluating and correcting images with histograms
00:01Earlier we discussed how images such as this RGB image that we see here a
00:05Greenwich is really a construction of three grayscale channels.
00:08What I'd like to do now is show you a tool if you can use to get a different
00:12look at all the grayscale data, and show you how to see where the data is, show
00:17you how to use that tool to evaluate the image and even to correct it and this
00:20tool is called a Histogram.
00:22We start in the upper left-hand corner with this Greenwich Village Gold image
00:25that you've seen before and we look down here at the Histogram panel, we see
00:30that there is data all the way from one end of this graph to the other.
00:34This is a graph that shows you from highlight to shadow where the distribution
00:39of data is in your image.
00:41This is the highlight, this is the mid- tone, this is the shadow, this is the
00:44quarter tone, this is the three- quarter tone, and as you can see this is a
00:48pretty well-exposed image so we have data all the way from the highlight all
00:51the way to the shadow.
00:53Just by looking at a Histogram you can get a real good idea of how the image has
00:58been exposed and as we're going to see it can lead you in the path towards how
01:02you need to correct the image and this works both in scanning and in Photoshop.
01:06What I'd like to do now is take a look at a variety of different images that
01:09have a different distribution of data to get you used to looking at and
01:13evaluating a Histogram.
01:14Let's look at this Cloud image and what I'd like to get you to do is be able to
01:18visually look at an image and actually imagine what the Histogram looks like.
01:22Notice that we've got white clouds but if we click on this image we see that
01:27there's data in the highlight but it maybe not pure white clouds and we look
01:31over this image we see, ooh, is there anything that's truly dark or truly black
01:35in here, truly shadow?
01:36When we look at the Histogram of the image we see, there's nothing that's
01:39exactly pure white and we've got most of our data from the quarter tone down to
01:44between the three-quarter tone and shadow and there's almost no shadow data in
01:47this image at all from about 60% to 100%.
01:51One of the points I want to drive home here is you really shouldn't be trusting
01:54your eyes to look at and evaluate your image.
01:57The human eye does a really good job of making very detailed qualitative
02:01assessments of your image when it's side -by-side with another image if there's
02:04been a small change, but the human eye does not do a good job of making
02:08quantitative assessments of the content or the color characteristics or the
02:12tonal variations in an image.
02:13And a Histogram is a graphical, it's a visual tool that we can use to really
02:18help out in this fashion.
02:19All right, let's take a look at the Lighthouse image and notice the lighthouse
02:22image is mostly dark.
02:23When we look at the Histogram we see lo and behold it's kind of almost the
02:26opposite of the Clouds image.
02:28Here most of the data is from the mid-tone down to the shadow.
02:31So notice how the Histogram in our evaluation of it matches the actual image itself.
02:36What do you think about this image here, the Gnarly Reflections image?
02:40When we click on the Gnarly Reflections image we see that most of the data in
02:44this one is from highlight to mid- tone, there's almost no shadow data.
02:47You look at it and the eye goes, oh that's dark, but in terms of the total tonal
02:51range it's really only a mid-tone.
02:53See the eye is fooled into the thinking that things are lighter or darker than
02:56they maybe based upon relative tonal or color values elsewhere in the image.
03:00And finally let's look at the Cloudy Landscape image and we see that here we
03:04have a grouping of most of the data right around the mid-tone.
03:07Right from the three-quarter tone not quite up to the quarter tone, and that's
03:10why the image is by the way very low contrast.
03:13And in fact when we carefully, visually evaluate the image we see there is no
03:16real dark shadows in here and there's certainly aren't any bright white
03:19highlights matching indeed the Histogram.
03:22So just quickly going from one image to another you can see how that Histogram
03:25changes and how much valuable information a Histogram can be.
03:29Now so far we've been looking at the composite Histogram, haven't we?
03:32Let's go one step deeper.
03:34Notice that these images are all RGB images which we know from earlier in the
03:39course means that this image has three grayscale channels in there.
03:43This Histogram that we're looking at is the composite.
03:46If we take this and we look at in All Channels View and we move this
03:54side-by-side to each image we can see what the Red, Green, and the Blue channels
03:59look like for each of the three channels.
04:01So this is the master Histogram and then we have three individual channels.
04:04Let's just take a look at each of these images in turn.
04:08There's the Clouds image, there is the master, remember not much data from
04:12three-quarter tone to shadow and it's the same on all of them except for look
04:15at the Blue channel, do you see how the Blue channel has even less data than the other ones?
04:19Click on the top of the Histogram.
04:21Let's go to the Lighthouse image, and here we see again missing data in the
04:25master channel but all three of them have lots of missing data, but notice
04:28that the Blue channel is a little bit further to the right than the Red and the Green.
04:33And when we look at this image that tells us, then that this image has a little
04:36bit of a blue color cast to it.
04:38Let's move to Gnarly Reflections and we see the same thing but it's even more
04:42dramatic, where we have the master Histogram, where we see data from mid-tone to highlight.
04:47When we look at the individual channels notice how the Red and the Green are
04:51almost coincidence, the Green is offset a little bit, but do you see how the
04:55Blue is offset even more indicating that this has a blue color cast to it.
04:58In fact when we look at it we see this has a little bit of blue to it or pretty
05:02significant amount of blue.
05:04And finally when we look at the Cloudy Landscape we see again not much data in
05:09the highlight to mid-tone, but the Red channel is offset a little bit more to
05:12the right than the Green and the Blue channel but not nearly as much of an
05:15offset as we saw in Gnarly Reflections in the offset of the Blue channel.
05:18So when you get used to looking a Histograms even minor variations are small
05:22changes can add up a lot of understanding of what this image is all about
05:26and where the data is.
05:27This is significant because when we look at an image such as say Gnarly
05:30Reflections we can see it's low contrast. That's fine.
05:33We can really semi-quantitatively say, oh my gosh, look at that everything from
05:38about 60% down to 100% grayscale is missing in this image.
05:42And then we can make an assessment, do we want to keep it that way, do we like
05:45the moody aspect of the image or would we like to change it?
05:47It gives us creative control of our image.
05:50Let's see how we might use the Histogram to help us make an adjustment.
05:53In this case of course we're working in Photoshop but the same thing we'll
05:56apply during the scan.
05:57All right, what I'm going to do is I'm going to add a Curves adjustment layer
06:02and notice that when we add a Curves adjustment layer we see the Histogram
06:06actually displayed in Curves, the same thing is in levels.
06:09But I'm showing you curves, because curves gives us much more control over
06:12the distribution of grayscale data because we can adjust the curve anywhere
06:16along the total range.
06:17I'm going to do two adjustments here just to show you how we can use the
06:21Histogram to help us adjust an image.
06:23One, I'm going to work with the master RGB channel.
06:26I'm going to click on the shadow point here and I'm going to use the Histogram
06:30to help determine how far I'm going to move that shadow point.
06:33I'm going to move it right up to the beginning of that data.
06:35What this allows me to do is still maintain the detail in the image but
06:38increase the contrast.
06:39Notice if I go too far see how all the shadow detail gets lost.
06:43So I can visually using a Curve tool adjust the shadow point up, but not to the
06:48point where we start to lose shadow detail.
06:49So I've done a master Histogram, so we'll call this one the Master Adjustment.
06:54Now I'm going to turn that off for a minute.
06:57I'm going to go back to the background layer, I'm going to add another curve
07:00layer, and in this case what we're going to do is I'm going to go into the
07:03individual channels.
07:05I'm going to go into the Red channel and let me just cycle through here, there
07:08is the Red, the Green, and then the Blue.
07:10Remember how we noticed that the Blue channel was offset, you put my little
07:13pointer there and go backwards.
07:15See how it's not pointing at the data anymore, the Blue channel is offset more.
07:19And in this case then if we adjust the shadow point on each of the individual
07:24channels the Blue, the Green and now the Red, it's a different point at each
07:30place on each of the individual channels.
07:32So we'll call this the Channels Correction, and look at the difference that we get.
07:37In the master channel we did them all at once, everything just gets darker, we
07:41get increased contrast, but the color balance remains the same, there's still
07:44the blue color cast.
07:45But when we did the individual channels, notice how it would neutralize the
07:48image more, take out some of that Blue and we can go anywhere in between.
07:52My point is that the Histogram is a very valuable tool for helping us not only
07:56evaluate the image in terms of where the distribution of grayscale values are
08:00in our image, it could point us in the right direction about how to correct the
08:03image and we combine a Curve tool which allows us to make corrections anywhere
08:07in the tonal range.
08:08As we'll see when we perform this during the scan rather than in the post-scan
08:12in Photoshop we'll actually end up with higher-quality images, because we're
08:15doing this before we actually capture the data and send it out of the scanner.
08:19So histograms and curves working together, great evaluation as well as image
08:24editing correction tools.
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Saving to different file formats
00:00When you've completed the scanning process, you want to perform one more thing
00:03and that is to save your images, and in part of that saving process is
00:06choosing a file format.
00:08And one of the reasons why this is so important is, earlier in the course, we
00:11talked about things like interpolation and compression, and minimizing those to
00:15maintain the quality of your image.
00:16Well, in the spirit of at least doing no harm to your images, you want to choose
00:20the proper file format for how you want to use your images and be aware that
00:24certain file formats, such as JPEG will actually apply compression to your image
00:28and it can downgrade the quality of your image.
00:31So let's discuss various file formats you might use to save your scanned images,
00:35and let's start with this really beautiful portrait of Isaac that was taken by
00:39Lucas Deming, the photographer at lynda.com.
00:41I love this picture, and we're working in Photoshop of course, because it's kind
00:44of a standard application and your dialog boxes may look a little bit different
00:47if you're using different applications and certainly from your scanning
00:50programs, but the fundamentals are the same.
00:53We're going to start off here by just using the Save As command, which brings up
00:56a dialog box that allows us to name our images and then choose a file format in
01:01which to save our images.
01:02Let's start with naming convention.
01:04I suggest that you use something like the following:
01:06Choose a logical name so you can tell what the file is, and then I like to put
01:10in a mode like RGB, and then I like to put in the linear resolution of the
01:14file, and the reason for this is that this allows me to just get a lot of
01:18information about that file.
01:20Let's assume that we're going to be editing our image, and if you're going to
01:24edit your image after the scan, you've done what you wanted to do.
01:26If you make your mind during the scan, and you say, all right, I'm going to edit my image.
01:29Well, the best file format to choose is the .PSD or Photoshop file format and
01:33that's we've chosen is, the first one at the top of the Format menu. So .PSD, why?
01:38Because this is going to be a small file format, but completely editable, gives
01:42you all the functions of Photoshop.
01:44So if you know you're going to be editing choose .PSD.
01:47As a general rule it's a good idea to go ahead and embed the color profile,
01:51because what this does is provide information embedded into your files, so when
01:54you open up your file in any other application, including a web browser, that
01:58there is information about where that color, or where the data came from, and it
02:01can be used in color management, which we'll discuss a little bit later.
02:04So .PSD, if you know you're going to be editing your file.
02:07On the other hand, if you know that you're completely done with your image and
02:10you're ready to go to print, you don't want to edit, well, then a good file
02:13format you might want to choose is the TIFF file format, and notice there is a
02:17whole bunch of different file formats you can choose from.
02:19In fact, there are over 400 graphic file formats, but I'm just going to discuss
02:22four, the .PSD, the TIFF, if you want to print is the second one.
02:26That stands for Tagged Information File Format, which is not critical for you to
02:30know, but what you do want to know is that this is a full quality, full
02:33resolution, no compression, no down-sampling file format.
02:36All the quality of your file is going to be maintained, no damage will apply to
02:40your image and it will allow you to maintain the quality when you go to print
02:43on any quality device.
02:44So if you named your file, choose TIFF for your file format if you're going to go to print.
02:48Embed your color profile and then click Save, and you'll get this TIFF
02:52Options dialog box.
02:53My recommendation is to keep things as simple as, than using a high quality as
02:57possible, is apply No Compression.
02:59You can apply some LZW and some ZIP which is lossless compression, but it takes
03:04a little bit longer for your file to process when it goes to print.
03:06So I generally choose NONE.
03:08Don't choose JPEG, because that's going to lower the quality of your image.
03:11For Pixel Order, go with the default which is Interleaved and for the Byte
03:15Order, that's the order in which the data is written on the disc, choose IBM PC,
03:19even if you're working on a Macintosh, because a Macintosh can read both with
03:23equal facility and some Windows machines prefer the IBM PC right Order format. Boom!
03:27There you go, and then you've saved your file out in a really nice
03:30high-quality print format.
03:32What if you want to take an image to the Web?
03:33And to do that let's look at a different image in here an RGB image.
03:37Here is a picture of my GF, we're out shooting pictures of each other on
03:40Kachemak Bay with the beautiful Kenai Mountains in the background, and let's say
03:44we want to take this image to the web.
03:45Again, we're going to perform a Save As and we're going to name this file again
03:50with a logical name and then RGB in this case, and then 300, and we've already
03:55edited, so it's a .PSD file now, and we just want to take it to the web.
03:59Then this is one we'll go to, the JPEG format, and this is both a file format
04:03and a compression scheme.
04:05Note that when you do this, you are going to be compressing your image in a lossy way.
04:09that is you're going to lose some data.
04:10Makes it very compatible for sending across the internet, because it's smaller
04:14and it will display for quickly on web pages, but you're going to lower the
04:18quality of your image somewhat.
04:19So choose JPEG, embed your color profile and then when you click the Save
04:23button you'll get this dialog box and there are two things you want to pay attention to here.
04:27one is the Quality options which is you're 8-10 and this goes up to a maximum of
04:3212 in Photoshop, but if you're 8-10 that's going to be fairly high-quality.
04:35If your image has high contrast edges in it, such as this high contrast edge
04:40here and the high contrast edge on the horizon, then I recommend going for
04:44the maximum, go for 10.
04:45If you go to low contrast image such as a portrait, and you can get by with
04:49maybe something like 8, but don't drop below 8 if you really want to maintain
04:53the quality of your image, and you don't want to have the chance of getting
04:56those really awful JPEG lossy compression of damaged areas in your image.
05:01The second thing you pay attention to is the Format Options, you can choose
05:03either Standard or Baseline Optimized if you want your image to pop up all
05:07at once on the web.
05:08I recommend using the Standard option to give you maximum compatibility with all
05:12versions of web browser, everybody recognizes that one.
05:14The Optimized makes the file a little bit smaller and optimizes the colors, but
05:18isn't quite as compatible.
05:20Actually I never had problems with either one, but you want to make sure you get
05:23full compatibility, use the Standard.
05:24You would only choose Progressive if you have a larger file, say typically above
05:28640x480 in which you want them to appear one, two or three times in order with
05:33the lower quality, medium quality and higher quality.
05:36When you save out to JPEG, pay attention to setting your Quality Options
05:39based upon the content of your images, set your Format Options and then
05:43you're ready to go.
05:44One final format I like to talk about, because many people are starting to use
05:48this format and that is PDF format, and we'll choose Photoshop PDF and this is
05:52actually a graphic file version of the PDF format, and again, save your color
05:55profile, name your file and choose Save and when your dialog box comes up I'm
06:00going to make a recommendation to you.
06:01There is actually lots of settings here, but if you choose High Quality Print,
06:05which is one of the Adobe PDF Presets you're going to get a very high-quality
06:08PDF file and no alteration will occur to the color profile of your image at all.
06:14So you choose High Quality Print and then you can just click Save PDF if you want to.
06:18Just a little side note here about what's actually applied here is there is down
06:23sampling that occurs if your image is larger than 450 pixels/inch.
06:25It will downsample it to 300, and there's a small amount of Compression, high
06:30quality JPEG Compression that is applied.
06:33You can turn these off if you want to.
06:35You can choose Do Not Downsample, and you can choose No Compression if you would like to.
06:39You'll still get the very flexible PDF format, which is Internet safe and
06:43very printable as well. So it's up to you.
06:45Typically, if you're going with the High Quality Print, you'll end up with good
06:48quality images and they will print very well.
06:50Notice when we go to Output, there is No Color Conversion that takes place and
06:54that's why I prefer to use that as opposed to the Press Quality, which will
06:57indeed apply a color profile adjustment to your image.
07:00Then just click your Save PDF and you're good to go.
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Color management
00:00Let's talk about color management.
00:02Color management refers to the proper control of tone and color in our workflow system.
00:07In a typical image workflow, we start by capturing an image.
00:11In our workflow we are starting by capturing an image without scanner.
00:14And then we move our image from a scanner to a monitor and from a monitor to
00:18an output device, such as printer or it might be another output device like on the web.
00:22So the image content is transferred from one device to the other.
00:25The image tone and color is reproduced differently on each device.
00:29And therein lies our greatest challenge.
00:31All right, scanners capture tone.
00:33In fact, that's all they capture is tone.
00:35They don't really capture color.
00:36Remember the all color is created by output devices, not input devices.
00:40So scanners take our tones and convert them into grayscale base and pixels.
00:44Then those grayscale pixels are sent to a monitor and monitors will then paint
00:48those pixels with various red, green, and blue technologies, LCDs, Phosphors,
00:53LEDs, wide variety and constantly expanding output technologies on monitors.
00:59And then, those color pixels are being colored by the monitor are sent to a
01:03printing device, where not only are we using dots to reproduce that instead of
01:08pixels, but we are using inks like cyan, magenta, yellow, black and that's just
01:12a baseline on wide gamut printers, we are adding light cyan, light magenta,
01:16greens, and oranges and expanding a range of colors.
01:20The result is that each of these devices has what we call a different color space.
01:24And color space refers to the range of reproducible tone and color.
01:28So a scanner has one color space, a monitor has another one and a printer
01:33has another one indeed.
01:34Some are larger, some are smaller, there's some overlap but you can reproduce
01:38tones and colors on one device that you can't on another.
01:40Now is if that weren't enough of a challenge, add to all those color
01:44variables output substrates.
01:47We start with the substrate which is the actual original surface with the
01:50scanner and the image is transferred over the monitor.
01:53It's glass or plastic.
01:54We go to an output device, right.
01:56It's going to be paper or plastic or metal and we are using a variety of
02:00different inks on those.
02:02Then add to that challenge, variable lighting that changes all the time.
02:06So with all those challenges of trying to reproduce tone and color, it's a
02:10wonder these images look anything like it always, you move them from one end to
02:13another, never mind match.
02:15Well, our solution to this is called Color Management.
02:17And with color management, we try to coalesce all these different devices with
02:21all these challenges to reproduce tones and color the same way on each one or
02:24get as close as we can.
02:26We do this though a process called characterization.
02:29Here is how it works, which we start with the target with known value.
02:33In this case, this is a scan target.
02:35We use a reflective target on reflective scanners and then we use film
02:38targets on film scanners.
02:39Then we scan this target that has known values with our scanner and then we take
02:43that file and we run it through a color management software that creates what we
02:46call a color profile.
02:48And that color profile contains the color space of that device, which says this
02:53device can reproduce these tones in these colors.
02:56We do the same thing on a monitor, and then we do the same thing on a printing device.
02:59For the printing device, we actually, print the tones and colors and then analyze them.
03:03And then what the color management system does, is it takes all those color
03:07profiles and it links them together, and we try to use those to try to reproduce
03:11our tones and colors the same on each device.
03:13That's just kind of an outline of our challenges in what we do to meet those challenges.
03:18Well, the details of that are well beyond the scope of this course.
03:21But what you and I can do is we can learn how to calibrate our scanners
03:24and create use color profiles, and very importantly learn to scan images by the numbers.
03:30We use to learn scan images by the numbers.
03:33we are going to get the proper grayscale base.
03:35And remember, that all we can actually capture is grayscale base.
03:38If we get the grayscale base right off of our scanner and we send our image to a
03:42calibrated device like a monitor or a printer, then the color is going to likely
03:45come off right on those.
03:47To learn more about a color management, I will refer you to this really great
03:51class called Color Management Essential Training with Chris Murphy.
03:54It's right here on the lynda.com Library.
03:57As a starting point, I am going to recommend to you that you learn how to
04:00calibrate your own monitors.
04:01And simple to do, you can buy a simple monitor calibration device for a $100 to
04:05$200 with software and that's going to calibrate your monitor, which is going to
04:10give you much better representation of tone and color right off the bat.
04:13And then add to that what we are going to do here is learning to calibrate and
04:16color manage your scanner, and that's how we are going to do our part to help
04:20you manage your whole color workflow.
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2. Preparing to Scan
Cleaning your scanner
00:00Let's chat about caring for and cleaning your scanner.
00:02Well, first rule of engagement is prevention rather than cure, as we already
00:06talked about, but just to review.
00:08Locate your scanner in a dust free environment, away from drafts, away from
00:12any sources of dirt and dust, no moving air, windows, doors, vents, fans, avoid them.
00:17All right, and then set up your scanner on a nice hard surface, no fabrics, all
00:20right, because fabric has static electricity, which attracts dust and dirt and
00:24therefore that gets on your scanner and your images.
00:27So stay away from that completely.
00:29And you may have noticed I've been wearing these lint-free gloves the whole time
00:32we've been talking about scanners and I've been handling my scanners and my
00:34images, always, always wear these, and it's critical, because your figures have
00:38oil on them, no matter how much you wash your hands, you've got oil on your
00:41fingers, and that oil gets on your scanner, gets on your images and then that
00:45attracts dust and dirt and boy!
00:46It's just awful to keep clean. Don't believe me?
00:49Take a look at this keyboard that hasn't been washed in a while.
00:52See all that gunk on there?
00:53That's from oil on the fingers that has attracted dust and dirt.
00:56Think about getting that on your images or on your scanner.
00:59Now we want to avoid that whenever possible.
01:02And since these gloves are so important, and I don't know about you, but I don't
01:06wear these all day along, all day.
01:07It's not the kind of environment that I'm work in, I typically use them just
01:10when I'm working on my scanner or touching my images.
01:12So I'm likely to, if I don't already have my gloves on, is I'm likely to walk to
01:16my scanner and start handling my scanner, and then I remember, oops, all right!
01:19So what I do is I put a pair of these gloves right on the top of the scanner,
01:23and that gives me a visual reminder that, oh, I need to put on my gloves before
01:26I even touch my scanner, and it really works for me.
01:29Couple of other details about gloves, is I recommend you get the good
01:33quality ones like these.
01:34See how nicely that fits.
01:35It improves the dexterity that you've for handling your scanner and your images
01:39and loading and unloading and so forth, and I buy them by the bag or the box and
01:43I recommend getting it from a company that has the good quality gloves, not just
01:47the inspection gloves, but the really good quality gloves.
01:50I get mine from gloves-online.com, and it's gloves-online.com and these right
01:57here are the all day gloves.
01:58So that's what I recommend in terms of the gloves.
02:00And then of course, leave the gloves in the plastic packages until you're ready
02:03to take one and use it, so that you are not collecting dust.
02:06So but, no matter how careful you are, you're going to end up getting some dust
02:11and dirt on your scanner or images, so let's talk about some tools and
02:14techniques to help you clean your scanner.
02:16First tools, well, what's the first tool? Well prevention.
02:19Second tool, the gloves for sure.
02:21All right, no question about that.
02:22Then some other tools here are these little PEC PADs here.
02:27These are dust-free, lint-free pads.
02:29You can go and buy the PEC PADs, a lot of people sell these, and they are kind
02:32of the industry standard.
02:33There are some other varieties as well, but make sure that they are lint-free
02:35and very, very soft.
02:38And then a little brush here, little fine brush, this one with a little air pump on it.
02:43And then lens cleaning solution.
02:45You want to get some of that for when you can't just wipe things off, but make
02:49sure you don't use your household or industrial cleaners, because of two things.
02:52one, they will leave a film, and two, sometimes they will actually corrode the
02:56plastic on your scanner.
02:57Then some judicious use of canned air can sometimes be helpful as well.
03:01All right, so these are kind of our tools, now let's talk about the
03:04actual cleaning process.
03:06When you want to clean your scanner?
03:07Well, just prior to using your scanner.
03:09Don't clean your scanner and say, oh it's time to go lunch and then come
03:12back and start scanning.
03:13No, you want to clean it just before it.
03:14So get everything all ready, organize your images and then clean your scanner,
03:18and I'll be go about doing that.
03:20Of course, you got to get your gloves on all the time.
03:22Open up your scanner, we're going to talk about cleaning this kind of a scanner,
03:25the Flatbed Scanner or the multipurpose scanner, why, because there are lots of
03:29surfaces that can get dirty here.
03:30We'll do the film scanner in just a little bit.
03:32That's easier to kind of handle.
03:33So get your gloves on and then we're going to grab a lint-free pad here.
03:38Notice I'm taking it out of the bag, because after you use these ones, toss
03:41them, because they are going to get dirty, they will collect lint and when you
03:44start using, you put lint on the scanner. Not a good idea.
03:46Okay, so grab your gloves, grab the lint-free pad and then your initial
03:52inclination is to start cleaning the bottom, because that's the key surface.
03:55Don't, because, one, you'll either forget to clean the top, or then you'll go
03:59clean the top and knock all the dust onto the bottom.
04:02I know it's silly, but it happens all the time.
04:03So clean the top surface first, all right, and I like to wipe away from me, away
04:08from the scanner, away from the images, all right, and then you can come down
04:11and do the bottom, same thing like this.
04:15Sometimes that's all you need to do.
04:16But you know, I don't know how it happens?
04:19But I looked down there, I cleaned it off and there is somebody's thumbprint,
04:22certainly not mine, all right.
04:23I know somebody has been touching the scanner while I had been away.
04:27So when it's like that, don't just push harder.
04:29That's when you want to use your lens cleaning solution, all right.
04:32So you open this puppy up, and then don't spray this right on the platen, spray
04:39it on the cloth here and then easy circular strokes like this and then I end up
04:43going away from me, away from me like that.
04:46You can do the same thing on the top of scanner, and you know, if you don't have
04:51this foam part, and if you've got a transparency adapter on top of your scanner,
04:55you'll be cleaning the glass on top.
04:58Either way, start on the top.
04:59All right, so do the pad, and then you'd be working with your image, and you may
05:04notice, oh, this one little piece have dust in there.
05:06That's when this comes in handy.
05:08Always away from you, away from your images, away from the scanner and then
05:12sometimes a little bit of canned air is useful and helpful to you, just blow a little bit off.
05:18But listen, if you're working in a dusty environment at all, all the canned air
05:21does is blow dust into the air and covers everything.
05:23So I tend to use this rather than the canned air, because sometimes the canned
05:28air is just too hard and too strong.
05:30All right, and then finally, I want to tell you not to do what I'm doing, and
05:34that is don't talk while you're cleaning your scanner or your images.
05:38All right, because what happens is when we've got a pedi pad, right, and we're
05:43over the top of the scanner and I'm cleaning the scanner like this, what am I
05:46doing, I'm talking and I'm spitting on my scanner, all right.
05:48I don't intend to, but that's what happens.
05:50Same thing when you're clean your images, silent process, all right.
05:54So that's for cleaning your flatbed scanner and your multipurpose scanner.
05:58Now for film scanners, actually these are a little bit easier to deal within a way.
06:02What you don't want to do is what I've done right here.
06:05All right, see how I've got my film holder and it's still in the scanner, maybe
06:08I scanned this morning or last week and the film holder is still there.
06:12That's going to cause the problem. Why?
06:14Because most of these film holders - I've got these windows on them like this
06:18and that prevents dirt and dust from getting inside the scanner.
06:21If you keep the film holder in the scanner for long periods of time that opens
06:25it up to dirt and dust.
06:26Can you clean dust way if it gets inside?
06:28Oh, sure, you can kind of take your canned air and put in here.
06:30So all that really does is blow the dust around inside.
06:34Hopefully you blow it off, maybe the scanned surface.
06:36But yeah, cleanliness and prevention is really the way to go with these,
06:40because if you get much dust or dirt, then you have to open them up to actually clean them.
06:46And then when you get done with the scanned process, close everything up, all
06:48right, so that you prevent dust and dirt from getting on the scanners, and then,
06:53what I like to do at the very end, you'll notice in the end of my scan bench
06:56here, I've got this cloth.
06:58We'll put that down, so we don't knock it over, and I fold that cloth back on
07:04top of itself, so at the end of the scanning process, I can take this and just
07:08drag it all over everything on my scan bed.
07:11That prevents any dust from collecting while I'm not using my scanner.
07:14I don't scan every day.
07:16All right, I scan you know maybe I have a scan session a couple of times a week,
07:18but I keep it covered like this, and then when I take it off I just fold it back
07:22on itself, so that the dusty surface is never facing towards my scanner or
07:26scanner equipment images and cleaning equipment.
07:29So that's how to keep your scanner clean.
Collapse this transcript
Cleaning your images
00:00Let's discuss care for and prep up your images for scanning.
00:03Just a quick review about why this is important, is this all about improved
00:07image with quality and better and more efficient workflow?
00:10Dust and dirt and scratches are all magnified during the scanning process,
00:14during enlargement and particularly during Unsharp Mask.
00:16All right, and that requires an awful lot of retouching.
00:20After the scan it's going to slow you down.
00:22It's going to reduce your image quality.
00:23So given that we know we are going to have to do this, let's talk about some
00:27of the tools that we are going to use for keeping our image clean and for
00:30cleaning our images.
00:31First, location, location, location.
00:33Just like real estate, all right.
00:34Keep your scanner in a dust-free environment with no dirt and no moving air, and
00:39that's going to be the best thing that you can do.
00:41Now how about some tool for handling images?
00:43Well, number one, we are back to the old lint-free gloves again, I know I am a
00:47broken record, but they're so darn important.
00:50Remember my suggestion about putting a pair of your clean lint-free gloves
00:54right on the top of your scanner to remind you to put on before you even open
00:58your scanner, good idea.
00:59The other thing that you want to do is, you want to keep your images in a
01:02dust-free storage environment. It's so important.
01:06Actually so many images is just kind of laying out on the table, collecting dust
01:10for days and sometimes weeks at a time.
01:12Keep them in here until you're ready to scan them.
01:14For the moment you create them, for the moment you print them, keep them in a
01:18dust-free environment.
01:19And the other thing of course is remember oil from your fingers is so
01:23problematic, wear your gloves all the time, very, very important.
01:27You are going to get much better results with your scan, you are going to have
01:30less cleaning to do.
01:31Remember, higher quality gloves, and for those of you who don't know remember,
01:36gloves-online.com, great place to get gloves.
01:40These are the all-day gloves and they are reusable and washable, and of very
01:44high-quality, very nice.
01:46Okay, so some other things we've got here is little blaster, for blowing air,
01:51off of particularly your film, it's handy.
01:54It is a lot of varieties of these things and here's one with a little bit of a
01:58brush bristles on the end of it and typically those don't actually move much air
02:02but this one does so I'd like to have both of these.
02:04And some emulsion cleaners, it's going to be very important for cleaning a dirty
02:08film, very important, make sure that the emulsion cleaners that you have works
02:13with the film that you have got.
02:15Most of the emulsion cleaners that you have today that are available with easy
02:18access today are for cleaning the hard emulsion.
02:20If you have some of the older film that has the albumen, the softer emulsion,
02:24you have to get a specific cleaner for that.
02:26And then some very tightly woven lint-free swabs are good.
02:31And then I do use canned air, I probably use this more on the film than I
02:34actually do on the scanner.
02:36And then for mounting purpose, particularly for reflective art, there is
02:39a little bend to it.
02:40I used to really low tack, low stick film.
02:45So there are my tools.
02:47Now, let's talk about the actual cleaning of the actual pieces.
02:51Well, let's first discuss this right here and that is a reflective art.
02:58When we are going to clean reflective art, first of all handle it with your
03:01gloves and sometimes you can just use your gloves, all right, to wipe off some
03:05of the reflective art.
03:06That works pretty well.
03:07The other thing you can use is a little bit of canned air on your image or you
03:13can use a little bit of air-blaster, but do you notice what I am doing?
03:16I am blowing this not towards my scanner, this is the last thing that you want to do.
03:21Get your scanner open, oh yeah, we will blow the dust right off the image onto the scanner.
03:24Believe me, I have seen it more than once.
03:27So if you are going to use some sort of the air movement device, do it away from your scanner.
03:31And if you have handled your images and you have kept in the dust-free
03:34environment, you may probably don't have to do much more than that.
03:37You can use emulsion cleaner on some of these like this, but honestly I
03:41have very few problems.
03:42Now one thing I should mention again, it was about talking while you're mounting
03:46your images and cleaning them, don't, like how I'm doing now because I am
03:50probably spitting, in fact, I can see it right there, I am spitting on my image
03:53which is not a good thing.
03:54So, wait you are cleaning and mounting.
03:56Then for mounting these images, you typically want to -- and particularly with
04:01line art that is vertical and horizontal edges, you want to make sure you mount
04:04these images right along the edge of the scanner so that good, parallel and
04:08perpendicular to the direction of the scanner.
04:11So that's basically what you have to do for most of your reflective images, most
04:15important thing to do is keep them clean to begin with.
04:18The surface of reflective prints like this, photographs, tend not to attract as
04:24much dust or dirt as film does anyway.
04:27Film tends to be the real challenge.
04:29So let's talk about film, and I use a piece of negative here.
04:33And keeping these first and foremost in a dust-free environment is important.
04:38Don't take them out until you are absolutely ready to scan.
04:40Don't leave them out there and go to lunch.
04:42Only take them out when you are ready to scan.
04:44You can look at them, the nice thing about these is you can get a little of
04:47reflected light off them to see if there is any stains on there and this is when
04:53I like to use this or my little brush, very, very fine brush for cleaning those
04:59off, again no talking because we definitely spit on these.
05:03And notice that you've got two surfaces to clean here.
05:06Unlike the reflective art where you only have one surface, you've got two here
05:09and you need to understand that most film has a little bit of a curve to it, you
05:13can see that probably.
05:14The concave surfaces where the emulsion is, that's the surface you have to
05:19be very careful about.
05:20The outside, the backing surface is usually just straight plastic, I mean you
05:23don't want to mistreat it, but the inside surface where the actual image is,
05:27that's the one you have to be most careful about.
05:30So make sure, if you do use a brush, it's very, very likely, and if you do use
05:34canned air, make sure that that canned air is not too close to it, back it off a
05:38little bit and just a little bit of canned air to blow that off, because you
05:41really can damage that surface.
05:43And that's true for both slides and for filmstrip negatives like this, they both
05:49have an emulsion surface.
05:52So that's cleaning those and if you do need to use your emulsion cleaner,
06:00typically what you want to do, take a little swab like this one here, and I'll
06:05put a little bit of the cleaner on the swab itself, and then I'll use that to
06:11actually clean my images.
06:12Notice I am never touching these images except for, with my gloves on. There you go.
06:19Nice and light, not too hard.
06:23And if you use a good emulsion cleaner, it will evaporate in just a matter of
06:2830 seconds usually.
06:29It won't leave a motion behind, any surface behind. So there we go.
06:35Then finally about mounting these particular images, remember, you've got two
06:40surfaces, and typically unless you're using oil, which we'll talk about, oil
06:44mounting a little bit later, most scanners, even the flatbed scanners but
06:48particularly the film scanners are set up to accommodate that natural film bin that you have.
06:54You want to make very sure that you mount the film in the proper direction
06:58because if your scanner is set up so that it expects the concave image down and
07:02you put the concave surface up, then only one very narrow area of the image is
07:08going to be in focus.
07:09So make sure that you direct emulsion side in the proper direction.
07:13And you can refer to your scanner's manual and you will be very clear about what
07:17direction that's supposed to be.
07:18Usually on most film scanners, like the one we have been using, it's emulsion
07:21side down, and then you put it in the holder, and then make sure that that
07:25clicks like that positively, and then put it right inside your scanner and
07:30you're ready to rock and roll.
07:32So there's our cleaning and mounting of both reflective art and film, both
07:39negatives and positives.
07:40Remember about that film emulsion, treat it very, very carefully.
07:44And there we go, there's cleaning and mounting your images.
Collapse this transcript
Calibrating your scanner
00:00Earlier in this course, we discussed how important it is to calibrate, and color
00:04manage your scanner, why?
00:07So that we can get the grayscale values right.
00:08If we get the grayscale values right, our continuous tone images and our color
00:12images are going to be correct, and we'll be passing on to the rest of our
00:16workflow a tonally correct and color correct file.
00:20In this movie and the following movie, I am going to show you first how to
00:23calibrate your scanner using a ten step target and then we're going to follow
00:27that up and create a color profile for a scanner based upon an IT8 Target.
00:32The first step here is going to be to calibrate our scanner and to do that,
00:36we're going to use this 10 step target that I have actually created and
00:40developed for use in digital photography and in desktop scanning.
00:43Each of these swatches, these 10 swatches here have a grayscale value assigned to them.
00:48An RGB value, 242 for the first one, 219 for the second one, 196, 173, 150, 128
00:56for the midtone, 105, 82, 59, and 36 and the way this works is we scan this
01:03target, we do a preview of the scan and then we're going to measure the
01:07grayscale values that the scanner actually sees, and then we're going to compare
01:11those values with what are on this target, and if there's a difference, then
01:15we're going to apply a correction curve to our scanner so that when it looks at
01:19this target, it's going to see the grayscale values properly, and if it sees
01:23these grayscale values properly, then it's going to see the proper tonal values
01:27in our images properly, and then our grayscale and our color, contone images are
01:31going to be properly captured.
01:32So let's dive right in, let's go on over to our scanner, here's our target
01:37that we pre-scanned and I will go ahead and pre-scan it again, so we go
01:40through the whole process.
01:45In this case, we're going to do a neutralization, which is the more complicated
01:49of the two calibration procedures.
01:51We can just do a grayscale calibration, which just involves getting
01:55one grayscale value correct for each of these swatches or we can do a color calibration.
02:00To do that, we'll choose a 48 to 24 bit Scan Mode, which means we're going to be
02:05capturing three 8-bit grayscale channels and we want to make sure that each of
02:10those grayscale channels has the proper tonal values on it.
02:12So our goal here is to make sure that each of these swatches is
02:17captured accurately.
02:18To do this, we're going to use the expert function that's built into SilverFast
02:23and I know this is pretty intimidating, but when we step our way through it, I
02:26think you'll see how it works.
02:28What this allows us to do is adjust the scanner in these various tonal ranges
02:32and this is 255, this is pure white, and this is at 13%, and 25% and 50%, and
02:39all the way down to 0.
02:41What we're going to do is we're going to create color sampler points on a
02:45couple of key ones.
02:46We'll put one at 242 which is the highlight, we'll put one at 173, one at the
02:51midtone at 128, and down here in the three-quarter tone at 82, and then we're
02:56going to measure what the scanner is actually seeing, compare that again to
03:00these values, and then come back and correct them with these input fields here. Okay.
03:05If you're not quite sure what's going on yet, hang in there and I think as we
03:08go, it will become clear.
03:10So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to create four color sampler points.
03:14We could do it for all 10, but I think if we just get four, we'll have a pretty good curve.
03:20and we'll have a really good idea of what's going on in the scanner.
03:23Let's start with this highlight point here.
03:25It's supposed to be 242, 242, 242, and when we click on there, and we measure
03:30this, notice it's 248, 247, 246.
03:34Not bad, pretty neutral actually, and remember, this is not just a
03:39calibration like for grayscale.
03:41It's a neutralization, which means we're doing calibration on three channels,
03:45and when it looks at this grayscale target in RGB mode, all these values should
03:49be equal for each swatch.
03:51This one is pretty darn close, isn't it?
03:52It's within 2, which is less than 1 % difference on a scale of 0 to 255.
03:58The 173 target, the number two, 174, 176, 171, pretty close, a little high on
04:05these two, just a tad low on that one.
04:07The 128 color sampler point, boom!
04:10The red is right on the money, the green, 130, blue is 125, these are slightly
04:17low, and then this value right here, 82, the green is right on and the red and
04:22the blue are a little bit low.
04:24By the way, we should use this on a scanner that's fully warmed up for half-an-hour.
04:29So I will do a couple of scans and make sure that the temperature is up to snuff
04:33and it's the operating temperature for the scanner, because the response of the
04:36scanner will definitely change with temperature.
04:39And if you recall earlier in some of the movies I've talked about how
04:42important it is to work in a constant temperature environment and not have
04:45huge temperature swings.
04:47Well, this is the reason why, because we're going to calibrate and color manage
04:50at a specific temperature.
04:52How do we then neutralize the scanner that is calibrated on all three channels?
04:56Well, SilverFast provides this Expert- Dialog box here, which allows us to come
05:00in here and input RGB values at specific places along the tonal range.
05:05Well, we're going to start up here by the highlight to at 242, and notice, we
05:10could come in here at 224, we're about halfway between the 255 and the 224.
05:16So since we're pretty close to the highlight, I am gong to come in here and I
05:20am going to start putting in some numbers that I think are going to be pretty close.
05:23And what I want you to do, while I do this is, watch these numbers here as I put
05:27in some numbers up here.
05:29I am going to go 246, because notice that these values are a little bit high,
05:33so I am going to lower these values here from 255 down, so we can lower these values there.
05:40Let's try some values here, try 246, 246, and 249, and then, let's see what
05:48happens to our values over here.
05:49And see by lowering these values, now we're measuring these pretty close to 242, aren't we?
05:55We could Shift+Tab come back and notice that, that one is just a little bit too
05:59low, so we could put this one to 247, let's say, just to raise that a little
06:04bit, and honestly, one point of difference one way or another is not going to
06:07make a whole hill of beans.
06:08But we'll be pretty accurate here.
06:10So now we've got the Highlight neutralized.
06:13Now, we're going to go down to the 173, and let's choose the area here that is
06:17closest, 192 is the closest.
06:20So let's try some values here, and we're pretty close on a couple of these, aren't we?
06:25We're right at 174, so we're going to keep that one to 190, let's put this one
06:29at 191, 190, and 193 and then just see what happens to our values here.
06:38We're supposed to be right at 173, which is perfect, we've got the red just
06:42right, green is up just by 1 at 174, and the blue is down just by 1 at 172.
06:51So we're within 1, and honestly, we could just leave it there if you want to.
06:54If you're really anal, you can come in here and you can go up one value here and
06:58go down one value there, all depends on how anal you want to be.
07:02So we get it just right on the money at 173.
07:05Then let's go to the midtone and see how we're doing.
07:08Notice that as we correct the highlight and our quarter-tone, the midtone is
07:12already going through some adjustments here. We're pretty good.
07:15In fact we're right on the money on the red, so we don't need to address that one at all.
07:21The green is just a little bit high, so let's drop that one down to 126. Boom!
07:27Right at 128, and this one is just a little bit low, the 128.
07:31So let's put that one at 130 and see what happens.
07:35128, let's go up to 131, there we go!
07:39Now all of them are at 128.
07:40One more, the three-quarter tone, see this is at 82, so we're going to want to
07:46go to this one right here, which is the closest, which is 64.
07:50These are a little bit low, aren't they?
07:52The green is pretty darn close.
07:54in fact, this is right on the money.
07:55So let's go with 69 on this one and see what happens. Ooh Sweet!
08:01Good guess, we went right up to 82, and let's tab forward to the blue, and let's
08:07go ahead and put 69 on that one and see what happens.
08:11Didn't quite make it, so let's go up to 71, right on the money.
08:16You can see slight changes in the curve that we have here.
08:19So we're making minor adjustments to how the scanner sees these values, and now
08:24we're just going to click OK to save these values.
08:27We've now calibrated our scanner on all three channels, which means
08:30neutralization, so that we know we have proper tonal variation from highlight to
08:35shadow, and we made minor adjustments in each of these swatches.
08:381, 2, 3, 4, true enough, we could do it on each and every one of these swatches
08:43and you'd get a little bit more accurate, but honestly, just doing these four
08:47points makes a huge difference in terms of the accuracy of the scanner.
08:50As we move forward now, we're going to take this calibrated neutralized
08:53scanner and move to the next step, which is creating a color profile with a color IT8 target.
08:59So I am going to click OK to apply that.
09:02We've now neutralized the scanner for RGB, so that the RGB values.
09:06that are the tonal values in all three channels are now going to be accurate
09:10across the entire tonal range of this image.
Collapse this transcript
Creating and applying a color management profile
00:00Previously, we performed a color calibration, a neutralization of our scanner
00:06using this 10-step grayscale target, in which we scanned the target that has
00:10known values and then compare what the scanner saw with what it should have seen
00:15and then went into the Expert dialog box, and adjusted the scanner until it was
00:19looking and saw the grayscale values properly on all three channels.
00:23hence a neutralization.
00:25The next step in the process is to create a color profile and we use exactly the
00:31same procedure with just a more complicated target.
00:34Here we're going to use an IT8 target that has over 200 swatches of color and a grayscale range.
00:40And the procedure is exactly the same, is we're going to scan this target
00:44that has known values, and these known values are contained in a file called a Reference file.
00:49So we scan the target and then we're going to run the target through the color
00:54calibration software from Monaco called EZcolor in which we match up the
00:58Reference file with the target and create a color profile which adjusts the
01:03scanner, so that the scanner sees this target very, very close, nearly exactly
01:08to where the target values are.
01:09So it's the same procedure that we did here.
01:12We're just starting with a calibrated scanner, so it's going to be close anyway,
01:16and this is going to get us even closer, and then we're going to use this target
01:19to create our color profile.
01:21So let's go over to our scanning software.
01:24The process is to make sure we have a very clean scanner, have on your
01:28lint-free gloves, and for heaven's sake, don't be handling this target with your oily fingers.
01:33Make sure you have your lint-free gloves on, clean the top of the scanner, the
01:36glass platen, blow any dust or dirt off the target, and this target should only
01:41be taken out of its case and exposed to sunlight and air and all that when
01:44you're going through this color calibration and profile creation process.
01:48So we put it up in the upper corner of the scanner, and then click Prescan, and
01:52then we'll put our frame around the target, set the Input Resolution to 200
02:04pixels per inch, and then click Scan, and then we're going to name this
02:10IT8_EpsonV750_R and then the date.
02:15It's important to name the scanner and the date and the fact that it's
02:18reflective, because my EpsonV750 scanner has a transparency adapter, and I am
02:25going to make two different profiles for the scanner.
02:27one for the reflective, which we're doing now, and then one for the
02:30transparency adapter.
02:33If I have another scanner like my Plustek, I am going to make a separate profile
02:36for that one as well for the film scanner.
02:39Normally, I've got three different profiles, three different targets that I
02:42have to account for.
02:43So very careful how I label them, so that there's no ambiguity about oh!
02:47This is the reflective target for the Epson 750 and this is the date on which I created it.
02:53You just don't do this calibration and color profile creation once really and
02:57depending upon how much you're scanning, you could do this weekly or at least
03:01every month you should do this.
03:03Remember, it's very important to keep your scanner not only in clean
03:06environment but a temperature- consistent environment, and don't perform this
03:10calibration and color profile creation process until you've warmed up your
03:14scanner for at least a half-an-hour.
03:16You want it to be at operating temperature, and then the temperature conditions
03:20in which you're using the scanner should not vary much during the day.
03:22So we're going to save this target, and we'll just replace the one we had previously.
03:33So there's our target, and we're going to go ahead and close that target.
03:37We'll close these as well, and now we're going to go over to our Monaco EZcolor software.
03:43It is in the software where we're going to marry up the scan of the target with
03:48the Color Reference data file that has the known color values for that target,
03:52and then this software is going to evaluate the target what the scanner saw with
03:56what it should have seen, and then make a profile adjustment that we could then
03:59load into the scanning software.
04:01So notice that this software can be used for making a wide variety of different
04:05kinds of color profiles.
04:07We're going to make an input profile for our scanner and it gives you some
04:10instructions and encourages you to clean your scanner and make sure that it's up
04:14to temperature, and then we're going to choose is this a Reflective 5x7, a 4x5
04:20Transparency or a 35mm, we're doing the 4x5 Reflective.
04:24And it gives you some more information about preparing for scanning the target,
04:28and then once you scan the target as we've had and save the target, now we're
04:32going to load the image of that target.
04:33There is that TIFF file that we created.
04:39I am going to load that and then it gives you some instructions on making sure
04:44that the target was properly scanned, and now we're going to load the reference
04:49file, and we look in the lower left- hand corner where it says MON which is
04:53Monaco, R, reflective, 2010, and then, colon, 12.01 which tells you that this
05:00target was created for the Monaco company and it's the Reflective target.
05:06It's created in 2010, December 1st and then for every batch of these targets
05:11that they make, they measure them very carefully and then they make a color
05:14reference file to match that batch of targets, and that's what we're going to
05:17select now is the color reference file for that.
05:20And these are stored in the -- now I am on a Macintosh here, so it's in the
05:24Library, Application Support, X-Rite, and IT8 Targets.
05:30And then we're going to scroll down here until we find that MONR2010.
05:35Here it is, MON, Monaco, Reflective 2010 and then 12.01, December 1st.
05:41There is the color reference file for that, and then we'll click Choose, and
05:45then we'll move forward, and it says, okay, I have married up the two.
05:49It has now accepted the profile and accepted the scan, and now we're going
05:53to save the profile.
05:54It's going to create a profile for that reflective target on that scanner at that date.
06:00I recommend that you label the color profile in a way that's going to be very
06:03easy to recognize, and I like to name it with my scanner and the date on which I created it.
06:10And we'll put R in here for Reflective, building the profile, we're finished.
06:19We can go out of that software and now the last step is to access that profile
06:24through the scanning software.
06:25For SilverFast, we do this by going to General and going to Options, and then
06:32going to the Color Management System, and then remember earlier we loaded a
06:37general profile that was made by Epson for all V700 scanners, which is fine,
06:42and that's a good place to start, but now we've created an actual custom
06:45profile that can be used for proofing, and for conversion to CMYK files, and
06:51for properly controlling the scanner during scanning, and we're going to zoom
06:56up here and there is our EpsonV750R_08 -03-11 and that becomes the new color
07:06reference file made specifically for this scanner on this date and then you click OK.
07:12Now, we're using a custom-made profile during the scanning process.
07:16Now, whenever you perform a scan, that custom file is what's going to be
07:20referenced, and one specific point here is that if you do use any of the
07:25automated scanning functions like this Automatic Correction, notice if you hold
07:29down the Shift key, you see the colors that come out around there.
07:32If you hold down the Shift key, it will use that custom color profile that
07:37you've just referenced to adjust the files in the scan.
07:40And watch I am going to do an automatic adjustment, and watch just the target as
07:43if that we were scanning that target.
07:45It corrects, and now watch, I am going to hold down my Shift key, and I am going
07:49to click it, and watch, there's going to be a very subtle difference and how
07:52that target looks, because when you do the automatic adjustments, and hold down
07:55that Shift key, it uses that custom color profile that you just created.
08:00So that's how we do a linearization with a 10-step target and we followed it up
08:05and created a color profile, and we then load it into our scanning application.
08:10If you don't have an IT8 target, and color management profile creation software
08:14such as the Monaco EZcolor, you can at least use the 10-step grayscale target to
08:19neutralize your scanner.
08:20If your software provides you with the ability of doing that neutralization
08:24right in the software like we did here with the Expert function, then that works very well.
08:30if not, you can scan the target, bring it into Photoshop, do the correction
08:34there, save out the curves, and load them into your software.
08:37That 10-step target is available through lynda.com or through me personally and
08:41there's full instructions that come with it on how to use it. There we go!
08:44There's color calibration, neutralization, and then color profile creation to
08:48get your scanner working right on the money.
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3. Evaluating Your Images
Evaluating your scan challenges
00:00All too often, creative people view the scanning process as not very creative
00:04intrusion into their whole creative workflow, and they just want to throw the
00:08image down in the scanner, do an autoscan, and they can't wait to get into
00:11Photoshop that can really start the creative work.
00:14But in many cases, nothing could be further from the truth.
00:16In fact, the scanning process meaning the decisions that you make before you
00:20scan can largely determine how creative you can be, how high-quality your image
00:24is going to be, and how easy your workflow is going to be.
00:27So in many ways, this portion of the course maybe the most fundamentally
00:30important that you may go through in the entire course and that is evaluating
00:34your images and deciding how you are going to scan your image.
00:38And we don't just think about it in terms of just capturing the image.
00:41we always want to think about how we are going to use this image later on in the
00:44workflow and what can we do during the scanning process to facilitate what we
00:49may want to do with our image later on in the creative workflow.
00:52We have up on screen here a variety of different images representing a lot of
00:55the different scan challenges that we meet along the way.
00:58So I would like to take these images and evaluate them and I want to step you
01:02through the process that I go through when I evaluate these kinds of images.
01:06Let's start with line art images.
01:08I want to take these two images, the Bike and the Moose, because they really
01:13represent kind of the in-members that we run into when we work with line art.
01:17On the left side, you have the bicycle, which is relatively simple line art image.
01:21On the right, we have a relatively detailed line art image of the moose.
01:25Now when I look at these two images and I say, okay, they're both line art, we
01:29maybe tempted to just put them down the scanner and just scan them as line art
01:32in Auto mode and then move on. Boy!
01:34That would be a bad decision, because both of these images have really specific
01:38things we want to do in terms of the setup and the scanning of them to give us
01:41the maximum flexibility later on in our creative workflow system.
01:45Let's start with the Bike and talk about evaluating this image and how we want
01:49to handle it in scanner.
01:50I look at this Bike image and I say, all right, what's the important part of that image.
01:54That's the single most important question you're going to ask yourself.
01:57what do I want to focus on?
02:00Line art images like this are really all about the edges, and we've talked about this before.
02:06When we look at an image like this, this image is actually created by creating
02:09this outline and then just filling it with black.
02:11The black is completely uninteresting.
02:13That's not the important part.
02:15What the important part of this image is, is reproducing this edge.
02:18I am thinking about during the scan, I know what the scanner captures pixels,
02:23but when I look at this, I am thinking vectors.
02:25Converting my images into vectors is going to give me the maximum amount of
02:28geometric editability and the maximum amount of edge quality, no matter how much
02:32geometric manipulation I do.
02:34So the two things I focus on in my mind capturing image like this is I want to
02:39capture this in line art mode that is 1- bit black-and-white mode and I want to
02:43use the optical resolution of this scanner which is going to minimize any edge
02:47interpolation and I want to scan this at 100%.
02:51Even if I want to use it five times larger, I am going to scan it at 100%,
02:55because that's going to minimize interpolation as well.
02:57Then I know I am going to convert this into vectors and then I can do my
03:00geometric manipulations.
03:02So black-and-white mode, optical resolution, 100%.
03:07If I just perform an automatic scan, none of that is actually going to happen.
03:11The moose on the other hand, also a line art image, but totally
03:15different challenges.
03:16When we zoom in on this moose, look at all of that detail and we zoom in more
03:21and more, we see a lot of the detail is actually created by changes in grayscale value.
03:25We could scan this in just straight black-and-white line art mode, but then we
03:30would lose an enormous amount of editability and creative potential later on.
03:34So when I look at this image and say what's the important part of that image,
03:37remember that key question we asked?
03:39What's the important part of this image? It's the detail.
03:42Yes, yes, the outline is important, but that's not nearly as important as what's
03:45going on in the middle as compared to the Bike image.
03:48It was going on middle is not important at all, which is just solid black.
03:51Here it's all about the detail.
03:53So how am I going to scan this image?
03:54Well, in order to capture and maintain all the detail, I am going to capture
03:58this as if it were continuous tonal grayscale image.
04:00I'm not worried about converting this to vectors.
04:03quite the opposite.
04:04I want to scan it as pixels, leave it as pixels.
04:07You see these two images both line art we are going to handle completely
04:10differently to give us the maximum amount of quality and editability later on in
04:14the scanning process.
04:16Now let's move on to a true continuous tone image where you and I would normally
04:19consider to be a continuous tone image.
04:22Let's take a look at my best buddy, Zip here, my Cardigan Welsh corgi.
04:25I look at this image and I say, what's the important part of this image?
04:29Well, obviously, it's the foreground.
04:31We want to get Zip.
04:32When I look at Zip what are the key parts of this?
04:34First of all, he's got some beautiful white fur and so I want to make sure
04:38that I capture that.
04:39It looks bright white, but I want to make darn sure that I capture all of the
04:42detail that's there.
04:43So I am thinking, all right, I am going to focus on that white highlight.
04:46Since it's a grayscale image, it's going to come out to be neutral any way.
04:50So I am going to focus on making sure that I don't blow out that white
04:53highlight, because it could be easy to do.
04:55What's another important part of this image?
04:57Well, I've got some dark shadow areas in here in the fur and I want to make sure
05:00that I maintain shadow detail there.
05:02So I am going to make sure when I scan this that I don't fill in no shadow details.
05:06There is another really important part of this image.
05:09There is lots of fine detail, look at his whiskers, look at the beautiful fur.
05:12So I am thinking I want to focus on, on the sharpening of this image.
05:15I want to bring out the sharpness, but not too much.
05:18So in this image, it's the white highlights, the dark shadows, and the detail
05:22that's going to be important.
05:23We are not going to maximize all that by going into Auto mode.
05:25That's for darn sure.
05:27So that's Zip in a continuous tonal grayscale image.
05:29Let's look at another grayscale image with kind of different challenges
05:34certainly different composition.
05:35This is the photograph I took of waves on Surfers Beach and this is on Kodiak
05:39Island, south of where I live in Alaska.
05:41I look at this image and I say what's the important part?.
05:43Well, again, it's the foreground.
05:45the foreground is very important here and that's where I am going to focus a lot of my efforts.
05:49We will talk a little bit about the background, but it's really all about the foreground.
05:53And what's the major portion of focus of this image?
05:55Well, it's the white spray and here again, just like the white fur with Zip, I
05:59want to make sure that I get all of the detail here, but because there's so much
06:02white, we have the potential of blowing out this white detail and it just goes
06:07flat, and then when you lose that three-dimensional nature of the waves.
06:11Then at the other end of the spectrum in the shadows, here and here in the dark
06:15part of the wave, there is texture in here.
06:17We don't want that to go flat either.
06:18So just like with the Zip image highlights and shadow details are important,
06:22but the highlights are just a paramount importance in this image in maintaining them.
06:27Then we look in the background, we want to make sure that if there is any shadow
06:30detail back here to be maintained.
06:32So in this image, we are going to find out where the lightest whites are, where
06:35the darkest darks, where the detail is, and make sure that those are maintained.
06:39Sharpness is important here, but we would want to make sure we don't oversharpen.
06:43We would probably want to sharpen the Zip image more than we'd want to do this
06:45one, because if you oversharpen this image, I am afraid that some of the spray
06:49will get harsh, and there is power in the spray but there is also subtlety and
06:52texture and fine texture that deserves a little bit of softness.
06:56None of these things were addressed when we go into an Auto mode in scanning.
07:00Once we have ruined the highlights and shadow details, once we've oversharpen
07:05this too much, we can never get that back working inside of Photoshop.
07:08So these are all critical evaluation images.
07:12Let's take a look at the color version of the same image.
07:17All the same qualities, all the same characteristics, the things that are important.
07:20the highlights, and the shadow details, maintaining the power, and the
07:24definition of the spray, sharpening but not too much, but in the color
07:27version, we have an additional issue that we need to worry about is we want to
07:32make sure the surf is white.
07:33In the black-and-white version, it's always going to be white.
07:36But if this image and a lot of images that are shot during the day have a
07:40little bit of blue colorcast in them, we want to make sure we remove that blue colorcast.
07:44We get nice bright white spray that's going to create beautiful contrast in this
07:48image, and we scan this image, we want to make sure that we're worrying about
07:51color balance as well as highlights and shadow details.
07:55Our final image to talk about is another color image and this is another
07:59wonderful portrait by Lucas Deming of Kim and when we look at this image, again,
08:03we ask yourselves what are the important parts of this.
08:05Well, in an image like this, one of the first things I ask myself is, is this a
08:10portrait or is this a product shot?
08:12This is a product shot for the shirt or for the jacket.
08:15That's kind of a different focus than the portrait.
08:18Well, this happens to be a portrait.
08:20So when I look at an image like this, one of the first things I think about is
08:23skin is of paramount importance.
08:26So we want to make sure that the color balance of the skin is very important and
08:30we also want to make sure that we have good enough sharpness of things like the
08:33eyes and the eyebrows and the hair, but not so much sharpness so that we start
08:37creating any modeling in the skin.
08:38So then this image very different than all the others, the skin is really the
08:43focus and in this case, because it's a color image, the color balance is
08:46going to be important and the amount of detail that we bring out is going to
08:49be important as well.
08:50Now there are some additional characteristics that we want to worry about here.
08:54We do have a nice diffuse white highlight here in the white shirt probably
08:57somewhere and we may have some shadow detail that we want to maintain in the jacket.
09:01If there's not shadow detail here, it's not critical in this image, because it's
09:04not a product shot, it's a portrait shot.
09:07Finally, because it is a portrait, we will want to make sure we maintain
09:11shadow detail in the hair.
09:13So we will want to look at all that.
09:14So you think you can see from our discussion that the evaluation of our images
09:19deciding what's important is so critical to having a good successful scans.
09:23Remember, if we don't capture the correct things and emphasize the correct
09:27things during the scan we lose and we never get them back inside of Photoshop.
09:31So we can see from our discussion how very important evaluating our images is.
09:36It really sets up where we are going to go in our scanning workflow and gives
09:39us the maximum editability and maximum quality for images later on in our
09:43entire creative workflow.
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Reproducing vs. assigning colors
00:00Taking our image evaluation process to the next step really kind of completes
00:04our whole analysis and evaluation of our scan process and how it fits into the
00:09rest of our creative process.
00:11I want to be really clear before I even start the scan what I'm going to do
00:15during the scan and what I'm going to be doing later on, maybe in Photoshop such
00:19as an image editing program.
00:21So I don't just think about the scan.
00:23I think that whole process all the way through, and here's a variety of images
00:26will demonstrate that whole process.
00:28Let's take a look at this first image in Antigua Iris image.
00:32I shot while I was down in Central America.
00:35For this image the composition, the cropping, the brightness, contrast, the
00:38colors, I'm pretty happy with it.
00:40So I'm going to do nearly all the corrections for this image during the scan.
00:43In fact, I might be able to just scan right to a tiff in print with this image.
00:47The second image, it's a portrait and this one as well to continuous tone color
00:51image, so I'm going to plan to capture nearly all the color.
00:54I might apply a little bit of brightness and contrast and change that from the
00:57original image, but again, I can perform all that during the scan.
01:01So these first two images I know in my mind what's going to come off the scanner
01:05is going to be pretty much what I'm going to end up with.
01:07For the third image, again, continuous tone color image can do most of the color
01:11capture during the scan, but when I look at this image, I think I'm not real
01:15happy with the contrast between the darker green background and the colored
01:20flowers and particularly between the green flowers in the background.
01:22So I'm thinking I'm going to do most of this color capture during the scan, but
01:26then I'm going to plan to take this into Photoshop and mask this image and then
01:31darken that background.
01:33So I'm thinking during the scan, I want to make sure that I get good enough
01:37contrast as much as I can between these foreground flowers and the background
01:41grass, so this is going to be easy for me to do that masking and conversion of Photoshop.
01:45So what we're going to start with and hopefully capture during the scan is
01:49this image and then with the full intent of taking and masking that background
01:53and darkening it a little bit to create more contrast between the flowers in the background.
01:57So I know I'm going to do that in Photoshop right from the get-go.
02:00This fourth image, this is a photo I took from porch of my house in Homer,
02:04Alaska looking across Kachemak Bay and my intention was to focus really on the
02:08sunrise and reflections and kind of use this foreground area as a frame.
02:12But notice this image detail in here, I could try to take some of that out
02:16during the scan, but some of it's lighter like the snow on the roof.
02:19So what I'm going to do is focus on capturing this part of the image during the
02:23scan and then remove the foreground detail here and take all of that to
02:28silhouette in Photoshop.
02:29So I know where my concentration is going to be.
02:32So this is what I create during the scan with a full intent of editing the
02:36foreground and darkening to a silhouette working in Photoshop.
02:40So this is what I concentrate on in my scan image.
02:43Moving onto these line art images, we've talked about this image quite a bit so
02:47far in this seminar so we know what we're going to do with it.
02:49We know this is an edge-based image.
02:51We're going to scan this at the optical resolution of the scanner at 100% with
02:55the full intention of converting that defectors and then editing the vectors.
02:59Well, this really comes into play if instead of having just a black-and-white
03:02image that we have here, what if we have a colored line art image?
03:06When I see an image like this, I'm thinking right away, I'm asking that
03:10question, am I going to capture this color during the scan or am I going to
03:14assign this later on either in Photoshop or in Illustrator.
03:17When I look at this image, I see this kind of an image here.
03:20my eye doesn't even look at the color.
03:22I'm looking at what kind of an image is this.
03:24this is an edge-based image.
03:25So my job during the scan is to define those edges, clearly that's the job.
03:30So I really look at this image.
03:32When I look at it, I see this over here in my mind's eye and I'm fully intending
03:36to convert this, because it's a simple edge based line art image into a vector
03:40and then assign the colors in Illustrator.
03:43So when I look at this, I see this, this is what I'm going to scan and then I'm
03:47going to convert that image to vectors and then just quickly, we can see how
03:50this works in Illustrator, then each of these areas is assigned to color.
03:55Now I can come in here and I can adjust these colors to my heart's delight
03:58working inside of Illustrator and no matter what colors we assign, I notice that
04:04the type is treated just like a vector just like anything else.
04:07We end up with super high-quality edges and the colors assigned exactly as we want them.
04:15So back to looking at our original image, when I'm capturing an image like this,
04:19I ask a really critical question, either of myself or if the client that I'm
04:22working for is, do you know what the values of these colors are.
04:26are they Pantone spot colors, are they metallic colors, do they have CMYK or RGB
04:30values or web values assigned to them?
04:32So I try to get what those specific values are.
04:35Then I don't have to worry about trying to reproduce those during the scan which
04:38I likely cannot if there are specific values.
04:41I just worry about reproducing the outline, getting a nice sharp outline,
04:44optical resolution to scanner, scan at 100%, convert to vectors and then I can
04:48just assign the colors in Illustrator.
04:50And boy, that's a much easier process than trying to reproduce those
04:53colors during the scan.
04:54So with these kinds of images, absolutely our goal is to reproduce the
04:58color during the scan.
04:59With these, it's not.
05:01these are going to be assigned color products in which we will capture the line
05:05art portion during the scan, but assign the colors later on.
05:08And finally, going back to a continuous tone image where we'll do most of the
05:12conversion where editing or adjustments afterwards, here's an image of sea star
05:17legs I shot at the Homer in Alaska and my intention from the beginning even when
05:21I shot the image was to convert this to a black-and-white image.
05:25I knew I wondered these to be very high contrast against a darker background
05:29in my final product.
05:30So I shot this with my camera in this case to do that and if I had a print of
05:35this image in the same fashion, I would scan this image with the intent of
05:39creating as much contrast between these legs and this background and capturing
05:43as much sharpness as possible and the final result of this image in my
05:48workflow would be, here's the original and then there's the final version that
05:52I end up with in Photoshop.
05:53Here I capture the image focusing on the contrast between the foreground
05:57and background in capturing the detail fully planning to do most of the work in Photoshop.
06:02So it's really a good idea to not just evaluate the image in terms of itself,
06:06but look at that image in terms of your entire creative workflow and very often,
06:09you can make some decisions during the scanning process such as an image like
06:13this where you really don't focus on the color at all.
06:15you just focus on the form fully intending to apply the color later on.
Collapse this transcript
Recognizing continuous tone (contone) vs. dot pattern images
00:00One special image evaluation issue that you need to pay attention to and this is
00:04kind of a sneaky one is whether your original image is a true continuous tone
00:10image and I like to use the word contone, like a photograph or if it's an image
00:15that's built out of dot patterns.
00:16Because they may look similar to the human eye, in fact, they are designed to
00:20look similar to the human eye.
00:21But in fact when we get to the scanner, they are not the same at all.
00:24Let me show you the difference between a true contone or continuous tone
00:27photographic image, and one that is built-out of patterns of dots.
00:31On the right, we have an image that was scanned from a true continuous tone photograph.
00:35The building blocks are actually microscopic.
00:38In fact, they are atomic in size and dimension.
00:41They are either a film-based emulsion type building block or they are a silver
00:45halide crystal if it's an old grayscale photograph, and the crystals are
00:50literally on the size of the atoms.
00:52It's just a collections of small atoms, much, much smaller than the resolution
00:55in which you're scanning your images.
00:57So your scanner will never ever actually see those building blocks.
01:01Let's take a look, let's just zoom in on this image here on Christina's
01:05forehead, no matter how close we get, you see you don't see any building blocks
01:09of the image at all.
01:10It's a true continuous tone, particularly when you can look at something very
01:14smooth like someone's skin tone, you don't really begin to see any building
01:18blocks until you actually see the scanned building blocks, the pixels.
01:22So the process of scanning an image or capturing it with a digital camera
01:26actually reduces the resolution of a continuous tone photograph.
01:29It takes something that is very, very super high resolution and breaks it up
01:33into pixel-sized building blocks, in this case, one three-hundredth of an inch on a side.
01:38That's what a continuous tone image looks like.
01:40Notice, there's no original pattern in that image that we have to worry about at all.
01:44No matter what scale you look at it, it's true continuous tone.
01:47The only thing you change is, is just a tonal value of the image itself.
01:51On the left on the other hand, we have a scan of a book, and there is a type of
01:56course and then there's a " photographic image" that has been reproduced.
01:59And let's zoom in on that like we did the previous image and notice as we start
02:05to zoom in, it looks like a continuous tone image, except for as we begin to
02:09zoom in more and more and more you start to see that dot pattern.
02:13You see because printed images are not printed as continuous tone unless they
02:17are actually a photographic print.
02:18When an image is printed on a printing press or a laser printer or an Inkjet
02:22printer, any of the standard printing devices that you and I use today, the
02:26image is actually reproduced as a pattern of dots.
02:29There are several terms that are used to describe this, the most common one is
02:33the most ancient one.
02:34It's called the halftone dot.
02:35In the process of reproducing a photographic image as a printed image to allow
02:40us to reproduce it cheaply at very little cost and multiple, multiple many, many
02:45copies is using this halftoning process.
02:48Conventional halftoning looks like this where you see you have an equal spacing
02:52of dots and we vary the size of the dots in order to create the perception of a
02:57grayscale to the human eye when we zoom out.
02:59That's the way a conventional commercial printing works, with a lot of printers
03:03like laser printers and particularly Inkjets, instead of varying the size and
03:07having equal spacing, they vary small halftone dot and they vary the spacing.
03:13But in either case, you end up with a dot pattern.
03:15This is a very obvious one because it's a fairly coarse grained halftone dot pattern.
03:20But the result is you don't end up with a smooth continuous image like we
03:23do over here with the Santa Claus image, you end up with actually a pattern of dots.
03:28As you move down the production path things get worse.
03:32This halftone dot image when you scan it, not only reproduces the halftone dots,
03:37but if you notice at various enlargements here, you see the pattern that's
03:41coming across on screen here, let me go down a little bit more.
03:45That pattern changes and you get this very obvious black and white pattern.
03:49That's all being created by the interaction of the halftone dot pattern in the
03:53scanned image that's been reproduced by the scanner.
03:56And the pattern or array of pixels that you have actually displayed on your
04:00screen, the same thing happens when you take this halftone dot scanned image and
04:05try to reprint it with another pattern of dots. Ooh!
04:08Things get real ugly in a hurry.
04:10So it's very important that you recognize if your image is built-out of a dot
04:15pattern versus a true continuous tone photograph before you start your scan
04:19process, which is one of the reasons why I recommend that if you are going to be
04:22doing much scanning at all and particularly of printed images, you should always
04:25have a little magnifying glass with you and you can look and see if you have a
04:29true continuous tone or if you've got halftone dot pattern.
04:32You would be able to see that pattern with the 10 power magnifying glass.
04:36Obviously, during the scanning process, our goal is going to be to remove this
04:40halftone dot pattern as much as possible, so we don't end up with all this
04:44interaction on screen or even worse, when we go to reprint this image again.
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4. Special Scanning Considerations
Understanding bit depth
00:00Let's discuss bit depth, and get that little bit of technical nuance out of the way.
00:05I know you're thinking, ah!
00:06Why do we have to do bit depth, all that technical stuff?
00:08Well, as it turns out most of your good scanning interfaces actually include
00:13bit depth as part of the description and the choices you have when you're
00:16selecting scan mode.
00:17So rather than just kind of wonder about what it is let's go ahead and dig in
00:21just a little bit, understand what bit depth is and then it becomes an actual
00:24proactive choice that you can make.
00:26The good news is there are only three fundamental image bit depths that we work with.
00:311 bit black and white, 8-bit grayscale, and 24-bit color.
00:35All the other bit depths that we will deal with are really variations on those
00:38three fundamental image types.
00:40So let's just dive right in.
00:41Let's start with the simplest of all kinds of images and this is the 1-bit black and white.
00:46I am going to enlarge this and notice that down when it's smaller it almost
00:49looks like a continuous tone grayscale image like the middle one, but there is a
00:53little bit of graininess to it.
00:54And when we enlarged this we see why there's graininess, because this image is
00:58actually constructed out of nothing but black and white pixels.
01:02To help us understand this whole concept of bit depth and the real issue is the
01:06relationship of bit depth to shades of gray.
01:08We are going to enlarge and we are going to use our Channels panel and our Info panel.
01:13Let's take it up even one more.
01:14there we go, get a good view of those pixels.
01:16Notice that this image is constructed out of nothing, but black and white pixels.
01:20It's a diffuse pattern of black and white pixels to create something that
01:24looks like a continuous tone image if you look at it just the right size, but
01:27this is the simplest of all images as I mentioned, because there is only black
01:30pixels and white pixels.
01:32To understand the relationship between these black and white pixels, let's use
01:36our Info panel to look at the K value and the RGB value.
01:39Just a little bit of review remember K value goes from 0-100% and the RGB value
01:44goes from 0-255, where 0 is pure black and 255 is pure white.
01:50Honestly, when we are working in most scanning programs there are typically
01:540-255 values that you're working with, so it's good to get a handle on that and
01:58used to working in those.
02:00We call these digital images for reason, because anything that's digital either
02:04a device or an image or a software program is digital because it only works in
02:08two numbers 0 and 1 and those are called bits, the basic bits, there is a basic
02:13digital alphabet if you will.
02:14There are only two characters in our digital alphabet, 0 and 1.
02:17Luckily, there's a match in this simplest of all images.
02:20How many shades of gray do we have here, only 2, pure black and pure white.
02:25This is indeed a grayscale image.
02:26It's just a simple one.
02:27it's a bitonal image with black and white.
02:30In order to construct this image all we need to do is assign one of our two bit
02:35values either 0 or 1 to each pixel.
02:38So say 0 to the black pixels and 1 to the white pixels, and that's how we
02:43construct this image 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0 and so forth.
02:50We assign one bit of information either 0 or 1 to each pixel and that's how
02:54we construct the image and that's why we call this a 1-bit black and white
02:59image, because we have two shades of gray, black and white it only takes one
03:02bit of information.
03:04Notice in Photoshop channels we see there is only one channel.
03:06We only need one channel to construct this image and only two shades of gray and
03:11two bits of information, one assigned each pixel to construct this image.
03:16Notice that Photoshop uses the word bitmap when it's using this 1-bit black and white channel.
03:20So that's the fundamental background of all shades of gray and all tonality when
03:25we are working in Photoshop.
03:26This is simple 1-bit black and white image.
03:30The second kind of image that we work with is the second one here, and notice
03:33that what we have here is more of a continuous tone image.
03:37In fact, it started out as a continuous tone image and we've converted it into pixels.
03:40When we look at this image we see all of these different shades of gray that we have in here.
03:46Many more shades of gray than we had in 1-bit black and white image. How many?
03:49Well, 0 to 255 or 256 shades of gray, going from 0 to pure black 255 to pure white.
03:58Notice that we still have one channel there.
04:00The difference is the number of shades of gray that are captured and displayed here.
04:05But how to do that in machine and in an image and software that only understands
04:100 and 1 black and white? How do we do that?
04:14Well, what we do is we add more bits of information to everyone of those pixels.
04:19Let's take a look at the numbers behind these two images for a second.
04:22Let's talk about our 1- bit black and white image.
04:24Remember, one channel and what we have is two shades of gray, 1 bit of information.
04:31So this is a 1-bit black and white image with one channel.
04:34Two shades of gray 1 bit for each one.
04:37For the 8-bit grayscale image how do we create that 256 shades of gray?
04:42Well, we take 2 times 2 is 4 times 2 is 8 times 2 is 16 times 2 is 32 times 2 is
04:4764 times 2 is 128 times 2 is 256.
04:51That's 8 bits of information gives us 256 shades of gray.
04:55That's an 8-bit grayscale image.
04:57Again, we have one channel of 8-bit grayscale.
05:00So both images have one channel, the difference is this is eight times as much
05:04information, so 8 bits of information in every single channel.
05:07Then the third fundamental type of image that we work with in terms of bit depth
05:11is the RGB color image.
05:14If you remember back from our discussion earlier in the course these are really
05:19imposter images in terms of color, aren't they?
05:21There is no such thing as color in a digital image, because our digital
05:25computers and digital images only understand what, grayscale, black and white.
05:29The color that we see here is actually created by the output device.
05:32in this case, the monitor that you're viewing.
05:34When we look at the individual channels that construct the image they're nothing
05:37but grayscale and when we zoom in on one of these channels what do we see,
05:43multiple shades of gray just like on the 8-bit grayscale image.
05:46But in this case we have three channels and if you were to just look at this
05:51image right here and someone asked you, oh, what kind of image is that.
05:54You weren't looking at the Channels panel, you say, oh, that's an 8-big
05:57grayscale image, and guess what, you'd be right, and so is that and so is that.
06:02So if we have three channels with 8- bit grayscale, three times 8 is 24.
06:08That's where we get the concept of a 24-bit color image.
06:12So when we look at and we view the numbers for this, we see 256x256x256, 256
06:20shades of gray for each of these channels, multiply those three out, you get
06:2416.7 million colors.
06:26You may have heard that number before, but now you know where it comes from.
06:29That gives us three 8-bit grayscale channels, 24-bit color, 3x8 is 24. And that's it.
06:36That's the fundamentals of bit depth.
06:37When we go into a scanning interface we are going to see choices like 1-bit or
06:42black and white or line art, those are all 1-bit terms.
06:45You'll see grayscale or 8-bits of grayscale and you may see 24-bit color and now
06:50you know what you're going to be choosing there.
06:51You're going to be choosing three 8-bit grayscale channels to create from your scanner.
06:56You may also see some other numbers like 32 or you may see 48-bit color and
07:00those are just devices that allow you to capture more than 8-bits of grayscale
07:05for every single channel.
07:07So for instance, if you captured 16- bits of grayscale it would be 3 times 16 to
07:1048 bits of grayscale on your RGB color image or twice as much information.
07:15More shades of gray, more tonal values.
07:18So if you want more total values in your image, then you add more bit depth to your image.
07:22You can go from 1 to 8 to 24 by adding more bit depth and more channels.
07:27Now just to cement this concept of bit depth and the kind of images we create at
07:31various bit depths with various numbers of channels, let's just do a quick
07:35review looking at some different images.
07:37Let's just review what their bit depth and number of channels would be.
07:40How about this image here?
07:41What do you think this would be?
07:43Black and white, so 1-bit black and white and how many channels? One, Good!
07:48And how about this one, this beautiful portrait of Isaac, how many channels?
07:51One channel, bit depth would be 8-bits of grayscale.
07:54How many shades of gray? 256.
07:55Then this one our beautiful Santa portrait of Tina. How many channels?
08:02Remember, we've got RGB colors so it's going to be three channels.
08:05How many bits on each channel?
08:078, it gives us 256 shades of gray on each channel, 16.7 million colors.
08:133 times 8 bits is 24-bit color.
08:15For those of you who work in the print world, particularly the commercial print
08:19world you maybe sitting there thinking, all right, well, RGB is 24-bit color,
08:24but I print in CMYK.
08:26Well, let's just open this up as CMYK image in Photoshop and take a look at it
08:30and in the CMYK image, just like in an RGB where there is one channel per color,
08:35there is one channel per color here.
08:36So we have four 8-bit grayscale channels, and let's take a look.
08:40one for Cyan, one for Magenta, one for Yellow, and one for Black.
08:43Each one has 8-bits of grayscale, you bet!
08:46This is a 32-bit CMYK image.
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Selecting a scan mode
00:00Let's dive right into the scanning software.
00:02and start learning how to set up our scanners for actually accomplishing
00:05creating some scans.
00:07One of the challenging parts of the scanning world is that each scanner
00:10manufacturer has their own hardware and they also have their own scanning software.
00:13The good news is that there is a lot of commonality from one scanner
00:16manufacturing software to another, and they've actually gotten a little bit more
00:19similar over the years, but there still are some differences.
00:22The other good news is that on the high- end there is a scanning program called
00:27SilverFast that a lot of scanning manufacturers include with their higher-end
00:31scanners, and we are going to be working in both kinds of scanning software
00:35during this course, and here we are going to learn how to do a basic setup for a
00:39scan first and manufacturer software, where we are going to use the Epson scan.
00:43You may not have an Epson.
00:44you may have an HP or Plustek or some other kind of scanner, but I think you'll
00:48find a lot of commonality between them.
00:50Then we'll move on and look at the SilverFast software, and here I want to focus
00:54on just basic modes for scanning.
00:57Notice that this software, like many, will default to the Full Auto Mode, and if
01:03you are using Full Auto Mode, you are really not controlling the scanner.
01:05you are just putting an image down on the scanner and then letting the scanner
01:08make all of the decisions.
01:09That's what Full Auto Mode is all about.
01:12This course is really designed to help you use some of the other modes and in
01:16this case, in the Epson scanning software, you have a Home Mode, an Office Mode,
01:19and a Professional Mode.
01:21Let's look at these three additional modes and see how they are similar and
01:24how they are different.
01:25When you choose Home Mode, the next menu down, pull-down menu, gives you
01:30various kinds of scans, such as Positive Film, Negative Film, B&W Negative Film
01:36and what kinds of document choices you have here will depend upon the kind of
01:40scanner that you have.
01:41We are hooked up to an Epson V750, which gives us both film and reflective scan
01:47capability, so we have those kind of choices.
01:50If you don't have the scanner that has those capabilities, those will either not
01:53be there or be grayed out.
01:55And then Illustration, Magazine, Newspaper, Text/Line Art, so you can make some
01:59basic choices as to what kind of document or image you are scanning.
02:02And then the software basically makes many of the decisions.
02:06This is far more powerful then just doing Full Auto Mode because in Full Auto
02:10Mode, scanner doesn't have any sense for what's actually on the scanner.
02:13So I would encourage you to at least use your -- in this case, it's something
02:17like the Home Mode that gives you at least some basic choice of what kind of
02:20document or image you'll be scanning.
02:22Underneath that, let's say you chose Photograph, then you can choose what kind
02:26of photograph, Color, Grayscale or Black &White, and if you watched the previous
02:30movie on bit depth, you know what these mean.
02:33This means 1-bit B&W. That means 8-bit grayscale and that means 24-bit color.
02:37And then the rest of this interface is setting other characteristics in addition
02:41to the basic Scan Mode, which I don't want to go there right now.
02:45Let's take a look at the Office Mode and see how it's different from the Home Mode.
02:49It gives us many of the same choices in terms of Image Type and instead of
02:52choosing a specific document type, you go right to Image Type.
02:5524-bit Color, 8-bit Grayscale, 1-bit B&W . Then you can choose the dimensions of
03:00your document and then other selections that you may have here, such as
03:05Descreening and Unsharp Masking, something we'll get into a little bit later.
03:08The Office Mode takes you right to Image Type.
03:11Of the two, in this particular scanning software, the Home Mode actually gives
03:15you more choices in terms of document types and maybe a little bit more
03:18logical to use, than just the Office Mode if you are scanning a lot of
03:22different kinds of documents.
03:24Then let's move to the Full Professional Mode and the Full Professional Mode,
03:28you start out by selecting a document type like Reflective scan, and then Film
03:33(with Film Holder) or Film Guide.
03:35The Document Source will be a flat Document Table in this case, which is what
03:39the scanner has and then the type of exposure, is this a photo or a document?
03:43Is it like a printed page or a photographic image, and then you move into Image
03:48Type, and here you really start to have choices of the kinds of bit depth
03:52choices that you might have in the more advanced scanning software.
03:55Start with the basic one which is B&W . You now know that that's 1-bit B&W,
04:00typically for line art, gives you an 8- bit grayscale, gives you 256 shades of gray.
04:05Then notice this 16-bit grayscale, in this particular scanner in the software
04:08will allow you to capture more than 8-bit of grayscale.
04:11It will allow you to capture 16 bits of grayscale to capture more tonal range.
04:1524-bit Color, which is as we've learned, previously, is 8 bits of grayscale on
04:20these channel or it gives you higher dynamic range choice of -- instead of just
04:248 bits/channel, 16 bits/channel and 3 times 16 is 48, so you get 48 bit.
04:30There's also in this particular scanning software, you won't find this
04:33everywhere, a Color Smoothing option, which will provide decreasing the
04:37choppiness that you have an image with a lot of hard color boundaries in it, you
04:41can choose Color Smoothing.
04:42But normally you will find in the higher end scanning software modes, the 24,
04:4648, and 8 and 16-bit in terms of grayscale.
04:50We'll discuss more in terms of different kinds of images which one you want
04:53to choose a little bit later, but this gives you an introduction to some of
04:57the choices you'll have in basic scanning setup and the manufacturer-scanning interface.
05:02Next, we'll move on and take a look at the SilverFast software, which is a full
05:05professional version of scanning software, which is supported by a lot of the
05:08scanner manufacturers.
05:10In here, now we've transitioned it to the SilverFast software.
05:13Again, this is a high-end scanning software, which is common to a lot of
05:17scanning manufacturers.
05:18I like to refer to this as kind of the Photoshop of the scanning world, because
05:22it provides us with a lot of controls, and because it's the same interface on
05:25just about every scanner.
05:26It gives us some consistency of interface, which is very nice.
05:30In this particular software, this provides you with two basic buttons, a General
05:35button, you'll start with the Scan Mode, where you'll get a choice of selecting
05:39Normal or Batch Mode for scanning multiple files, and then you select an
05:43original, which is Reflective, Transparency if you are scanning films or
05:47Transparency (full area), if you are using the full area of the scan bed.
05:51We'll come back and talk more about the details of selecting these a little bit later.
05:54Just wanted to give you an introduction at this point, and then whether your
05:57image is going to be a positive or a negative, and if it's a positive image,
06:01then whether it's going to be, looks like an Ektachrome or Kodachrome type of image.
06:05Then when you move to the Frame Setup, you go to Scan Type and this is again
06:09where you have a higher end scanning program where you have the options of
06:13choosing the bit depth of which you are gong to be scanning, and this is the
06:161-bit black and white liner which you end up with 1-bit image with only
06:20black and white pixels.
06:21In SilverFast, you don't get just an 8 -bit grayscale option if your scanner
06:25can actually capture more than that, and this Epson V750 scanner can indeed capture 16 bits.
06:31So SilverFast default choice here, kind of like the low end choices, captures in
06:3616 bits and then converts to 8-bit.
06:37It will actually capture more tonal detail, 16 bits per pixel, and then it will
06:42deliver you 8-bit when you opened it in something like Photoshop.
06:45Same thing for Color, it's going to automatically capture in 48 bit if the
06:49scanner supports it, which this one does, and deliver 24 bits of color.
06:53But if you want to capture and edit, say, open the image in Photoshop later on
06:58and work in 16 bits of grayscale data of tonal data, then you can choose a
07:02straight 16-bit scan, which it will capture in 16 bit and deliver 16 bit.
07:07Same thing for the color is you can select 48-bit color.
07:11It will capture 16 bits/channel and all three channels will deliver you a
07:1548-bit color image.
07:16This is similar, by the way, to selecting RAW when you are working in digital camera.
07:21you'll automatically get 16-bit grayscale images, which is 16-bit times 3 are
07:2548-bit color images.
07:27SilverFast with this particular scanner also offers what's called as HDR or
07:31High Dynamic Range Mode.
07:33Notice if we choose like 48-bit color, we have all these controls which
07:37we'll get into a little bit later, for controlling the quality and quantity of your scan.
07:42They work both in all of these other modes, the 16 and 48-bit color modes.
07:46But when you choose 16-bit grayscale HDR, notice it just shuts down all those
07:51controls, or if you choose 48-bit HDR, again, it closes down all these controls.
07:56What it's telling your scanner to do is just capture as much data as it possibly
08:00can, all the way from Highlight and Shadow with the full intention of working on
08:04this image somewhere else, either in Photoshop or in LaserSoft's other
08:08application called HDR.
08:09So you see you have a lot more choices for setting up your scanner.
08:13So it's very helpful to know about bit depth and what these various bit depth
08:17modes provide you for an option.
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Sharpening and its effects
00:00One of the most common adjustments you'll make to a scanned image or for digital
00:04photographic image for that matter is sharpening, and the reason for this is the
00:08very process of capturing your image with a scanner or digital camera, process
00:13of digitizing, that is converting your images into pixels softens your image.
00:17This makes perfect sense conceptually, because you're taking a not completely
00:21infinite resolution image, like a scene or a photograph, but a very, very high
00:25fine-grained image, and you're converting it into pixels, which has definite
00:29structure at a much lower resolution than the original image.
00:32The very process softens your image.
00:34So you'll want to sharpen nearly every one of your digital images that you
00:37capture with a scanner or digital camera, the question becomes how much and when
00:42you want to apply the sharpening?
00:43And along the way, we'll talk about some things to avoid.
00:46Here we have the same image, this is the Kodiak Tundra image, but the left hand
00:50one has no sharpening applied to it.
00:52So I've labeled this a Nosharp image.
00:55The right hand one has already had some sharpening applied to it.
00:57Let's start with the left-hand one.
00:59First, I want to show you that I have actually assigned two color sampler points here.
01:05sampler point #1 is right on the edge of the leaf and it's a critical white
01:09highlight area near the edge of the leaf, and sampler point #2 is a critical
01:13shadow area down here where we want to maintain shadow detail.
01:15We are going to zoom in and focus visually on the edge of the leaf and the
01:19highlight point, and then we'll monitor the values of the shadow point over here.
01:23Notice, currently, the highlight point is about 228, and it's a good highlight value.
01:29it's not right at 5% white highlight, which is what we shoot for in a pure white highlight.
01:34You'll notice that our starting value along that highlight edge is 228, which is
01:39certainly plenty good value in terms of not being too light.
01:42The shadow value is at 13.
01:44we don't want to go too far below that.
01:46A shadow value of 12 is about as low as I will ever want to go, because if we
01:50go below that, that's 95% shadow in the percentage scale, then our shadows tend to fill in.
01:56On the highlight end, we don't want to go any lighter than 242.
01:59So we're okay in terms of the image and how it's exposed right now.
02:03Let's zoom in a little bit, I am going to move this over and we are going to
02:07zoom in on the highlight edge, and we are going to bring up a common sharpening tool.
02:15This one is called Unsharp Mask.
02:17This other good sharpening tool, that's your smart sharpen, but they all work
02:20pretty much the same way.
02:22We create focus, we enhance the focus or sharpness of an image when we apply
02:27sharpening tool by increasing the contrast, and particularly along high contrast edges.
02:32Notice here, in this Unsharp Mask tool, we are going to focus first on
02:37addressing the amount or changing the amount of sharpening and the amount is a
02:40percentage as you see here, and we have 50% sharpening.
02:44That means that the increase in contrast between two adjacent pixels is going
02:48to increase by 50%.
02:50Let's zoom way in right on the edge here, and let's turn the Preview checkbox
02:55off and on, and you can see how the contrast between adjacent pixels is being
03:01increased when we apply sharpening in the preview.
03:04That's how we create focus.
03:05lighter pixels get lighter, darker pixels get darker.
03:09Move over to the Info panel here and see what's going on at the same time.
03:12Remember, our starting values is 228.
03:15when we apply 50% sharpening, our highlight value goes to 242.
03:18That's right at 5% white highlight, and notice the shadow stays at about 13,
03:23which means, there probably isn't a lot of difference in contrast in the
03:26shadow area, which is okay, but we certainly wouldn't want to go too much
03:29higher along this edge than 242.
03:32Notice what happens when we increase the Sharpness amount to 100%.
03:36Visually, you can see the pixels get much higher contrast and over here
03:41numerically, we see these white highlight edge gets blown out to 255.
03:44Now granted that's just one pixel, but notice that a lot of the edge pixels
03:49are getting very, very light, and let's back off in our view just a little bit and come up one.
03:56there we go, and I am going to take this all the way up to 200% on this image,
04:00and you can see that the whole image gets very grainy.
04:03The other thing that happens is you see these white halos that start to
04:06form along that edge?
04:07That's a very common phenomenon of oversharpening.
04:10My point is a little bitter of sharpening goes a long way and it's easy to
04:14oversharpen an image.
04:16Point that I want to make is to really get the best visual representation
04:20of what sharpening is going to do to your image, you'll always want to work
04:23ultimately at 100%.
04:25You want to take a look at that 100% view of your image and when we turn the
04:29Preview off and on, you can see at 100 %, the whole image gets a little bit
04:33grainy actually, and you do start to get that white halo along the edge.
04:37So for this particular image, we can see that at 200%, this whole image gets
04:42very, very grainy and we get a very distinctive white halo along the edge.
04:46So 200% would be way too much for this image.
04:49Say, nothing of the fact that our edge has certainly blown out and our shadow
04:52has dropped down to a numeric value of 8.
04:55For this image, probably 50% sharpening for the amount of sharpening would be
04:59good for this image, because this was a pretty darn sharp image to begin with.
05:03Notice, when we turn the Preview off and on, you can visually see the increase
05:07in overall sharpness of the image, but you don't get a lot of graininess in your image.
05:12These other two values that we typically adjust when we do a high-quality
05:15sharpening is Radius and Threshold.
05:18Again, I'd like to zoom in on the edge of our image to show you the impact of those.
05:23The Radius controls the width over which the sharpening is going to be applied.
05:26Watch this edge right here where my cursor is, when I go to a Radius of 2.
05:30Do you see how everything thickens up a little bit?
05:33On a Radius of 3 it gets really thick, rarely, if ever do I go above a Radius of
05:381 on a continuous tone image.
05:40For some line art images, I'd go higher, but not for continuous tone images.
05:44And then a more subtle control is something called Threshold, and various
05:48sharpening tools do this in different ways.
05:50What Thresholds allows you to control is where the sharpening is going to be
05:54applied to an image.
05:55For instance, a Threshold of 0 means sharpening is going to be applied across
05:59the entire image and notice there's equal graininess across the whole image when
06:03we have a Threshold of 0.
06:05When I apply a Threshold of 3 to this image, you'll notice that the interior of
06:09these leaves get a little bit softer.
06:11The edges are still sharp and pretty much the same, but the interior has softened.
06:14Let me just go back to 0 and watch this area right in here, and then go to a Threshold of 3.
06:21Notice the high contrast edge details are still sharpened, but the interior
06:24portions, which are a little bit lower contrast, are protected a little bit
06:28from that sharpening.
06:29This is a very important tool when you're sharpening people's faces, for
06:32instance, where you want the eyebrows and the teeth and the hair to be sharpened
06:36more than say the skin tones.
06:37Or on this particular image, if you wanted the interior of the leaf to be a
06:41little bit smoother than the edges, then you can apply a small amount of
06:44Threshold in the 1 to 3 category.
06:46This would be a little good sharpening amount for this image.
06:49Amount of 50, a Radius of 1 and maybe a Threshold of 2 or 3 or for this image
06:54and in a lot of night landscape images I'll use a Threshold of 0, I want
06:57everything sharpened.
06:58But something in this range here would give us good quality amount of
07:00sharpening in our image.
07:02And notice, we end up with the RGB value of 245 for our highlight area and an
07:07RGB value of 11, which just falls below the 12 Threshold.
07:12And if you want to apply a little bit more sharpening than what the two
07:16highlight and shadow details will allow, you can always fine-tune your highlight
07:19and shadow details afterwards and I've done that quite a bit, and particularly
07:22if you use adjustment layers in Photoshop, it gives you that freedom without
07:26damaging your images.
07:27So that's pretty good sharpening on that particular image, and if we take that
07:31to, again, 100% view and return that Sharpening off and on, you can see that
07:36it's enhanced the quality of that image.
07:38Let's move over to the pre-sharpened image and the point that I want to make
07:41here, I think, you probably have already figured out where I am going to go with
07:44this, but let's just go there anyway.
07:47Is this image is already sharpened, you can tell by looking at the nice sharp edges here.
07:51Look at our value 242 and 12.
07:54The point I want to make is if I come back in and I apply sharpening to this
07:58image, just the 50% we did before, notice the edge values go to 255, the shadow
08:03value is dropped way too low down to 9, and the image is getting too grainy.
08:08You don't want to over sharpen your image, you sharpened it completely twice.
08:11This very commonly happens, because the automatic mode on most scanners and for
08:15that matter on a lot of digital cameras is set to sharpen your image.
08:19My suggestion is and particularly if you intend to edit your image in Photoshop
08:23after you scan your image, don't apply sharpening during the scan.
08:26If you go apply sharpening during the scan and afterwards in Photoshop, you are
08:31going to over sharpen your image.
08:32Another thing to consider is if you do want to work in your image, you want to
08:35edge your image in Photoshop, notice that sharpening not only increases contrast
08:40along these edges giving us better focus, but it also decreases the overall
08:44tonality of your image.
08:45That is the amount of tones in your image decreases, because we are increasing
08:49contrast between adjacent pixels everywhere.
08:52If you want to edit your image, and you want to have all the tonal values to
08:54work with, you don't want to be editing your sharpen image.
08:57So my suggestion is finish your editing and then apply sharpening.
09:01So if you are going to go to Photoshop, wait, don't apply it during the scan.
09:05And in fact, as a general rule, I don't sharpen any of my images during the scan.
09:10I always like to have a fully color corrected, but not sharpened image that I
09:14can always go back to, if I decide to apply some editing later on.
09:17So there's how to apply sharpening and how sharpening works and some things to worry about.
09:23One final thing that we want to talk about is there are some kinds of images
09:27that are really dangerous to apply sharpening to, and it is a kind of an image
09:30that we talked about already, and this is a JPEG image, particularly one that
09:34has had a lot of JPEG compression applied to it.
09:37I mentioned that sharpening really has its greatest impact along high contrast edges.
09:42Let's zoom in on this image and this is the JPEG compressed image we talked
09:46about a little bit earlier in the class.
09:47Well, this is how the JPEG compression amount of 4 applied to it.
09:51When you zoom in, you see these boxes of compressed pixels that have been created.
09:55When we come in and just apply a modest amount of sharpening to this image, say,
10:0050% of sharpening to this image, watch what happens to all those JPEG
10:04compression boxes that we see in the image.
10:07The impact of the compression is actually exacerbated by the application of sharpening.
10:12It makes it actually worse, because the edges of all those groups and pixels are
10:16high contrast edges and the sharpening tool doesn't know what they are.
10:20they are just season this high contrast edges.
10:22If you were to apply something like 100% sharpening, oh, my gosh!
10:26that impact of the JPEG compression becomes worse and worse and worse.
10:29This is one more reason why you really don't want to save your high-quality
10:32images out as JPEG, because when you apply sharpening to them, the impact of the
10:37JPEG compression just is exacerbated.
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Creating and assigning color management profiles
00:00Let's chat about color spaces, color conversions, and your color workflow.
00:04First, whenever you capture an image with a digital camera, a scanner you view
00:09them on your monitor or on a webpage, you're working in RGB color space and just
00:13like the RGB images that we've been capturing and working with so far that's the
00:17color space in which you work and when you capture and view colors.
00:20When you go to print on the other hand you're working entirely different color
00:24space in difference set of color and different substrates, papers and plastics
00:28and metals and so forth.
00:30So if you are a person of the monitor and the web as well as a person of
00:34printing, you really work in at least two different color spaces.
00:38Need to be aware that you're working in different color spaces and also be aware
00:41that you need to facilitate the conversion from one color space to another.
00:45In this case we have up on screen we're converting from a scanning and
00:48viewing color space of RGB to say commercial printing color spaces, cyan,
00:52magenta, yellow, and black.
00:54If you're printing to the inkjet world particularly the photo quality inkjet
00:58world, you're dealing with devices that have even more color, cyan, magenta,
01:02yellow, and black they have CMYK plus light cyan and light magenta and various
01:06versions of black and even other colors.
01:09The question is, where do you want this conversion to occur?
01:12How long do you want to stay in RGB?
01:14Let's talk about those issues just a little bit.
01:16First of all little bit of history.
01:18Used to be way back in the dark ages during the 1980s, and partly during the
01:22early 90s when we would scan.
01:24Scans were done by professionals on big drum scanners and they actually did the
01:27conversions right during the scanning process.
01:30This was such a common practice that everyone thought the scanners
01:33actually captured CMYK.
01:35What was actually happening is that we were capturing in RGB just like we do
01:39today, but we were using things called palette color look-up tables to do the
01:43conversion to a specific paper in a specific press CMYK version right from the scanner.
01:49As the digital age has progressed and evolved this RGB to print CMYK or other
01:56conversion has moved further and further down the workflow.
01:59Throughout most of the 90s and even in today much of the color conversion is
02:03occurred in Photoshop if you're doing commercial printing.
02:05Now that we're printing to these really wide-gamut inkjet devices that color
02:09conversion is so complicated we can't even do it in Photoshop, that is usually
02:13accomplished through the printer driver or through something called a Rip that's
02:17attached to the actual printing device.
02:19You need to decide and be aware of where this conversion is going to occur.
02:22You can actually do it during the scanner.
02:24High-quality scanners and scanner softwares will actually allow you to do this
02:27and I'll show you how to do that in just a moment, but my suggestion to you is
02:31to stay in the RGB color space for all of your capture and for all of your
02:35editing, and here's the reason, why.
02:37First off all, RGB is a simpler color space, noticed there is only three
02:40colors, with cyan, magenta, yellow, and black you have to have four colors that
02:44you have to work with.
02:45When in you work in RGB a neutral color correction, like for 5% white
02:49highlighted 242, 242, 242.
02:50If you're working in CMYK, it may be 755 because of the impurities in inks.
02:57And if you're editing, RGB is much easier to edit, and in fact Photoshop is
03:02really basically in RGB painting and image editing program, Although you can
03:06do some things in CMYK, it's much more difficult and some things you can't do it all.
03:11And CMYK is what we call a very device-specific color space.
03:15Conversions to CMYK or even other print spaces really need to be specifically
03:20for specific paper and a specific device.
03:23So I say stick with RGB and then do conversion to CMYK, if you do a conversion
03:28to CMYK through Photoshop such as for commercial printing I strongly recommend
03:32you work in a copy of the image, so you can save your original RGB file and
03:36always go back to it.
03:37So let's assume that we're all going to stick in the RGB color world and we'll
03:41do the conversion later on.
03:44Understanding that you're probably going to start with your scanner and then
03:46move into Photoshop what you want to do is set up Photoshop and your scanner, so
03:50they have the same color profiles.
03:52If you remember from our earlier discussion we create profiles from targets
03:56and those profiles and targets help was characterized the color and grayscale
04:01or tonal capture capability and reproduction capability such as for monitors
04:05of individual devices.
04:07So let's go back to our scanning software.
04:09In this case we will go to the SilverFast software and we're going to set up
04:13color profiles in SilverFast and then move over to Photoshop and make sure they are the same.
04:18The way you set up color profiles in SilveFast is you go into the Basic tool
04:23panel here and click Options and then you click on the Color Management
04:26System, by default General will come up first and you just click on Color Management Space.
04:31The most important profiles that you need to assign here, and I know this is a
04:35bit of an intimidating dialog box at first, but there is only a few that you
04:39really need to pay attention to here.
04:40First, right here where it says Internal to Output, we're going to stick with
04:44RGB for the most part.
04:46If you are one of those people who really wants to scan into CMYK you can do it
04:49and this is where you would set it up, and we choose your P&P which is
04:52Plug-and-Play CMYK, which would allow you to capture in RGB and convert right to CMYK.
04:58If you want to do that you would choose that here and then you would come down
05:01here, you would choose the output profile and usually it's going to be something
05:06like a sheet fed, coated sheet fed, uncoated or web-coated.
05:10One of the specific paper and press combinations you would use for going to
05:14Prepress, and that kind of information we'd get from your printing company.
05:18But for most of us who are working in the multiple color world, we're not just
05:21working in the print world, we're going to choose typically RGB as our internal
05:26color workspace that we are working with, and then importantly you want to
05:30choose the profile that was created with this version of the scanner.
05:34Here we're using an Epson Perfection in version 700 scanner.
05:38And this profile that you're looking at here it's an ICC profile.
05:41It's professional profile that was created by Epson for this particular scanner
05:46model, and then importantly you'll come down here and choose a specific RGB
05:50color space and a grayscale color space.
05:53For most people I think we are taking this class you can have one of three choices.
05:57If you're really just a web person through and through and you never go to
06:00print then you'll choose one of these sRGB color spaces because that's a
06:05web-specific color space.
06:06If you're a multiple color space person web and print.
06:10My general recommendation is to go with the AdobeRGB1998.
06:13If you are a professional photographer and you're capturing in a wider color
06:17gamut, it is a wider range of colors you can capture with your camera and
06:21printing to very wide gamut devices like an Epson multicolor inkjet printer then
06:26you may want to use a ProPhoto and that's right down here.
06:29So choose one of those three basically and if you're a professional
06:33photographer and you're capturing in ProPhoto then by all means capturing to
06:36ProPhoto in your scanner.
06:38I'm going to set this on AdobeRGB1998 because that's a more general color space
06:42that more people are going to use.
06:44Then underneath Gray, if you're doing grayscale scanning then I would
06:48recommend that you choose one of these two gamuts and we get into the actual
06:51scanning, we can talk about which one you would choose, but typically we'll be
06:54choosing a great gamut of 1.8.
06:57If you want things to be a little bit lighter than we can choose a 2.2, but
07:00typically we'll be using 1.8.
07:01There we go and then you can apply this and these are the profiles that will be
07:07used during the scanning process and then click OK.
07:10Now we'll move back over to Photoshop and what we're going to be going to the
07:15color setups inside of Photoshop, going to Color Settings and then we're going
07:19to assign exactly the same color settings here underneath RGB.
07:23Here is the same one, there's the RGB, there is the ProPhoto and there is the Adobe RGB.
07:28So we're going to choose Adobe RGB here and we're going to choose the Epson Gray Gamma 1.8.
07:33This way when we transfer our images from our scanner to Photoshop there is not
07:38going to be any adjustment to the colors or the display of the colors and the
07:41tonal ranges of grayscale.
07:43And of course those of you who want to learn about conversion to CMYK this is
07:46one of the places where you can set your output profile for CMYK.
07:50But having this setup you want the scanner and Photoshop to have the same color
07:54profile setups, and if you're a photographer you want to have the same setup in
07:58your camera as well.
08:00Most cameras by default have setup on SRGB just like Photoshop is, so if you
08:05care about having consistency of which your colors and tonal ranges look like
08:08from one device to the other, make sure they all have the same setup in terms
08:12of the color profiles.
08:13Now there is one step beyond what we've done here.
08:16We've taken profiles that were created by somebody else, you see the scanner
08:18manufacturers and the camera manufacturers and at Adobe and we've applied them,
08:23which gets us pretty far down that road.
08:25If you're very, very critical about your color and your tonal ranges and your
08:28reproduction you can create your own color management profiles using targets
08:33like we talked about earlier.
08:34If you'd like to learn more about that I'd like to refer you to a lynda.com
08:38course called Color Management Essential training with Chris Murphy.
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5. Specific Scanning Tasks
Taking the Tazmanian Oath!
00:01Our primary goal in scanning is to faithfully reproduce high-quality images,
00:05and then in some cases attempt to improve and/or edit the characteristics of
00:09the original images.
00:11However, before we begin the capturing, editing, and improving imaging
00:14processes, we must address the fundamental issue and take an oath.
00:19Just like the Hippocratic Oath and medicine, our prime directive in scanning is
00:22to first do no harm.
00:24Well we tend to view the scanning and image editing process as an
00:28image enhancing process.
00:29It is also indeed true that many of the tools' processes and procedures, we use
00:34doing the image capture editing and output, can actually degrade the quality of
00:38our images and in many cases significantly so.
00:41Processes such as changing the dimensional and linear resolution of our images,
00:45repeatedly resaving our images in different file formats and especially
00:49compressed formats like JPEG, applying improper tone compression, too much
00:54sharpening and converting our images through multiple color spaces can
00:58dramatically reduce the quality of our images.
01:01As I have repeatedly emphasized, probably to your extreme annoyance at this
01:04point, working in a dusty, dirty environment and with unclean hands and images,
01:09can cause all sorts of unspeakable image quality degradation problems.
01:14Here is a review of some of the damage we can inflict.
01:18Our goal with reproduction of line art is to create these nice, clean,
01:21consistent high-quality edges like this objectively scanned edge that you see here.
01:25With very little effort at all this nice, clean, sharp, high-quality edge can
01:29become this as highly interpolated distorted edge.
01:32Interpolation is a result of resizing, re-sampling or geometric distortion.
01:37In continuous tone images, this is our goals to have nice, clean, sharp, high
01:42contrast images with lots of detail and tonal variation, and our image can
01:46quickly go from something like this to something that looks like this.
01:50If we apply too much interpolation or apply too much compression to our image,
01:54you get significant loss of detail in very little time.
01:58And then of course, if you add too much sharpening or sharpening at the wrong
02:01time, particularly if you add that to something like a JPEG compressed image,
02:05you lose even more detail and the quality of the image degrades
02:08significantly, you start to get these white halos around the edges, and
02:12that's certainly not what we want.
02:14If you're don't really pay a lot of attention to the cleanliness of your
02:16environment and handling of your images, you can end up with adding dirt and
02:19dust and all sorts of stuff to your images which like here on this portrait it
02:23is really a bad idea.
02:25And then, if you combine all of these entries at one time on one image, you can
02:29end up with some truly hideous results.
02:32In addition to knowing what tools to use and how to properly use them, we also
02:36need to pay attention to the order in which we use tools.
02:39So it's not just what we do but when we do it.
02:42One of the more obvious examples is applying sharpening too early in the image
02:46capture and editing process.
02:48Sharpening as you have seen is an edge contrast enhancement tool which actually
02:53reduces the overall tonal content of your images, thereby reducing the edit
02:57ability of our images.
02:59Before we proceed any further you must take the Tasmanian scanning pledge.
03:03Raise your right hand or a left if you prefer and repeat after me.
03:06First, I will do no harm to my images.
03:10One of the first steps in fulfilling our pledge to do no harm to our images is
03:14to make sure you don't add any dust or scratches to your images.
03:18To accomplish this, you want to work in this dust-free environment as possible.
03:22Always have on your lint-free gloves and handle your images as little and
03:25as cleanly as you can.
03:27Going forward I'll scan project instructions, we'll assume you have cleaned your
03:31scanner and images, and of course you're wearing your high-quality lint gloves.
03:36Let's go scanning!
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Choosing your weapon
00:00Let's discuss which kind of scanner tool that you would like to use.
00:04Basically we are going to choose our scanning weapon.
00:06Most of you or a lot of you will have two choices.
00:09The first choice is the manufacturer scanning application.
00:13And this is an Epson scanner that we are using here so the, Epson scanning-ware
00:17called Epson Scan is one tool you can choose.
00:20One of the challenges of working with scanners as supposed to working with
00:23something like Photoshop for image editing is a Photoshop is a fairly common and
00:28universal tools you have a standard interface.
00:31With scanner manufacturers, each one has its own scanner interface.
00:35It's somewhat of a challenge to move from one to the other.
00:37Although, as we'll see a lot of the tools once you understand them are fairly
00:41common from one to another.
00:42Let's take a look at this scanner interface first and other manufacturers has
00:46similar kinds of scanning tools.
00:48If we first look at the Mode, which is a Full Automatic Mode, when you go in
00:52that you just click Scan, there is a Home Mode which is a relatively simple
00:57interface, in which you can choose from various kinds of documents and the
01:02scanning software is preconfigured to make certain choices.
01:05Then as we move down you go to the Office Mode which will give you a few more
01:09choices and then finally into the Professional Mode.
01:12In this class we are going to be using the mode that gives us the most control
01:15which is the Professional Mode.
01:16We are not going to be using the Automatic Mode.
01:19If you use the Automatic Mode you really don't learn anything about scanning.
01:23To learn the most about scanning and to get the most control over your image, we
01:26are going to use the Professional Mode.
01:28Little bit later on, I'll give you some tips about how to configure Auto Mode
01:32and when you might want to use it from time-to-time but primarily this class is
01:36about working in a full manual mode.
01:39In most of the interfaces when you go to a full manual mode like this, you'll
01:43have a variety of settings that are common from one to the other like assigning
01:46a name and choosing a document type, reflective or film for instance and various
01:51kinds of film holders.
01:52And where the document is coming from if you have the scanner that has multiple
01:56capabilities, and then exposure type and then image scanning modes, and
02:00resolution and document dimensions, these are all going to be fairly common.
02:04Then you'll have a Configuration Mode or Preference Mode that you will work in
02:08most scanning softwares.
02:10So this is one tool that you could choose to use, and we're work in this a little bit.
02:14But what I'd like to show you now is a tool that I consider to be kind of like
02:17the Photoshop of the scanning world which is called SilverFast.
02:20It's made by a company called LaserSoft.
02:23LaserSoft makes SilverFast for a wide variety of different scanners.
02:27And most of the medium-to-higher quality scanners provide this as an option.
02:31And if you really want to have good maximum control, high-quality control of
02:35your images I want to recommend this software to you.
02:38And because it's a common scanner interface, as you move from scanner-to-scanner
02:42you'll have the same tool.
02:43So you have the same advantages that you do working in Photoshop, complete
02:46manual control and a consistency of interface.
02:49Let's go take a look at that scanner interface and start working in that one.
02:52Here we are in the SilverFast interface.
02:57When you first look at it, oh my gosh, this is very complicated and indeed there
03:01is a lot that you can do in this software interface, and I am going to focus on
03:05the main tools that we are using in SilverFast that could give you the primary
03:09control over your images.
03:10Like the Epson software, it has some of the same basic set up characteristics.
03:15In this case, we start in General where we select our device and the basic scan
03:20mode and whether it's reflective or film or not, and then we go and we set up
03:24Frame for the scan types and settings and names and dimensions and all that.
03:28So this is a tool that we are going to be use in throughout most of the scan course.
03:32There is an Automatic Mode here and it's this button right here, and when you
03:36choose something like one of the grayscale or the color modes, it's really a
03:40very sophisticated automatic mode.
03:42But again we are going to choose not to use that because you really don't know
03:46what you're doing to your image.
03:47It's just a software making all the choices.
03:49So we are going to use SilverFast, throughout most of this course we will come
03:52back to the other interface once in a while, just to show you how things work
03:55there, and we are going to be working in Full Manual Mode.
03:58So you are going to learn the most about how to use this software.
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Setting up your scanning preferences
00:00Here I'd like to review the overall SilverFast interface and then I would
00:05like to show you how to set up the options which most of us think of as
00:08preferences for SilverFast.
00:10First to note about SilverFast versions, you'll notice that this is
00:13SilverFast Ai Studio.
00:16Depending upon the version of the scanner, the model you may get a different
00:20version of the software, but have no fear, almost all the really good
00:24fundamental scanning tools are available in all the versions.
00:26There are different bells and whistles as you kind of move up the scale.
00:29For instance Ai has a few more tools than SE, few more capabilities, and if you
00:34want to upgrade you can do that directly through the LaserSoft website at
00:38lasersoft.com, and they have a variety of other tools that you can choose from.
00:42We are going to be sticking with the fundamental core scanning tools.
00:46Don't sweat it if you don't have exactly the same version, you probably have all
00:49the tools that you need.
00:50All right, now about laying out the interface.
00:53Instead of having a lot of menu choices up here, everything is pretty much laid
00:57out in these panels, and I think it's really inspired design, I like it.
01:00It's different than most of us used to working with, used to working with in Photoshop.
01:04So at first, ooh boy, the interface is a little bit confusing because we've got
01:07so many tools down here, but it really provides access to all the tools in a
01:11real small area without having to go to menu.
01:13So here's how I like to arrange things.
01:16As I like to have my Primary Setup panel over here and then this is the Preview
01:19panel, and when we get into Scans, as you will see, we will pretty much start
01:23all scans by of course cleaning our scanner and the images and laying it down
01:27on the platen, so I can get into the side of the dedicated film scanner and
01:31then we click the Prescan button to see where things are located and the
01:35preview scan comes up here.
01:36So this is the Preview window where we will see the image, then we'll set up the
01:40final scan based upon what we see and measure here.
01:44So I'd like to put this over here and then I'd like to put the Densitometer in the middle.
01:47You may want to put your Densitometer over here.
01:49That's fine, you can develop your own little system.
01:51But keep this Densitometer up, this is by the way similar to the Info tool in
01:56Photoshop, and this is what we will be using for measuring the critical RGB
01:59values in grayscale and color continuous tone images in particular.
02:03There is also this Picture Settings panel which we won't be using in awful lot,
02:07in this course, we are going to be using all the fundamental scanning tools.
02:10So you can learn how to use that if you like and you can add that to your bag
02:13of tricks, but we are primarily going to be working in these three windows in this course.
02:17Now moving over to setting up just for a basic scan, there's two buttons over
02:22here, there is Frame and General.
02:24We are going to start in the General and this is where you designate what kind
02:27of scanner and this should be pre-selected for you.
02:29SilverFast really doesn't launch properly unless it's connected to a scanner,
02:32your device should come up and be right here.
02:35If for some reason this connection is broken then SilverFast will really stop working.
02:40So you won't have to worry too much about setting that device.
02:43But you will want to set the Scan Mode to either Normal or Batch Mode, and Batch
02:46Mode allows you to scan multiple images.
02:48We will be doing a Batch Mode project in the last section of this course where
02:53we do multiple scans.
02:55Then you will set the Original either to Reflective or Transparency, your
02:59Transparency (full area), we will talk about the difference between these two
03:01choices a little bit later when we did discuss scanning films.
03:05So we will set this to Reflective.
03:06That's how we are going to start, and then whether we are going to have a
03:09positive or negative image, and of course, when we are working with Reflective,
03:12it is always positive.
03:14SilverFast has a special Kodachrome setting for Kodachrome film.
03:17Again more on scanning film a little bit later.
03:20And then this Frame-Set that you see here, you can actually, after you set the
03:24General and the Frame up, you can save your frame-sets, notice when I choose
03:27Save, this little dialog box, and this says new frame setting, so you might set
03:31up one primarily for like doing line art or one for doing grayscale images or
03:36one for doing color-con tones.
03:38That's a really handy feature, so you don't have to go through and do
03:41everyone of those, or if you have multiple scanners with multiple settings,
03:45so you may have one frame setting for doing your Epson Reflective Scanner,
03:48another frame setting for doing maybe your Plustek Transparency Scanner or
03:52Film Scanner, so that's handy to do.
03:54It can be a real timesaver if you do a lot of scanning.
03:57One of the other things that you will notice, if you move around the interface
04:00is there is these buttons with the drop shadows that have the Q, these are
04:03QuickTime instructional movies that LaserSoft has added all over the interface
04:07to help explain and these provide some basic description of what the tools do
04:11and a little bit about how they work, but they are very handy to have there.
04:14All right, next, let's go click on the Options button.
04:17This is basically setting up the preferences for how SilverFast is going to
04:21work, you'll notice that there are four different buttons here.
04:24The Auto button, we are not going to talk about right now.
04:27This is for how you would set up and instruct SilverFast to do an automatic scan.
04:32I will revisit this a little bit later, but it's not the primary tool that we
04:35are going to be using.
04:36We discussed the Color Management Setup tool a little bit earlier, so I
04:40won't review that now.
04:41If you want to review how to setup your color management, please refer back to that movie.
04:46And then there is this special section, we will come back to it a little bit
04:48later when we talk about half-toning.
04:51Let's focus on the General options or General preferences, and let's go
04:55down through here and discuss how we might set these, now or in specific circumstances.
05:01The Color Mode notices RGB or CMY, remember our discussion earlier about the RGB
05:07versus CMYK workflow, we are going to stick in RGB.
05:11It's simpler, it's faster, smaller files, easier color correction, and of
05:16course, Photoshop is an RGB color image- editing painting program, when you can
05:20do with CMYK editing, but it's really primarily an RGB program.
05:24Remember, we discussed that CMYK is really device-specific and device-dependent.
05:28The conversion from RGB to CMYK is something you should do later on in your
05:32image-editing workflow, unless you truly are just going up to one specific
05:35printer on one specific paper.
05:37All right, so we are going to choose RGB.
05:39You can select your own units of measurements.
05:41Typically I will use Inches.
05:42If you like to use Centimeters or Points, Pikes, or Pixels, it's up to you.
05:47Densitometer Radius, this is an interesting one to talk about the default.
05:50By the way, I have got all the default values set here to the
05:53LaserSoft defaults.
05:54Here it's 2 pixels.
05:56What this is used for is, remember we discussed the Densitometer, the RGB values
06:00that you see here, if you were to choose a one pixel radius, it would just
06:04measure one pixel at a time.
06:07This gives you like a 2x2 square for measuring the pixels.
06:10My preference are a 3x3 pixel, and this is similar the way I set it up in Photoshop.
06:15My suggestion would be to set up your Densitometer Radius here to the same one
06:19that you have in Photoshop, so you are going to get similar readings as you
06:22move back and forth.
06:23The reason why you want to have something other than one pixel is, remember when
06:26we were working with an RGB image, it's really three grayscale channels and you
06:31don't what the individual pixels are on each channel.
06:34You may have a straight pixel, you really want an average of like what a
06:37highlight or what a shadow value is.
06:39So I like to set this on 3.
06:40If I have very small highlights or very small critical shadow areas, I will set it down to 2.
06:45But typically I will set this at 3.
06:46Notice the default settings where it says SilverFast Defaults, and that's what
06:51we are kind of setting up here, what this is going to be for the default.
06:54But notice that underneath Option Parameter, again we can save settings, we can
06:57delete them, we can go back to the Factory Settings, if we want to.
07:00When we click Save, we can name that, so we wanted to set this up for Contone
07:05images, I could make a Contone setting and then save that.
07:10Typically you don't want to do this until you get done with all your settings, I
07:12am just showing you how to do that.
07:14And then all you have to do is to come in here and choose Contone.
07:17If you wanted a separate one for grayscale, separate one for color, one for line
07:20art, you can certainly do that.
07:22Interpolation, definitely set this on Anti-Alias rather than
07:25SilverFast Standard.
07:26What this does, when you set on Anti- Alias, if you have some built-in like
07:29grid structure in your image, the anti- aliasing interpolation will try to take
07:33that out of your image.
07:34It's kind of a mini de- screening function if you will.
07:36So I suggest set that on Anti Alias.
07:39This High-Resolution Prescan, what you can do here is you can set this on
07:42anywhere, the default is 1x, so when you go through a Prescan, remember you
07:47click this Prescan button down here and you get 100% view of your image.
07:51If you want to use your Magnifying Glass to zoom in, typically what you have to
07:55do on a scanner is, if you want to zoom in, it has to go through another prescan
07:59which can really slow down the process.
08:01So if you set this on 4, for instance, we'll go ahead and set it on 4, and then
08:05we get done or show you how it works, that allows you to zoom in.
08:07The only downside of putting this at a higher value than one is it does slow
08:11down the prescan slightly, and you can test your scanner with the software and
08:14see if it significantly slows it down.
08:16We will set it on 4 for now and then you how it works.
08:20This Preview Lightness by default is set Off.
08:22Watch the relationship of this image here to the outer frame background, watch
08:27what happens when I go from Off to Dark.
08:30See it will automatically darken the outside area creating contrast between
08:33where the frame is and the area that's outside of the frame.
08:37That's how I like to set mine, but you can set yours to make it lighter.
08:41So if you're working with dark images, you will have more contrast with a
08:44lighter background where you can turn it off. It's up to you.
08:47We will set it on Dark for now.
08:48Gamma-Gradation, when I set this on the factory default, it came up with 2.2.
08:54What this Gamma-Gradation is, is that the response of CCDs to grayscale values
08:59is not linear which means that when it looks at 50, it doesn't necessarily read 50%.
09:04So typically for most continuous tone images and reflective continuous tone
09:09images, a default Gamma-Gradation is about 1.8 and for a lot of films
09:14Gamma-Gradation is between 2.0 and 2.2.
09:17Since we are doing Reflective right now we are going to set this at 1.8.
09:20If you are doing HDR Output which is High Dynamic Range Output which we will
09:24talk about later, you can check that, and this is one of the examples of, or you
09:29might save a separate parameter option for say High Dynamic Range versus Line
09:34Art versus Continuous Tone Images for Film or Reflection.
09:38If you do some high dynamic range scanning which basically you are just going to
09:41collect data and send it somewhere else to be edited, that might be a special
09:45set up and you might have a different Gamma-Gradation for that.
09:47Okay, then just tabbing down, by the way you can just hit the Tab key or
09:51Shift+Tab to go backwards on these.
09:54But the Q-Factor is when you're using Line Screen in order to designate your
09:58resolution, if we to go to the Frame function, you see the Q-Factor is here, if
10:03you are using Line Screen to designate the resolution of your file, we are
10:06typically not going to be doing that.
10:08We are going to actually be working down here in the pixels per inch.
10:11So that's where Q-Factor is effective or applied. It's right there.
10:15My recommendation is to go ahead and just leave that on the default of 1.5, we
10:19will discuss that in a more detail as we go.
10:22You can reopen SilverFast after the scan, you can show image after the scan if
10:26you want, typically I checked this on and I have on Real-time Correction which
10:30means that as soon as you do something on screen, it's reflected in the preview.
10:34The only reason you would want to trim that out would be if you were working on
10:37a very slow computer where things were just dragging along.
10:39If you have a computer that's just a couple of years old or younger, SilverFast
10:43is going to work just fine in the Realtime Correction.
10:46The Mask Edge, leave that on 0, typically only you are going to be using that if
10:51you're doing selective color corrections and it creates a mass kind of an
10:54anti-aliased or graded edge if you will, or masked, so that you don't have
10:58abrupt changes in color.
10:59It's not something we are going to spend a lot of time with in this course.
11:03You can choose open color screen and then your Frame Color, it's the color that
11:07you have right here.
11:08I kind of like that red orange color.
11:10Let's just go into our Magnifying Glass tool that you see here, and notice when
11:15you click on that, when you have more than a 1x, it gives you some keyboard
11:19shortcuts that you can use using the Ctrl key and dragging frames and clicking
11:23and zooming, and notice that as I click here, I can use my Command key or
11:32Command or Ctrl, depending upon whether you are on Mac or Windows, you can keep
11:35magnifying as long as that says Green, so I can keep magnifying in.
11:39Once it gets to Red, then it's going to perform a prescan.
11:43If you hold down the Option+Alt key, see the little P that comes up.
11:46It goes right back to the one-to-one view.
11:48So that's what we set and now we are using that 4x that you see right here and then click OK.
11:56Notice that Preview Scan at 4X, we'll just go through that once.
12:01It's a pretty fast preview scan, even when you put it at 4x it's collecting a
12:04little bit more data.
12:05All right, so there is the interface, the general interface and kind of
12:08organizing things and setting up their preview preferences and tool
12:12preferences in SilverFast.
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Performing a prescan
00:00One of the first scanning functions you are likely to perform after you set your
00:03General preferences is something called an Overview Scan or Prescan, in
00:06SilverFast that button is right here.
00:09When you click on this Overview or Preview button what happens is this scanner
00:13performs a low-resolution overview scan of the scan platen or the film holder
00:17if you are working with the dedicated film scanner, and this allows you to do several things.
00:21One, of course it allows you to locate the image to see where it actually where
00:24it is within the scan area, and then two, it allows you to set the scan frame
00:28and that's this red rectangle that you see here.
00:31You don't always want to scan the entire image.
00:33If you just want to scan a portion of it you can set the scan frame by using a
00:37preview image and that'll determine what portion of the image will actually be
00:40scanned in final scan process.
00:42The other thing, this is preview image, of course it's very important for you,
00:45is doing image evaluation.
00:47Visually looking at the image or if you want to come in you want to set critical
00:50highlights and shadow points such as we see here that you can then monitor with
00:54your Info or Pipette palette that you see here.
00:56Now in some cases just having this small low-resolution overview scan like
01:01working with some simple line art is fine. That's all I need.
01:04In other cases it's nice to be able to zoom in and this does have a Zoom tool,
01:08watch as I move my cursor up here in the upper left-hand corner and I click on
01:12Zoom you'll get some keyboard shortcuts that will come up and then I'll show you
01:16how to use your keyboard shortcuts for zooming in.
01:18But notice when I click on that with the default setting, if I want to enlarge
01:23then the preview scan has to be performed again.
01:26So that can be kind of time-consuming.
01:28One of the nice things about SilverFast is that there is an option that you can
01:31go to in the General tab and then click on Options down here.
01:35We discussed this in Setting Preferences with a default to set on 1x for
01:38instance if we set our High resolution prescan at 4 times the normal amount and
01:44then click Apply and OK, then when we perform a prescan a little bit higher
01:49resolution is going to be used to perform that prescan.
01:52It takes just slightly longer.
01:54What this allows us to do is now when we go up to the button like this and we
01:59click on it or we use a keyboard shortcut to magnify, such as this, and I click
02:05on it, notice that I can keep magnifying without having to go through prescan.
02:09In SilverFast as long as that little magnifying glass is green I can continue to keep enlarging.
02:14Once it gets red if I click again then it's going to perform a prescan.
02:19Notice one of the nice keyboard shortcuts you probably want to learn is if you
02:22hold down the Ctrl key it brings up the Magnifying Glass, then if you click the
02:26Option on a Mac, Alt on Windows see it says P, it will take you back to the
02:29original preview scan size and then you can zoom in again.
02:33You can also do the click- and-drag to zoom in as well.
02:36So as long as this is green you can continue to zoom in, and boom, go right back
02:40to the low view or the small dimension of the preview scan.
02:43So there is setting up on performing a preview scan and controlling the preview
02:47scan resolution and how that can be helpful to you in configuring your image for
02:51setting up for the final scan.
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Assigning a scan frame
00:01After you've performed your pre-scan the next order of business is really
00:04setting your scan frame of your image. Whether you're doing an automatic or a
00:08manual scan now is a good time to go ahead and set the scan frame.
00:11The scan frame is this outlined red area here.
00:15What that designates is the actual portion or area of the image is going to be
00:19scanned when you finally click that ultimate Scan button when you're all set up.
00:23You can actually set the color of this in your options.
00:28You probably want to start for just a manual kind of get close to where you want it.
00:32Let's say if we wanted to 5x7 scan, you can just manually drag it over there
00:36with the default settings.
00:37With the default settings this is the area where you're really going to be
00:42designated the scan frame and you can see the results of any resizing that you do here.
00:47You'll watch these numbers here and here at the original and then the
00:50output will change.
00:52So you get it close to what you want.
00:57Then you can move over here and you can get it exactly right if you want to.
01:00Let's take a look at a couple of different scenarios.
01:02Let's say that you wanted your original frame to be 5x7 and you will find these
01:10fields to be a little squirrely sometimes.
01:12They seem to change on their own.
01:13they have a mind of their own.
01:15If you put in 5.0 and 7.0 instead of just 5.7, you'll have better luck.
01:20Watch to the scan frame over here.
01:22I'm going to Shift+Tab to move backward.
01:24You can Tab from one field to the other.
01:26If I go 4 point and as soon as I hit the point that red line comes to move in.
01:32Sometimes it moves in without the point, sometimes it doesn't, but the
01:34point always helps.
01:36If I go over 6, notice it didn't move that time and then point, then it actually moves up.
01:41So I'm going to hit that point that kind of tells that red scan frame to actually move.
01:47So Shift+Tab move about here. We'll go 5.
01:48And see how it moves and then 7.0.
01:51So go ahead and just put in the whole number and be sure to use that point even
01:58if you using full numbers.
02:00Then I'm going to Tab forward here, and I'm going to 5.0, Tab 7.0.
02:07Notice we are at 100 and 100.
02:08Then what I like to do as soon as I set my output.
02:11See this is the size of the original frame here and then this is going to be the
02:15output dimensions of the final image.
02:18Then I'm going to click on these two and it holds that in position.
02:22It holds that output at 5x7.
02:24So no more interpolation will occur.
02:26Whatever we scan that's what's going to be held.
02:28Notice that I can then move my scan image anywhere that I want to.
02:33So if I were to move that down here I'd get part of this white area that
02:35actually be captured.
02:37So by clicking on these locks, it locks that frame area.
02:41Sometimes depending upon the dimensions in the image you may want to actually
02:45zoom out a little bit so that you can see that scan frame location.
02:49Remember to use that multiple or higher-resolution prescan to give you that
02:53capability without having to rescan the image.
02:57Just another scenario.
02:58let's unlock this again.
02:59Let's say you wanted to change from the 5x7 format and you wanted to go to 8x10.
03:04So we started with a 4.0 and then a 5.0 and then we wanted to output this at 8.0
03:15and 10 and notice do you see this little proportion here. That's turned on.
03:20It's turned on by default and generally you want that turned on.
03:22Otherwise, you'll get non- proportional scaling which is not a good thing.
03:27Notice when I put in the 8 the 10 automatically filled itself in here.
03:30Now when I click these see I've set a 4 inch by 5 inch original frame.
03:37Now I can move this around anywhere I want to.
03:40When I complete the scan I'll end up with an 8x10 image.
03:44This framing and scaling data here interacts with the resolution data that you
03:50see down here and we'll discuss that in the next movie.
03:53One side note to mention about setting your scan frame and this may happen to
03:58you where we've placed a 5x7 image down on the scan bed.
04:01In this case a flatbed scanner with a glass platen.
04:04If we nudged it all the way up to the top to get the top edge of the image,
04:09square with the top edge of the scan platen and then we place the 5x7 scan
04:15frame in the image and then we scanned it we end up with this little white
04:18space down here at the bottom and that's because on some scanners, and this
04:23particular one as well, the scanner doesn't quite read all the way to the edge
04:27of the scan platen and that can be a little frustrating if you want to get the entire 5x7 image.
04:32So what you can do is what I've done here is I've actually taken the image and
04:37I've offset it from the top of the scanner and the easy way to do that just
04:40take a short straightedge ruler, usually a metal ruler works best, and just lay
04:45the ruler parallel to the top edge of the scan platen and then nudge the image up against it.
04:50As you can see down here in my prescan I placed little piece of light stick tape
04:55down at bottom to hold it in place.
04:56So this edge is still perfectly parallel to the top edge and these edges are
05:01parallel to the side edges.
05:02I've just offset it using my ruler in the nudged this edge up to the top of the ruler.
05:07Then when we set our scan frame and we complete our scan, we'll just call this
05:13a Test scan, we end up with an image instead of having that little white area in the bottom.
05:21we've actually captured the entire 5x7 image.
05:24So you may have to do that on some of your scanner beds.
05:27It's a less of a problem with dedicated thumb scanner, because they're right
05:30inside their holders.
05:31You just get a steel flat edge and it works best if it's a short one.
05:35So doesn't overlap the edges of the scanner body itself from the glass
05:39scanner platen.
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Determining scan resolution
00:00Let's discuss setting your scan resolution.
00:03This topic can get a little bit confusing and one of the reasons as we've
00:06discussed earlier is that there is different terminologies, different ways of
00:10looking at in expressing resolution.
00:12We're going to run into a little bit of that here, but hopefully we can square
00:16things around and clear it up.
00:17First of all let's talk about setting resolution for a continuous tone image and
00:21then we'll address line art separately.
00:23The first point to make about setting Scan Resolution is that there is two
00:27things that we're going to use to determine Scan Resolution or Input Resolution.
00:31That is, Scanning Resolution is dependent upon the output device and on scaling,
00:35those are the two variables.
00:37For instance some output device if we go to like the web for instance, 72 pixels
00:42per inch is still the standard, all that may rise over time.
00:44I'll put resolution for desktop printers 200 pixels per inch.
00:49For high quality inkjet printers 240 pixels per inch is at this point in time we
00:55found out to be that kind of an optimal resolution for high-quality,
00:58photographic quality of inkjets.
01:00For commercial printing, typically between 200 and 300 pixels per inch
01:05depending upon the printing press and something called Line Screen, which we're
01:08going to get to right now.
01:10So before we go any further with that description of output device and scaling
01:15let's take a side-trip into a little bit of terminology.
01:19First to understand that all the expertise, the greater expertise behind
01:22SilverFast scanning software really comes from Prepress which is why it's such
01:26a great software, because Prepress has always been kind of the gold standard for image quality.
01:31And one of the results of that is some of the terminology from Prepress is used
01:35in some of these dialog boxes.
01:37Things like this you see in the word Densitometer which is a Prepress term.
01:41In Photoshop we call that the Info panel.
01:43They do the same thing they are just different terms, when we run into some of
01:47the same issues when we talk about resolution.
01:50When we look at resolution and setting resolution in SilverFast this is the area
01:55of the SilverFast panel that we use for setting resolution.
01:59You'll notice that there is a variable called Q-Factor and something called
02:02Screen, and it gives you megabytes which is file size and then there is dpi down here.
02:07Let's address these terminologies and kind of square those round with what
02:11we've been talking about.
02:12First let's do the dpi.
02:14dpi has been used in Prepress forever, but really this is pixels print.
02:17That's the terminology that we're using.
02:19We're using image resolution technology based upon the building blocks and since
02:23we're creating pixel-based images we're using pixels per inch, and you can click
02:27here and you can change this to dots per centimeter if you want to if you're a
02:31centimeter-type person.
02:33Instead of using dot it's pixels.
02:34So that's the first thing.
02:35Second thing is lpi, this is definitely a Prepress term, and you can use lpi
02:41or lines per centimeter and the L stands for Lines and what the lines refers
02:46to is the number of lines of halftone dots that are laid down in every single
02:51inch or centimeter.
02:53One of the standards in Prepress is 150 lpi or lines per inch.
02:57Now the one who is 175 is commonly used.
03:00For newspaper printing it may be 80 or 100 lines per inch.
03:03It's the number of rows of halftone dots in every linear inch.
03:08Scanning resolution is based upon the requirements of the output device, while
03:11in commercial printing since we're using patterns of conventional half-tone dots
03:15we use that variable, that factor to help us determine what the input scan
03:19resolution could be, and that's what the Q-Factor is all about.
03:23It's a relationship of pixels per inch to line screen, and typically for
03:28commercial printing this number is going to be anywhere from 1.5 to 2.0 times a
03:34line screen and for the various highest quality commercial printing generally
03:38it's going to be two times the line screen.
03:40So the pixels print then if we 2 times the line screen gives us 300 pixels per inch.
03:47If I adjust this to 1.5 times a line screen, notice it drops it down to 225, so
03:53the really good news here is that SilverFast is doing the math for you, and this
03:57is handy to use this Q-Factor at first if it's new it's a little bit confusing,
04:02but let me show you another reason why this is a nifty dialog box to use when we
04:06talk about scaling, but let me finish this discussion.
04:09So if you're using Q-Factor and we're talking about continuous tone images here,
04:13SilverFast is going to do all the math for you.
04:15If you're unsure to use 1.5 or 2.0, error on the side of more pixels rather than
04:21fewer, although if you have too many pixels it is going to be down-sampled when
04:25you go to Press, but it's better to have a little bit too many than not enough,
04:29because having to sample up when you're printing creates far more deleterious
04:33impact on your quality of your images to sampling down a little bit.
04:37In the best of all possible world you scan it at exactly the resolution that
04:41which you're going to print.
04:42Most of us don't do that, we tend to take our images and use them in multiple
04:46places, we use them for commercial printing, desktop printing, send them to the
04:50newspaper and use them around the webpage.
04:52And if you, like me and most people are multipurpose in your images then what we
04:56do is we scan for the highest quality device and then we can make copies of
05:00those images and down-sample them for using our own five different devices if
05:03we'd scan it five different times, well, sorry that's going to cut into my
05:07kayaking time way too much.
05:09So I am going to scan it once for the highest quality device and then make
05:12copies and down-sample it.
05:14Soon the highest quality image is going to be two times a line screen that would
05:17mean a 300 pixel per inch scan.
05:20Now let's go back and discuss this scaling, remember we set our 4.0x5.0 inch
05:25frame and then we wanted to actually I'll put it at 8.0x10.0, so we have a
05:28scaling factor of 200.
05:30The good news is we have a 200% scale let's say, we absolutely want the scaling
05:36to occur, the scanner is going to work with original data information.
05:40If we just do 100% scale take it into Photoshop and then scale it up there using
05:45Photoshop Interpolation, will end up with far lower quality images.
05:48This is one of those times we want to let the scanner do the scaling.
05:52So 200 pixels per inch times the 300, we really should be scanning at 600 pixels per inch.
05:58If you press your Ctrl key it shows you the actual optical resolution which your
06:04image is going to be scanned, when you release it goes to 300 which gives you
06:08this math times the 200, it actually makes the determination for you.
06:12So it's great, once you understand what the Q-Factor is all about and Line
06:15Screen all you have to do is put in the Scaling, put in your Q-Factor of 1.5 to
06:202.0 and you can discuss this with your printing company, you go to standard
06:23printing company that you normally work with and they may tell you, oh!
06:261.5 is fine and for a lot of printing it is fine, so you can choose your factor there.
06:31But the nice news is that SilverFast will do all the scaling for you and all the
06:35mathematics for you which is great, so that's for continuous tone images.
06:39Now for line art, when I'm scanning line art, one, I don't usually scale my line
06:44art during my scan at all and particularly simple line art, and the reason for
06:49this is that I don't want any interpolation occur along that edge.
06:52Remember we talked about that edge quality and we want to minimize the amount of interpolation.
06:57If I've got simple line art I am going to be converting that into vectors and
07:00then doing my scaling.
07:01So for line art I put my Q-Factor at 1. 0, and then I just set my independent
07:06resolution right here.
07:07For scaling line art I always start with 100% up here and then I just set
07:14Q-Factor of 0 so there is no multiplication, and then as you'll see I
07:19typically use either 600 pixels per inch for simple line art that I am
07:23converting to vectors or 1200 pixels per inch if I'm keeping my image as a
07:28pixel-based line art image.
07:29So I am going to get nice high detail, sharp edges, and I can reproduce
07:32detailed lined art images.
07:33There setting your resolution, it's probably going to be worthwhile to go
07:37through this a couple of times and listen to it, but you're really going to get
07:40it when you start actually scanning your own images and scaling them up and then
07:44I am going to refer you to the simple and detailed line art scanning portions of
07:48this course where I show you specifically in the details why we want scan at 6
07:53and 1200 and we don't want the scanner to do the scaling.
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Choosing a scan mode and bit depth
00:01Now let's discuss scan mode, and in particular, the bit depth that we're
00:04going to scan our images.
00:06We're talking about this portion of the frame right here where it says Scan
00:08Type, different scanning surfers use different terminology.
00:11They may say Scan Mode or who knows, but this is what we are going to choose the
00:15basic number of channels in the bit depth, the number of bits/pixel that we are
00:18going to have in our resulting scan image.
00:22It's a little bit complicated when you first look at it, but notice that there
00:25is a variety of different grayscale choices here, several different color
00:29choices and then this one, 1 Bit black-and-white Line Art.
00:32So let's start with a simple and then move to the more complex.
00:35When we get through I think you'll see it's a little bit less daunting than it first appears.
00:401 Bit black-and-white Line Art, this is going to create an image that has one channel.
00:44That's going to have one bit/ pixel, just like you see here.
00:47It's either going to be black or white pixels.
00:50We obviously don't use this for continuous tone images.
00:52This is the Scan Type or mode choice, with the bit depth choice we're going to
00:57choose, when we are scanning simple Line Art, that we intend to convert into
01:00vectors or just print as high -quality pixel-based images.
01:04That's the 1 Bit black-and-white Line Art.
01:06We're going to use this when we're trying to capture edges.
01:09Grayscale, we've got several different choices here, we have got 16-8 Bit
01:12Grayscale, then we've got 16 Bit Grayscale, then we have 16 Bit HDR Grayscale,
01:17just take them in order.
01:19This one, honestly this is the most likely mode in which you're going to scan
01:23your images, unless you do a lot of image-editing or you like to work in
01:27enhanced bit depth images, in terms of your editing and output.
01:31This is the most common mode which you'd choose for grayscale images and I'll
01:34recommend you start here.
01:35When you choose this, the scanner captures in 16 bit grayscale data, which means
01:40it captures 512 shades of gray, and then will deliver you 8 bits of grayscale,
01:47after the scanner captures the image and you apply all the corrections you're
01:50going to do during the scan, then it delivers an 8 bit image
01:54So as long this scanner supports, which most scanners do these days, this to
01:58medium to high-quality ones, and then delivers an 8 bit grayscale image.
02:02So that's the most common one that you'll choose.
02:04The next one is it captures in 16 bit, and delivers a 16 bit grayscale image,
02:09full 512 shades of gray.
02:11It's going to be twice the file size of the 8 bit and more importantly, it's
02:15going to have that 512 shades of gray, and if you're working in Photoshop, you
02:19can do a lot of editing in 16 bit mode, not all the editing, but most of the
02:24editing and if you are again doing lots and lots of editing in Photoshop in the
02:27postscan, this may be a good choice for you.
02:30And increasingly, there are printers that will actually print 16 bits of grayscale.
02:34Now honestly there is a good deal of debate about whether you can actually get
02:38better quality out of a 16 bit image on certain kinds of images.
02:41My suggestion is test it, with your images, your type of editing and your
02:46type of output device.
02:47Do a couple of the same images in this mode.
02:49print them out, see if you see any difference, and if you do, then use it.
02:53The third grayscale mode here is 16 bit HDR and notice when we choose this, all
02:59of the editing modes are basically shut off over here, and when you choose 16
03:03bit HDR, you're selecting this, if you intend to really perform most of your
03:08editing in the postscan phase, you might be working in the HDR software that
03:13LaserSoft makes, so you may be working in your 16 bit images in Photoshop or
03:18some other application that can actually work on 16 bit data.
03:21So here you're really minimizing the amount of work you're doing during the scan
03:25and you would plan for your workflow to where most of these image-editing is
03:28occurring somewhere else.
03:29We have the same set of choices in color, we have 48 bit to 24 bit color, here
03:35the scanner is capturing in 16 bit/pixel/channel.
03:38Remember from our earlier discussions that a color image is really a scan which
03:42has three grayscale channels.
03:44If you capture in 16 bits/channel, 3 time 16 is 48, you capture 8 bits/channel,
03:48it's 3 time 8 is 24, so it's very much like the grayscale, but we're just doing
03:53three channels and we're doing the initial sampling and capture in 16 bit mode,
03:57then apply the scanner corrections and then deliver a very high quality 8 bit
04:01image, 8 bits on each channel, 3 time 8 is 24.
04:04On the other hand, if you want to work in 48 bit color, that is 316 bit
04:09grayscale of channels, work in Photoshop that way, do most of your corrections
04:12in Photoshop or another application that can handle that, terrific, but you'll
04:16apply corrections during the scan and then work on the corrected 48 bit image,
04:21and then similarly to the 48 bit HDR, if you want to do most of your corrections
04:26somewhere else rather than into the scan, what this allows you to do is it would
04:29capture all of the raw data with very little of any corrections and then move
04:33that raw image into some other applications.
04:36It really kind of depends upon what your workflow is like, where you do most of the correction.
04:40This boils down to three choices, right, where you can go 1 bit
04:43black-and-white, one of the three version to grayscale, or one of the three
04:47versions of the color image.
04:48If you're trying to decide between the 16-8 bit and the 16-bit grayscale or the
04:5348 bit-24 bit color, or a full 48 bit color image, which one you want to
04:57actually create off the scanner.
04:59Run some tests with your images and your output devices, and test to see if
05:02the additional bit depth actually provides you with better image quality in
05:06the final analysis.
05:09When we choose something like 48-24 bit color, there's a lot of other Filters
05:14that you can choose sharpening and descreening, we'll come to that later.
05:17For now I'm going to suggest for most of your scans is we are going to apply no
05:21Filtering, no Sharpening, no Descreening, unless we really want to do that
05:25during the scan, and we'll address that later on in the course.
05:28Notice we have an Image Type selection here, these are Presets for a lot of the
05:34tools that you see up here and a lot of the corrections that you would do up
05:36here, and that's kind of a semi- automated scanning technique, and we'll talk
05:40about that little bit later on in the course.
05:42So choose a Scan Type, no Filtering, choose Standard Image with no Preset
05:47corrections, and then we're going to go apply most of the corrections using
05:50these correction tools that you see up here.
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Naming images
00:00Just take a few minutes to chat about naming scheme.
00:03It may seem a little trivial, but in fact it's really important for you to
00:06develop your own naming system and then use it, because later on when you go to
00:09try to find images and you've got different naming systems at different times,
00:13they become a real nightmare.
00:14On the other hand having a consistent naming system will make organizing and
00:18finding and sorting through your images a whole heck of lot easier.
00:21Let me just show you what I do and maybe this'll give you some ideas about how
00:24you want to name your images.
00:26I like to have basically four parts to most of the images.
00:29These are the important images that I'm going to keep and work on them, put in
00:32my database and my portfolio.
00:34I like to start out with the logical name like for instance Kim, because this
00:38is going to be a portrait of Kim and I may or may not call this Kim portrait for instance.
00:41We'll just keep it simple here.
00:44Then I like to put in a mode or bit depth. for instance, RGB.
00:50So when I look at this I know this is a photo of Kim and then RGB and then I'd
00:54like to put the resolution of which I'll be scanning this image we'll call this
00:57300, because I want to this for prepress let's say.
01:01Then I'll always to have a three character extension on the end of my file and
01:05it happens that in SilverFast, and you can set up Photoshop do the same.
01:08It'll automatically add that three character extension at the end of the file.
01:12Now as I mention if you want to have more detailed information.
01:15So you could do something like this Kim_ Portrait_RGB_300 and then I would save
01:20this out as a TIF most likely or it's a .psd file if I maybe working on it and
01:24doing some image editing in Photoshop.
01:26So at a glance I can look at this image and say, oh, that the portrait of Kim, I
01:30know it's an RGB image, and I know it's 300 print.
01:32So it's a high-resolution file.
01:34Now that just kind of naming system that I like use and if it were grayscale I'd
01:38have GS instead of RGB and if it were a 1 -bit black-and-white image I would have
01:43BW for black-and-white.
01:44Develop your own naming system and use it consistently and you'll be glad
01:48that you did.
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Scanning simple logos and line art
00:00For our first honest-to-goodness scan project let's start with doing a simple line art.
00:05In many ways, it's one of the simplest kinds of scans to perform in terms of the
00:08setup, but it takes some fairly sophisticated thinking in terms of your whole
00:12scan workflow as to how you actually want to construct your scan and what
00:17setting do you want to make.
00:17So it's a simple scan, but it takes some sophisticated thinking to really get it
00:21exactly right, and honest-to-goodness many people make the wrong decisions even
00:25scanning the simplest kinds of images like this.
00:28So we've got this line art image.
00:30Let's review what we mean by simple line art.
00:32Simple line art is line art that is defined by the edge of the image.
00:36When we look at this image here, we can see we don't care what goes on
00:39in-between the edges.
00:40It's the edges that really define this image.
00:43Our goal here is to reproduce this edge as close as possible to what
00:47the original image is.
00:48If our goal is to take the original and then edit it, make it look different,
00:54we're going to go a whole different direction.
00:55But in this case, we have a high- quality original line art or logo, and we
00:59want to reproduce it.
01:00So our goal is to get this edge as close to the original as possible.
01:04Now when we do this, remember we talked about setting up the general and then
01:08we're going to the frame.
01:09Our next setup decision is what kind of scan mode.
01:13High-quality scanner operators for a long time have known a trick about scanning
01:18line art, and that is, you scan it in grayscale and then you convert it to 1-bit
01:22black-and-white line art, scan it an 8 or 16-bit and then convert it to
01:25black-and-white later.
01:26We're actually going to use that technique, but not for the simple line art.
01:30We're going to use it for complex line art more on that later.
01:33What we want to do is we want to reproduce this edge right here and the
01:38sophisticated part of thinking moves us down the workflow line.
01:44I am thinking, boy, would I like to convert that into vectors?
01:46In order for me to do that and get real high-quality vectors that don't require
01:49a lot of editing to make it look right, is I want to get this edge as sharp and
01:54as hard as and as consistent as I can, and to do that we're going to choose
01:581-bit black-and-white line art.
01:59That's the first choice.
02:01So we're going to end up with a nice hard edge and it's going to be identical
02:04to the current one.
02:05Remember, if we're going to edit the edge, we'll do something else.
02:07We're going to go to grayscale, but for just edge reproduction, that's the first
02:11important choice is 1-bit black-and-white line art.
02:15Then as we move down here, we're going to name the file.
02:18This is how I like to name my scan files, a logical name and then like a mode or
02:23a bit depth, black-and-white which assumes 1-bit and then the size about 5x7 and
02:28then we're going to go with 600 pixels per inch for our first scan and then
02:32we're going to do two scans here, one at 600 and one at 1200.
02:35That's going to be the second critical choice that we make in terms of our settings here.
02:38The first one is 1-bit black-and- white line art and then since we're just
02:42working our way down the dialog boxes here, we can go Output and you can
02:46actually put in if you want to 5x7 if you want an exact 5x7 inch image.
02:51With an image like this that frankly I am going to be taking the vectors
02:54anyway, so the dimensions of the image actually is going to be determined by
02:57the vectors that we create.
02:59doesn't make too much difference if we get exactly 5x7.
03:02If we were intending to print this and wanted exact borders and so forth at 5x7,
03:06you can designate it.
03:07Honestly, for this one, it doesn't make too much difference.
03:10So I'm just going to set this manually by eye and make sure I have got enough
03:13space going all the way around so that I don't impinge upon the image at all.
03:17But the next crucial setting is this one right here, resolution settings.
03:21As much as I love SilverFast, I don't really like the way they have done the
03:25resolution and certainly I don't like the terminology which is dpi.
03:29What I am going to be using in this course is ppi, pixels per inch.
03:32If you remember our earlier discussions about resolution, I prefer to use
03:36resolution terminology that matches the building blocks of the image.
03:39We'll be creating a pixel-based image that's going to be 600 pixels per inch
03:43vertically and horizontally.
03:45So think of this as pixels per inch.
03:47It's a holdover from really where this program came from and a lot of the
03:51basis, the foundation, the knowledge come from prepress here, which is why by
03:54the way, this interface uses Q-Factor and it's multiplication factor based upon line screen.
04:01I'll discuss that more a little bit later.
04:03Let's just skip that for now and let's just move right to pixels per inch.
04:06We're going to put in 600 pixels per inch here.
04:09Why are we choosing that, because the optical resolution of the scanner is
04:131200 pixels per inch.
04:14I am going one-half of that, which means that there will be very
04:17little interpolation.
04:18We should end up with a high-quality edge.
04:20If we go up with something between 600 and 1200 we're likely to get interpolation.
04:24That's why this is such a critical choice.
04:26A lot of line art that we intend to take to vectors doesn't require really small pixels.
04:32It just requires a consistent edge.
04:34So I am going to go with 600 pixels per inch, 1-Bit Line Art, no scaling of this at all.
04:40We're not going to scale at all.
04:42We're just going to scan this image at 100%, not have the scanner do any
04:46magnification at all, and I am going to go ahead and click Scan, and oh, it
04:50looks like we've got to set on a multiple output.
04:53So let me just go up here for a second.
04:55Let's change this from Batch Mode to Normal mode. There we go!
05:00Back to frame and let's click Scan.
05:01See how I could tell that.
05:03that was set at Batch Mode, because it had the multiple pictures of the scan there.
05:06So if that ever happens, just come up there to go back to the General frame and
05:10put on single mode of scan.
05:11All right there we go!
05:12I am going to click Scan, and then the name comes up and we're going to save
05:15this as a 600 ppi, and then TIFF.
05:18I don't want any interpolation.
05:19We're not going to be going with JPEG or anything like that.
05:22In fact, we're going to save all the black- and-white 1-bit line art images out as TIFFs.
05:25Remember the reason why you wouldn't want to go with a JPEG particularly here is
05:29you want to maintain that high-quality edge as much as possible and by saving it
05:33out as a JPEG you risk interpolating that edge from compression.
05:36So the scanner is going to do its thing, convert all those edges to pixels. Here we go!
05:43Now we're going to go right back to scanner.
05:44I want to scan this one at 1200.
05:48I want to do two scans, because I want to show you the difference between
05:51the two and then scan.
05:54Now something interesting is you notice this scan is going to take quite a bit
05:59longer, even the scanner makes a different noise, and you notice the file size
06:03is going to be 4 times larger.
06:05Not twice, but four times larger. Why?
06:08Because we're doubling the horizontal and the vertical resolution.
06:11So anytime you double the linear resolution from 600 to 1200, it's going to
06:16quadruple the scanning time and the file size.
06:18A lot of people think that when you're going from 6 to 12, you're just doubling,
06:22but you're doubling horizontal and vertical resolution.
06:24That's why everything goes up by a factor of four.
06:26Now what I would like to do now is just compare these two images.
06:33I want to zoom in on a similar edge right up here, and I always like to look at
06:38two places when I look at these images.
06:40I like to look around curved edges like that and I also like to look at any
06:45place that we've got like a hard edge which comes to a tip, something like that.
06:50We'll zoom in on both of those.
06:52Let's start by zooming in right here and comparing the consistency of these two
06:57edges, and let me just move this over here, and there we go!
07:03Notice both of these edges have lots of good real nice consistency in terms of
07:09pixel placement and that's because we use the optical resolution of the scanner.
07:12We didn't allow the scanner do any magnification.
07:15Notice this is a 1.44 MB file, this is 6.63.
07:19It's four times larger as we talked about by doubling the horizontal and the
07:22vertical resolution.
07:23Both of these images have nice consistent edges on them.
07:27Notice almost no interpolation.
07:28In fact, no interpolation at 600, because all we have done is we've just doubled
07:31the size of the pixels, but we haven't moved them because it's one-half the
07:34optical resolution scanner.
07:36The question becomes which do we need?
07:39The answer is this.
07:40if you're going to be printing this as a pixel-based image, then they're both
07:44about at 233 here, you see that?
07:46This is going to give you a finer edge at 1200 pixels per inch.
07:50So if you're going to print it as a pixel-based image, scan it 1200.
07:521200 is a good resolution if you want to print as a pixel-based image.
07:57If you're going to convert this into a vector-based image, either one of these
08:00will work just fine, thank you.
08:02And if you know you're going to go to vector, there is no sense scanning at
08:051200, the 600 will work just as well when you convert it to vectors.
08:09To demonstrate this is we're going to convert this into vectors and I want to
08:13show you, and I am not going to step you through this process, I am just
08:16going to do it right now.
08:17When we come to our projects we'll talk more about how to actually do the conversion.
08:22I just want to do it quickly for you. There's our 600.
08:25Let's go back.
08:27I am going to go to the 1200, and I am just going through this just to show you
08:31so you've actually seen it so you believe me that we're converting these images
08:35to vectors, and how it's going to work, because I want to compare these two.
08:40Notice how the 1200 takes longer, everything takes longer when you go from 600 to 1200.
08:45The question is, is it worth it?
08:47We're about to find out.
08:49Let's take this, move this over, this is the 1200.
08:56Over here, come over to the first one we did, the 600.
09:03First of all, look at the number of control points along here.
09:051, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 down to the changing curve and they're 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,
09:118, 9, 10, there is about twice the number of control points on the 1200.
09:16Let's zoom in and take a look.
09:17Look at the quality of that edge.
09:22Look at the quality of that edge. They're identical.
09:25In fact, when we look at the greatest detail area and here is where it really
09:30tells and something like this in the two images.
09:34Notice the detail is just as good on the 600 as it is on the 1200.
09:38No question about it.
09:40Point being, folks when you've got a simple line art image like this with not a
09:45lot of detail, you can use half the optical resolution of the scanner and create
09:50just as good a vector-based image.
09:52In fact, this one is actually better, because it has so fewer pixels.
09:55It doesn't create as many control points and we just use default settings to
09:58convert it to vectors.
09:59The rule here then is one-half the optical resolution of the scanner and most
10:03scanners these days have optical resolutions of around 1200 or some multiple of that.
10:08So 600 pixels per inch, and you've seen it here.
10:11It's proof that this image is not only equal to, but actually better because it
10:14has fewer control points in it from this one that was constructed at 1200 pixels per inch.
10:19All right, there's simple line art scanning going to vectors.
10:23But if you plan to scan this as pixels and leave it as pixels and then keep it
10:27and print it as pixels, then you'd go to 1200.
10:29But honestly, why would you do that when you could take it to vectors and then
10:32you have all that scalability while maintaining its quality.
10:35I'd like to just say a few more words about resolution and I want to show you something.
10:39Down here remember we set the resolution we were working at 6 and 1200 pixels per inch.
10:45Notice that this software goes all the way up to 12,800 pixels per inch.
10:49Honestly, most people have been trained or they tend to think that, well, the
10:53higher the resolution, the better.
10:55I see lots of line arts images that are scanned at 2400 and 3200 and people
10:59might be inclined to go all the way up to 12,800.
11:02First of all that's interpolated resolution that high.
11:04So you can get all sorts of interpolation.
11:07But I think I've proven to you that you don't really even need 1200 if you
11:10intend to go to vectors.
11:12The key is not how much resolution, particularly interpolated resolution
11:16you're going to be using.
11:17When you look at your scanner manual, you're going to see a couple of different numbers.
11:21One is going to be, maybe, it'll say hardware resolution or optical resolution.
11:25That's really the optical resolution of the scanner and probably it's going to
11:28be 1200, might be 2400.
11:30Then you're going to have a wide range of resolutions up to in this case like 12,000.
11:34The optical resolution of the scanner is not 12,800.
11:36It's not anywhere close to that.
11:39But point is that you don't need that resolution if you're going to be going to
11:42vectors, 600 is all you need for this kind of an image.
11:45In fact, if you went all the way up to 8 ,000 or 12,000, you would be imparting
11:50so much interpolation that your edge would actually be lower quality and you'd
11:54end up with far more control points and the scans would take so much longer. No benefit at all.
11:59So this is one of those circumstances where less is indeed more.
12:02So I would encourage you to take a couple of line art images like this and
12:06practice with your scanner and the software and see which one gives you better results.
12:11is it 600, is it 800, is it 1200?
12:13I think you'll find that for most scanners these days 600 is going to work
12:17really good for these kinds of images.
12:18But test with your scanner and your images.
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Scanning complex line art
00:00Here is an example of a great complex line art image and it almost looks like a photograph.
00:05In detail it is indeed line art.
00:07It's a pen and ink or pencil drawing.
00:09It's all black-and-white.
00:11When you look at this it's completely different than the simple line art.
00:13With simple line art the whole issue remember was the edge reproduction.
00:16Here we want to reproduce the edges in horns in the moose, but what's
00:19important here is the detail.
00:21That's what's really going on with this image.
00:22If you don't have a perfect or optical edge here, who cares?
00:25But if we don't get the detail captured in this image, it's a huge loss.
00:29So this image is all about capturing the detail.
00:32If we go back to our scanner interface now and we'll set this up pretty much the
00:38way we did the last line art scan.
00:40We'll start in 1-Bit Line Art mode and many people who do this, they will
00:44think, oh, it's line art I need to be in line art, because the scanner
00:47interface says Line Art.
00:48Let's just get right to resolution and get that out of the way and then move
00:52back to the mode, because the mode is one of the key selections here is are we
00:56going to go 600 or 1200?
00:56Well, for a detailed line art like this we are almost always going to choose the
01:01full optical resolution and the scanner like 1200 pixels per inch.
01:04The 600 will work okay, but it really doesn't give you enough definition of the detail.
01:09Unlike the simple line art image that were taken the vectors where the 600 was not only fine.
01:13In fact, it was preferable.
01:14Here we're going to go in the other direction.
01:16We're going to want more detail.
01:18So we want a higher native resolution of the scan.
01:21It's always good to use the optical resolution if you can, far
01:24less interpolation.
01:25So 1200 pixels per inch.
01:28But notice when we choose 1 bit black and white Line Art as a scan mode, look
01:32what the image looks like even in the preview.
01:34If we would to complete a scan like this and just to save a little bit of time
01:38I've predone the scan.
01:39Let's go back to Photoshop and take a look at this image.
01:43Here is the Moose_BW_1200 pixels per inch and this is what happens when we do that.
01:50Instead of having all the detail like you saw in the original image all of the
01:54darker areas went to pure black and all the lighter areas went to pure white.
01:58That's what 1 bit black-and- white line art scanning does.
02:00You're forcing the scanner to make a decision. Is it black?
02:03Is it white?
02:03Now true enough, you can come in and you can adjust the Threshold value, where
02:07the pixels go black, and where they go white, but when you go lighter than some
02:11of the darker pixels go pure white and the black ones lighten up a little bit,
02:15but you end up with this real bimodal image.
02:17So this is certainly not the mode in which you want to scan.
02:21Let's go back to the scanner interface and look what happened to even to the
02:24preview when we go to Grayscale mode.
02:27Now we've got two choices here.
02:29We can go 16 to 8 bit grayscale or we can go to true 16 bit grayscale.
02:34We can argue for days and weeks and months over whether 16 bit is worth it or not.
02:40If you're someone who likes to work in high dynamic range images with extra bit
02:43depth and you maybe even like to print these images in 16-bit, because more and
02:48more we have printers that will actually print 16-bits of grayscale.
02:51Feel free to scan this in 16 bit grayscale.
02:53To either one of these would be fine and then you can convert to 8 bit later if
02:57you want to for simple or faster printing or if your printer doesn't handle
03:0116-bit prints, or we can just choose to scan in 16-bit and then downsample to
03:068-bit by the scanning software and that's what we're going to go.
03:09But notice on the preview what happens, boom, now all that detail is there.
03:13For detailed line art the trick is to don't scan in line art mode even though it
03:18says line art, treat this as if it's a continuous tone image.
03:21All that detail we want to capture that grayscale value in order to capture that detail.
03:26So go to a grayscale mode and then set your frame up to create the image at
03:31the original size that you want, or if you want to scale this image up now
03:34it's the time to do it.
03:35If you want this image to be a 200% then puts your 200% Scale in here.
03:40I'm just going to go at 100% we're just going to capture the image at the original size.
03:44My suggestion is there is the edge of the original image right here.
03:48Make sure that the frame is up above that.
03:50Make sure you've got room all the way around the image so that there is
03:52nothing to cut off.
03:53Pay attention to that.
03:55Set your resolution to 1200.
03:56Remember we're going with pixels per inch instead of dpi here in terms of how we
04:00think about this, because we're actually creating pixels.
04:03Then go ahead and click Scan.
04:04Once again just to save some time I've gone ahead and done the scan for you and
04:08I'll show you what the results are, because this takes a long time to scan,
04:11because not only are we quadrupling the file size by going from 600 to 1200, but
04:15we're going from 1-bit to 8-bit which then multiplies that number by 8.
04:19So notice we end up with a 37 megabyte file.
04:23Not a 1 megabyte or 6 megabyte, but a 37 megabyte file.
04:27It takes a little while to scan, but let me show you what you end up with when
04:30you complete that scan.
04:32Here is the image right here.
04:34We'll just enlarge that and look at the huge difference we have between this
04:38image which is the 1-bit scan and then the 8-bit scan.
04:41Notice that the scan has much the same detail that the original image does.
04:46When we zoom in here we see we've got lots and lots of pixels with grayscale
04:50values going on in-between.
04:52What this allows us to do is not only capture that individual grayscale value as
04:56we're doing here, but notice this gives us full editability in the post-scan.
05:02So if we bring up our Layers panel and we use an adjustment layer for Curves
05:06and it's good to use adjustment layers, of course, because they're fully
05:09editable and nondestructive.
05:11Notice that I can change the brightness of the image I can darken it up, push
05:17some of the pixel more to dark by moving the highlight.
05:19Although in this particular image I'm more likely to come in here and lighten
05:23and darken the image by adjusting the midtone.
05:26See, this gives me full editing capability of those grayscale values once
05:29I'm inside that image.
05:31Skip back to the scanner interface for just a second here.
05:34We set the frame, we set the resolution, and we're going to call this grayscale
05:39and then if you want to put the dimensions here and it's about 5x5.
05:42It doesn't have to be exact.
05:43It just reminds me what the dimensions of the image are.
05:46Set this at 1200 so we've got plenty of detail.
05:48Set this to Grayscale.
05:50Now sure enough we could come in here for instance and we can come in here there
05:54is a curves tool and we can come in here and adjust that curves tool prior to
05:58the scan just like we were doing in Photoshop.
06:00Yes, that's absolutely possible for us to do, but I typically don't do that.
06:04We've got some great editing tools here right in SilverFast.
06:08Frankly, if you want to do this quickly and you didn't have time to work in
06:11Photoshop you thought ooh, that's a little bit too dark, let me come in and let
06:15me lighten this image by working the midtone here in SilverFast, fine go after
06:21to your heart's delight. It's no problem.
06:23But typically I like my workflow.
06:25what I like to do is scan the image, get all the detail in there, and I might
06:28lighten it up a little bit working inside of SilverFast, but then I really want
06:33to do my editing here in Photoshop, or if you're working in Photoshop Elements,
06:37or another image editing program. Why?
06:39Because, I get to see all the pixels here.
06:41When I'm been working in my scanner interface I just have the preview pixels to work with.
06:45Here I can see all of pixels and I can make any kinds of edits that I want and I
06:50get to work nondestructively by working in an adjustments layer.
06:54So that's my recommendation, capture in 8-bit grayscale, go for the higher
06:57resolution around 1200 so you get all the detail in the image, save it out as Grayscale.
07:02You can do maybe it's overall lightening or darkening in the original scan, but
07:06then save most of your image editing working in the post-scan.
07:09And I strongly recommend that you work on copies of the image and certainly use
07:14adjustment layers when you're working inside of Photoshop.
07:17So that's how I work with complex scans and the final question to chat about and
07:21we're going to get to this in more detail when we talk about the projects in the
07:24last section, is do we keep this as grayscale or to be go to 1-bit
07:28black-and-white, and we can go either way and we'll come back and talk about
07:31that a little bit later.
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Scanning grayscale contones
00:00Here let's discuss setting the proper exposure control for capturing a
00:04continuous tone grayscale image.
00:07At this point, we've already selected the scan mode and we're going with no
00:11filters, no sharpening.
00:12I'm assuming we're going to do that in the post-scan and we'll address
00:15sharpening a little bit later.
00:17We've named our file, we've set our frame, we've enlarged our image so we can
00:20see the amount of detail we need.
00:22We know where this image is going and we're assuming this is going to go to the
00:26highest quality output device at prepress.
00:29So 300 pixels per inch, so we're going to focus on exposure.
00:31So I want to begin our discussion with setting the exposure by a visual evaluation.
00:36I always look in the image and say, okay, what's the important part of this image.
00:40Well, here obviously, this is a portrait so the face is the important part, the
00:44background is of little consequence.
00:46We might want to address the contrast between the hair and the background
00:49and address that issue.
00:50So we've got a portrait, the face is very important.
00:53We also have neutral areas in here.
00:56So we've got some white highlight areas, we've got some shadow detail in the
00:59hair that's important.
01:00The coat may or may not be important in terms of maintaining shadow detail and
01:04we can see if there's any shadow detail there to begin with.
01:07By the way, one of the tools that you can use if you're kind of wondering, you
01:10can use your Densitometer because sometimes if you look on screen, you can't see
01:13if there's detail or not.
01:14And if you move your cursor around like this and then watch the values over
01:17here, if there's only one or two point change, it means that there's not much detail.
01:22Watch when I move it over the hair, there's a tremendous change in the value
01:25because we can see lots of detail there.
01:27So in this particular image as part of my eval, I'm going, face important, shirt
01:31important, hair and hair contrast at the background important, jacket not so
01:35much because there's not a lot of detail in there.
01:37But if there's any texture at all, we'll want to maintain it, but it's not going
01:40to be a focus of this image.
01:42If in fact, this were a product shot where the coat was important, we'd probably
01:46want to get this re-shot different photography.
01:49But in this case, it's a portrait shot.
01:51That's what this is really important here.
01:52So the photography is quite appropriate.
01:54All right, So we know we're going to have some highlights, we've got some skin
01:58tones, we've got some hair, some shadow detail.
02:00Where I like to start and there's lots of tools we can use here, but here's the
02:03ones that I like that I'd like to introduce you to.
02:05First we're going to start with this tool right here, and when I click on the
02:08very top of this, notice it shows me where the lightest portion of the image is.
02:13This could be a specular.
02:14It could be a diffuse highlight, we'll talk more about those a little bit later
02:18when we talk about product shots, and then when I click here, it shows me where
02:21the darkest portion of the image is. That's nice.
02:23So I'm looking at this, I'm saying okay, the teeth turned out to be one of the
02:27lightest portion and also looking at this image and going the white shirt is
02:31typically part of the white highlight of the image that I want to pay attention to.
02:34So I'm going to look at the teeth, I'm going to look at the shirt.
02:36And when I look at the teeth, I can see there's a little bit of reflection on those teeth.
02:40So I'm thinking that's a little bit of a specular highlight.
02:44And a specular highlight is a portion of the image that has not as much
02:47detail or no detail.
02:48The diffuse highlight that is the light portion of the image that still has
02:51detail is the one we really want to focus on.
02:54By the way, as I'm moving my hand over here, I can see the detail here in my
02:58Densitometer and see there's a little bit of reflection right there.
03:01I'm going to look at the teeth, I'm also going to look down here in the shirt.
03:05The nice thing about this tool is not only does it show you where the highlight
03:08is by clicking on it, but if you hold down your Shift key, it places a color
03:12sampler point right there.
03:14And notice, it is on a kind of a specular highlight, a little bit of a
03:17reflection area there and it gives you the current RGB value.
03:20Now I mentioned I was also interested in the shirt.
03:24So I'm going to go down and look at the light areas of the shirt and look at this.
03:27I'm getting about the same highlight values, the high 210, 209, 211.
03:32So I'm going to hold down my Shift key again and I'm going to put a second color
03:36sampler point there.
03:37Notice these are both 211.
03:39So I can use my shirt or I can use the teeth, I'm going to trust the shirt
03:43because there's a little bit of reflection on the teeth and I don't like to use
03:45reflections for color sampler points.
03:47Then I'm going to come back up here to my Pipette, put my Densitometer up here
03:51so I can see both of them.
03:52And these are values that I can monitor.
03:55I can set these as color sampler points.
03:57in this case, just grayscale sampler points.
03:58Then as I make adjustments, I can monitor them.
04:01Then I'm going to hold down my Shift key, click here, and that gives me
04:05that value down there.
04:06That's the darkest shadow portion of the image, and then I'm going to
04:09investigate up in the hair here, put that in the 50s and I'm looking at these
04:13values right here these starting values.
04:15See in the 60s, we've got some of the 50s in the high, 40s.
04:19All right, And then we've got some 38s and 39s.
04:22Not a lot of change in values right there.
04:25See as I move back, it just goes from 37, 38, to 40.
04:28So I'm going to put up here at the top of the hair, I want to maintain
04:33shadow detail up here.
04:34I want to make sure that that doesn't get too dark.
04:37So I'm going to put my fourth color sampler point there.
04:39So I've got two highlight points, we'll move things up here.
04:44And then point number three, we've got the deep shadow and then we've got kind
04:47of three quarter-tone shadow right here.
04:49So we're going to monitor these points.
04:51And I always like to put my diffuse white highlight as point number 1, I do that
04:54in all of my images.
04:56So when I'm working with these fixed pipette.
04:58in Photoshop it's called color sampler points, the number one point is
05:01always going to be my highlight which is really one of the most critical
05:04portions of the image. Okay.
05:06So now what tools we're going to use to kind of adjust these points to get them
05:09where we want them to go?
05:11Well, there are some automatic tools but we're going to stay away from those for right now.
05:14We're going to use primarily these tools right here.
05:17It's the Levels tool and the Curves tool and you're probably familiar with those
05:20in Photoshop if you've worked in Photoshop.
05:22And these days, we tend to work primarily in the Curves tool in Photoshop, but
05:26in SilverFast, these two functions of setting highlights and shadows are really
05:30designated for the Levels tool.
05:32And then we're going to go to the Curve tool to do our midtones adjustments for
05:36brightness and contrast.
05:37So let's start here and what this shows us is a very well-defined, easy-to-see
05:41histogram of the distribution of the data in our image.
05:44Now right now I'm going to pay attention to these two values right here and
05:47particularly value number 2, which I know is a diffuse white highlight.
05:51I'm going not quite so sure about this.
05:52A really well-defined specular highlight, like a real strong reflection will be
05:56much lighter than the diffuse highlight.
05:58Here they're about the same.
05:59But I'm just going to trust this one a little bit better because I know that's
06:02flat, there's no reflection there.
06:03And what I'm going to do is I'm going to monitor this value.
06:06Here is the starting value and here's the ending value.
06:08And I'm just going to take my highlight curve and I'm going to move this in
06:11until I get to the high 230s, low 240s.
06:14See it's right at 238, 239, 237 right in there.
06:18Notice, that's close to the beginning of this data.
06:20Sometimes you'll find little strings of data in here and sometimes it's just noise.
06:23Now this is how you can tell.
06:25You can do it by the numbers, and why am I going for the high 230s, low 240s.
06:28Well, that 242 is a 5% white highlight and I know on my inkjet printers, I can
06:35hold a 5-7% white highlight so I tend to set my highlights in the high 230s, low 240s.
06:40We can shoot for around 240, I'm going to put it 239 right now.
06:44I know in a commercial printing press, I can hold 5% all day long, and some of
06:47the papers that I print with my inkjet, I like to have it around 6 or 7.
06:51So you can be anywhere in the high 230s, low 240s, but don't go above 242
06:56because then you're going to be getting around into four, three, and two and we
06:59may lose the detail in the highlights.
07:00All right, Now let's work on the shadow.
07:02I'm going to move this forward, and in this case, I'm monitoring the darkest
07:06point in the image, point number three.
07:07And I want to make sure that the very darkest I want to have this is 12 which is a 95% shadow.
07:13But typically, in my shadow areas, I don't like to go quite that low.
07:16So I typically shoot for around 17 to 19 for my Shadow value.
07:20See I'm not judging this visually, I'm doing it by the numbers. Absolutely!
07:24And then we put this number four point up here because this is an area that we
07:28want to make sure we get detail in.
07:30That's up at 43 which is a nice three quarter-tone.
07:32So we're going to maintain real nice detail in that area right there.
07:37Here we've set our highlights, our shadows, and we're monitoring kind of a
07:40three quarter-tone area, we want to make sure that there's plenty of detail coming out there.
07:44Click OK.
07:45So that's our highlights and shadows which addresses our overall brightness and
07:49contrast, but most importantly, make sure that it gives us as bright white as
07:52we can go in the diffuse white highlight where there's detail without losing detail.
07:57And we've maintained shadow detail here and in the three quarter-tone which
08:01is where we have more detail in the three quarter-tone, and we're doing it by the numbers.
08:05Don't go above that is lighter than 242 and certainly never go below 12, but
08:10up around between 15 and 20 is a good value for a nice shadow that gets you about 90%.
08:16And depending upon the paper and the press and the stock and so forth that
08:19you're printing on, you can vary these numbers and I would encourage you to run
08:23some tests to see exactly where you want your numbers to go.
08:26Now when we set highlights and shadows, we're going to go to our Curves tool and
08:30we're going to do overall brightness and contrast.
08:32And we do that by adjusting the distribution of tonal gradations between the
08:36highlight and shadow.
08:37We've already set these two points.
08:39The way the Curves tool works in SilverFast is that you set these two points and
08:43then you adjust things in between.
08:45Now there's two ways to go about doing this mechanically.
08:47One is we can come down here and we can adjust the overall Luminance value.
08:51You can see how it moves the entire curve.
08:53That's one way to do it and it's fine, and sometimes I use that.
08:56This adjusts overall contrast and notice when you adjust contrast, it holds the
09:01midpoint stable, and then you increase contrast by creating a curve.
09:06And notice how the contrast increases here, by increasing the quarter-tone value
09:10and decreasing the three quarter-tone values.
09:12A little tip about doing portraits with lots of skin tone in them, typically you
09:16don't want to increase contrast of anything.
09:18You might want to decrease contrast a little bit which gives you nice flat,
09:21lots of tonal variations right in the midtones, gives you nice smooth
09:24gradations in the skin tone.
09:25So we can do this with these curves, we can also address the quarter tones by
09:30moving this and the three quarter-tones by moving that.
09:34Now there's this Overall Brightness tool, just stay away from that.
09:37Notice how it destroys the highlights and shadow points when you move this tool.
09:41Just stay away from that puppy, just don't use that one at all.
09:43The other way we can make our adjustment here is we can just manually move the curve here.
09:47Let me give you some keyboard shortcuts that you might find helpful.
09:51If I hold down my Command key and I click, I can move my entire curve.
09:56It's very much like moving this curve here.
09:59But if I just want to primarily focus on the midtone, I can move that up.
10:02If I hold down my Option key, Alt in Windows, I can deactivate a point.
10:07And then I can hold down my Shift key and drag just that three
10:12quarter-tone point right there.
10:13And what I'm doing here, I'm going to do a couple of things.
10:17Option key to activate that point again, Command key, I'm going to move the
10:21whole curve up, but I want to do two things.
10:24One, I want to overall lighten the image just a little bit.
10:26You can see the visual impact on there.
10:28Plus this kind of tends to flatten the midtone just a little bit which smoothes
10:33out the skin tones, which is a nice thing to do.
10:36And then I'm looking at the contrast between the hair and the background and I'm
10:39thinking I'm going to Option+click there and then Shift+click here just pull
10:42that vertically, and see how that just increases the contrast a little bit
10:45between the hair and the background because I'm lightening that three
10:47quarter-tone background just a little bit.
10:49I can also choose to move up here and darken the quarter-tone.
10:52Let's move things out just a little bit more.
10:55Although I'm pretty happy with the way things look right here, so I'm going to
10:57leave that about where I left it.
10:59So we can utilize these sliders right here or we can come in and do manual
11:03manipulation of our curve.
11:06Notice, if you move your cursor over one of those points and just let it sit for
11:10a minute, the keyboard shortcuts that I was just using will come up and then
11:13remind you how to use those. There we go!
11:16So that's addressing overall brightness and contrast, and then what I like to do
11:20at this point, and particularly that's a critical image, I like to come back and
11:24take a look at my points, particularly in my highlights and shadow points.
11:27And notice, we move from 237 to 240, 238 to 240 because we lightened the overall curve.
11:33And that's okay, so long as we don't go above 240, 242 in that range there, for
11:38our shadow point we're at 28 because we really lightened that three
11:41quarter-tone, and that's okay, that's good.
11:44You can if you want to come back in here and if you want to just back off on
11:48that highlight just a little bit to get it back down in the low 230s, you can
11:51fine-tune the highlight and/ or the shadow if you want to.
11:54If you decided, I'd like to just darken the shadow just a little bit down to
11:58about 20, you can do that.
12:00So go back and forth between those two. And there we go!
12:03Now we've got a nice adjustment of highlights, shadows, brightness, and contrast
12:07and we've lowered the contrast because of the skin tone.
12:10And other images such as landscapes, a lot of times I'll enhance the contrast,
12:13get a little bit of an S-shaped curve.
12:15So there we have setting highlights, shadows, brightness, and contrast on a
12:18continuous tone grayscale image.
12:21Now that we have completed our tonal adjustments, we're ready to complete the
12:24scan, we'll just take a quick look down here to make sure we have the proper
12:27scan mode, and we're not going to apply any sharpening at this point.
12:31Make sure we have the proper name assigned and scaling and our frame is correct
12:35to make sure we have the proper resolution at 300 pixels per inch for the
12:38highest quality scan.
12:39And then we'll just click the Scan button to complete the scan.
12:42And we'll save the file and notice that we can choose the file format and of
12:46course we're going to go with TIFF because it's an uncompressed file format,
12:50no quality reduction.
12:55Then the scanner does its thing, scans the image with all the settings that
13:00we've applied, and there we go.
13:01We open up this image in Photoshop and here's the beautiful portrait of Kim, and
13:06notice we'll just check our highlight values here and notice we've got the low
13:09240, 237, 242 for our minimum value and beautiful nice smooth skin tones.
13:16Got nice shadow detail in the hair and we've got nice separation between the
13:20hair and the background.
Collapse this transcript
Scanning color contones
00:00In this exercise, we're going to discuss scanning a color portrait and
00:04particularly about setting highlights and shadows and brightness and contrast
00:07and getting skin tone correct.
00:09If you haven't already performed the previous exercise on the grayscale
00:12portrait, I would really encourage you to go start there because a lot of the
00:15fundamental techniques and concepts that we use for scanning portraits apply to
00:20grayscale and it's a great place to start.
00:22An assumption here in this exercise we've already selected our Scan Type 48 -> 24 Bit.
00:27We're not going to be doing any sharpening just yet.
00:29We're going to name the portrait Kim_Portrait_RGB.
00:32We're going to go to the highest quality output device.
00:34we're going to have a resolution of 300.
00:36Your resolution, of course, will change based upon your output device and what
00:39kind of scaling you have.
00:41But we've already preset all of this and if you have any questions about how
00:43to set that please refer to the previous videos on these topics of framing and resolution.
00:48All right, So let's start by evaluating our image.
00:52Just like in any other image, we do a visual evaluation and identify most
00:56important points in the image.
00:58The first one here is, of course, the face and the skin tone.
01:01We want to make sure we get the right balance of colors and also we want to get
01:05the right balance of skin tone.
01:07And other important portions of this image, of course, are white highlights,
01:10particularly if we want to get the white shirt in the right tonal value, but we
01:13want to get the right color balance, we want it to be neutral.
01:15It should be neutral white, which means the RGB values are going to be equal.
01:18In terms of shadows, we probably have the shadow values either back in here or
01:22down here for critical shadows.
01:23We'll look in the hair.
01:24we want to make sure good tonal values in the hair so it's not too dark so the
01:28hair doesn't fill in.
01:29So to start our evaluation of highlights and shadows which is where we start,
01:32where we do highlights and shadows first, and then we address skin tones, we go
01:37to portrait and then overall brightness and contrast.
01:40So the tool I love to use here is this tool right here that allows me when I
01:43click on the white, it shows me the whitest portion of the image.
01:46Notice that little red bull's-eye shows up on the shirt and then the dark area
01:51right down there in the jacket.
01:52And the really cool thing is when I hold down my Shift key, if I click on that
01:56white highlight, boom!
01:57I get a color sampler point in the white highlight which brings up this Fixed
02:01Pipette, which if you're used to working in Photoshop, this occurs in the Info panel.
02:05In SilverFast, the Info panel is called the Densitometer.
02:08Remember, a lot of these terminologies come from prepress and they've kind of
02:12made it into the SilverFast dialog box.
02:15But it's the same thing we have in Photoshop, just different name slightly.
02:18And then we'll Shift+click on the shadow to set the shadow point.
02:21So now we've got our critical highlight and shadow points and perhaps the most
02:25critical point in this image is going to be the skin tone and we're going to
02:28Shift and click to set our third point there.
02:30Sometimes I'll even set two points in the skin tone if I've got kind of
02:33like unequal lighting.
02:35But here the lighting is pretty good all the way across the face.
02:38So I'm just going to set one here, and then we can set one up in the dark hair
02:41area just to check to make sure those values don't get too dark.
02:45So let's go after the highlights and shadows first because that's kind of the
02:48order in which we do things.
02:49For color portraits, highlights, shadows, skin tones, and then we'll do overall
02:53brightness and contrast.
02:55Once again, I'd like to emphasize we're using manual tools, not automatic
02:59tools, and you really learned how the scanner works and how to do the
03:01corrections manually.
03:03And listen, once you learn how to do it manually, you can take selective use of
03:07automatic tools once you understand what they're doing and you can properly
03:10evaluate whether they're working correctly or not.
03:12Instead of doing everything in curves like we often do in Photoshop, in
03:16SilverFast, we kind of separate the highlights and shadow adjustments using the
03:19levels and then we do the brightness and contrast using curves.
03:22So let's just dive right in and look at our histogram.
03:25And if you've done the grayscale portrait, you'll notice this looks quite a bit different.
03:29Instead of having one histogram, we have three because we knew that an RGB color
03:34image is really a sandwich of three grayscale images.
03:36Now what's different about working with a color portrait versus a grayscale
03:40portrait is we now have three channels to address.
03:43And with white diffuse highlights like in the shirt, and if we've got a black
03:48jacket and we know that's neutral as well, a white and black at both ends of the
03:52tonal scale, then we know we want to get this close to about 5%, maybe 6%, 7% if
03:57you're using an inkjet like I do for most of my final output these days.
04:01We know that we want the RGB values to be equal here.
04:04When we look at the number one point in the Info panel, the Fixed Pipette panel
04:08that we have here, notice it says 221, 216, 215.
04:12Just the way the raw scan is done here, we can see there is a little bit of a red cast here.
04:16All right, The Green and Blue are actually almost equal, but the Red is a little bit high.
04:21And interestingly, when we look at this image on the screen, you can see the
04:25skin looks a little red, doesn't it?
04:27I mean just qualitatively.
04:28It looks a little red.
04:29So when I'm evaluating this, I'm not just looking at my highlights right now,
04:32but I'm thinking, boy, that red might be a little bit too red to have a
04:36natural looking skin tone.
04:37So I'm going to keep that in mind as I move forward when I start to take a look
04:41at the skin tones, bit of a red flag for me.
04:43What I want to do in this white diffuse highlight is I want to have all
04:47these RGB values equal and I want them to be in between 5 and 7 in terms of
04:52my highlight value.
04:53You can choose where you want to be in that range of 5-7 based upon what kind
04:57of printing you use.
04:58Most commercial printing companies can hold a 5% white highlight, no problem.
05:02Some inkjets may be you go up to 6 or 7 and you can decide, and we'll set our
05:06goal here at about 240 which is between 5 and 6% white highlight.
05:11And the way we do this is instead of just setting a master channel highlight and shadow.
05:15we're going to work on the individual channels.
05:16So I'm going to click up here on the histogram on the Red Channel so we just
05:20display the red channel.
05:21And then watching these values right here and these are the before and after
05:24values, I'm going to click on here and I'm going to move this up until we get to
05:28just about 239 or 240.
05:30All right, While we're in the Red Channel, let's go ahead and do point
05:35number two as well.
05:36You know what, for this particular image, because we've got so much shadow
05:40area there, I want to make sure whatever detail is there, I want to make sure
05:43that it's maintained.
05:44So I'm going to set this at about 20 which is between about 90-92% shadow point.
05:49Then I'm going to do this for each of the three channels.
05:52Now we're going to watch this value right here, the resultant green.
05:55I'm going to slide the highlight until that's at about 240 as well and bring the green up.
06:01And we're assuming that this is neutral, we can see we've got a neutral black
06:05jacket here, we'll set that at about 20 and then we'll go the Blue Channel and
06:08we'll do the same thing.
06:09I'm watching this value right there.
06:11I'm going to set that at 239, 240. Here we go!
06:17See this here?
06:18I'm pulling this up and we're moving into the data a little bit.
06:21Sometimes you don't know if the histogram data right on this end is actually
06:25part of the image or if it's a little bit of noise in the image, that's one of
06:29the reasons why we do this by the numbers.
06:31And remember, we're going after the critical parts of this image.
06:34Skin tone, diffuse white highlights, those are the two key portions of this image.
06:38Unless this is a product shot for the jacket, the jacket is kind of secondary in
06:42terms of importance.
06:43So we're really going to optimize skin tone and white shirt because those are
06:46going to pop to the eye.
06:47So now we've set our highlights and let's do our shadow and the blue, make sure
06:51we've finished that up and get that equal to about 20.
06:53All right, There we go!
06:56So we've set our highlights and shadows and notice our image is overall brighter
06:59now because we've done a little bit of tone compression.
07:01I'm going to click OK, and now we're going to move into curves to discuss and
07:06adjust our skin tone.
07:08Why, because with curves, you have much more control over the entire midtone
07:13than you do with levels.
07:15Yes, there's a midtone level adjustment, but we can do a lot more here
07:18because we have almost an infinite number points along this curve that we can
07:21use for adjustments.
07:23So here's our highlight, here's our shadow.
07:25we can just take a quick look at point number four.
07:27We've got plenty of detail back here.
07:29All right, Notice the red is higher but it should be because it's kind of auburn hair.
07:32We're going to focus right here on these values which are the skin tone values
07:36and we want to make sure that we have real natural values for our skin tones.
07:41Now what we're looking for is not a neutral.
07:43A neutral means pure gray, like this white or this black.
07:47But for human skin tones and of course, you know we have a wide variety of skin
07:50tones because of different nationalities, from different parts of the world,
07:55nobody has exactly the same skin tones.
07:57So there is some variation but there's something common to just about everybody.
08:01Red is greater than Green is greater than Blue when we're doing RGB values for skin tones.
08:06It's another great reason to do our color correction in RGB versus CMYK because
08:11this is really easy to remember.
08:12You just remember Red-Green-Blue.
08:13Red is greater than Green is greater than Blue.
08:17Now the question is, what are the ratios?
08:19Well, look at the separation we have here between the Blue and the Green.
08:24And you remember, let's just take a little side trip back to when we were
08:27talking about the highlight here, remember, we said that the Green and the Blue
08:31were just about the same on the highlight?
08:33That gave me some confidence.
08:34The Green and Blue values were pretty close to being right because they were
08:37both neutral in the highlight.
08:39I'm going to take look at this separation here and make sure there's a
08:43substantial separation. And there is.
08:46Typically, you're on a midtone or maybe a little bit lighter like we've got
08:49here, I'm going to look for a good 20 points of separation.
08:52As we move towards darker areas of the tonal ranges of skin tones, that
08:56separation is going to decrease, but you just have got a good 20 points of separation.
08:59That's great.
09:00And then what we want to look for here is we want to have more than 20 points of
09:04separation, and sure we do.
09:06180 to 220 is 20 points, 200 to 232 is about two-and-a-half times of it, so that's great.
09:12What range do we want to have here?
09:14Well, this is actually not too bad.
09:15I might want to lower the red just a little bit.
09:17Here we've got 180 to 200, the maximum we would ever want to have on any natural
09:22skin tone I've better seen would maybe do two times of the difference between
09:25the Green and the Blue.
09:26So we wouldn't want to have any more than 40 points, like a 240 here.
09:30So around at 230 is good, maybe a little bit, maybe we'll lower this a little bit.
09:35So I'm going to go to the Red channel and I'm going to hold down my Command key
09:39because I'm going to move all those points down, maybe down to about 225.
09:41225, 226, 227, somewhere just lower maybe about five points because we
09:50started up about 231, 232.
09:51So I'm going to take it down, I'm just going to lower just a little bit.
09:55And notice just visually, assuming we're working on a calibrated monitor and
09:58we're getting reasonable display feedback here, I'm going to say I like this
10:03229, 228, we've taken a little bit of that red hotness out of the red, the skin
10:07tone, we back things off just a little bit.
10:09But I'm using my numbers to really drive my decisions here.
10:12We've got 20 points of separation.
10:14180 to 200, and if we take another 20 points that would be 200 to 220.
10:19And then if we add ten more points, we're up to 230 so we're a little bit above
10:24that two-and-a-half times.
10:26So I'm backing off about five points here and look at the difference, just watch
10:30it on screen and you can see it.
10:31When we're up here, we had 231, 232.
10:36See the redness and then I just back it off just a little bit.
10:39And notice that it just takes some of that hot value out of there.
10:43It doesn't take much, sometimes just a little bit of subtle change.
10:47By the way, if you hold down the Shift key as you do this, you won't be
10:51moving left or right.
10:52You would just be moving vertically and you do this which is typically what you want to do.
10:56So we'll move that down to thee, four, five points, something like that so that
10:59we're more than two times, but not a lot more than two times.
11:02And that's a good-looking natural skin tone.
11:05Now if we want to do a little bit of overall brightness and contrast adjustment,
11:09we move out of the individual channels and go to the master channel.
11:13And if I want to move things up a little bit on the master channel, I'm going
11:17to hold down my Command key and I'm just going to move the whole thing up a little bit.
11:21I'm doing this with my curve, you can also use the slider here, remember, to
11:25move that up a few points just to overall lighten my image, and you can see
11:28the impact on screen.
11:30And as we talked about, we typically like to decrease contrast a little bit on
11:35our grayscale contone portrait images, the same thing for color.
11:38You don't want to increase contrast.
11:40you don't want to do something like this, because here that makes the skin
11:44tones kind of harsh.
11:45If anything you might want to just back off just a little bit.
11:48If we just use the contrast adjustment which darkens the highlights and lightens
11:53the quarter tone, you can do it that way.
11:55Although I would probably choose in this case to use my Command key or my Three
12:02Quarter-Tone tool here and I'm going to put that up just about four points,
12:06maybe take it from 0 to -5 just to lighten the three-quarter tone area to create
12:10a little bit more separation here.
12:12And as far as the quarter tone is concerned, I take my Highlights slider.
12:17Notice when I move my Highlights slider to the left, it darkens the highlight
12:21just a little bit which flattens out the skin tone.
12:24You want to be very careful here.
12:25No more than maybe just -2 and -3, just to increase that overall softening of
12:31the tonal values across the skin tone.
12:34I'm always checking back here to make sure we don't have a lot of movement.
12:37All right, Notice we've got 188 to 205, 205 to 230.
12:40no real change in the highlight values here.
12:43Our Shadow values, notice that we've gone from 20 to 24 here.
12:46Honestly, I'm not going to worry about it because this is not a critical part
12:50of the image so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that, and it's only a 1% change.
12:54So it's unlike to be visible visually.
12:57If it were a product shot and I was trying to get the jacket just right, then
13:00I'll be more anal about it.
13:01But in this particular case, it's all about the portraits, it's all about the
13:04skin tones, and it's all about the highlights. Well, there we go!
13:06Now we've done our tonal correction, color correction, we've gotten the skin
13:10tone, the highlights and shadows, we've done overall brightness and contrast.
13:13But just do a quick check to make sure we've got our Scan Type no
13:17sharpening, got the name correct, good the good frame, 300 pixels per inch,
13:22ready to complete the scan.
13:26And we'll save this image out with a proper name and up comes our image in Photoshop.
13:32I'm kind of anal about this, so I would just come in here and do a quick check
13:36and notice we've got the highlights and the high 230s, low 240s, terrific skin
13:42tones, Red greater than Green greater than Blue, got nice shadow detail, the
13:47three quarter-tone detail back up in here, get everything in the low 20s in the black shadow.
13:53Here we go!
Collapse this transcript
Sharpening
00:00Here we're going to address the whole topic of sharpening, and in fact in the
00:03next two movies this one and the next one on de-screening, and they're closely related.
00:07I'll recommend that you actually view and study both of them.
00:10We're going to start with sharpening.
00:12In our previous discussions of sharpening we talked about establishing your
00:15workflows to where you're going to do your sharpening.
00:17Honestly I typically don't do my sharpening during the scan.
00:20I wait until much later in my workflow process, because the scan is very rarely
00:24the last thing I am going to do to my image even with a program like SilverFast
00:27which provide me so many controls.
00:29There's still a lot of composition work and editing and masking and so forth
00:32that I tend to do to my images might get them in the Photoshop.
00:35If I'm going to be applying a lot of editing I don't want to do more
00:38sharpening until I'm all done with my editing, because remember that
00:41sharpening is an edge contrast enhancement tool and it actually removes
00:45grayscale values from your image.
00:46However, there are some images that you want to just scan, sharpen, and print
00:49and let's say that I didn't want to do anything to this image of my buddy Zip,
00:53my constant companion, you know I've hiked over 1000 miles together.
00:56He is a wonderful Cardigan Welsh Corgi, so sweet.
00:59And let's say I just wanted to scan and print, I'm ready to go.
01:03So I've decided I'm going to apply Sharpening during the actual scan process,
01:07because I don't want to have anymore work to do when I get into Photoshop and
01:10I'm happy with the results that I'm getting here.
01:11First thing I'm going to do of course is set my other scan parameters, I'm going
01:15to go 16 to 8-bit, set my frame, and my red frame appear at 7.9, I want an 8x8
01:22image, so I've set that here, I've assigned my Output Resolution of 240 pixels
01:28per inch, because I've got a Q-Factor of 1 because I'm going to be printing this
01:31on my high quality inkjet printer.
01:33And notice when I hold down my Ctrl key it shows me it's actually going to scan
01:36at 266, because I'm going up from 7.9 to 8.0.
01:39So I've established all that and I've set my highlights and shadow points, my
01:43critical highlights in the fur and critical shadow in the fur using my Highlight
01:48and Shadow tool holding down that Shift key and we just talked about to set the
01:51highlights and shadow points.
01:52And then I've set my highlight values at the high 230s, low 240s, because I've
01:57got a lot of darks in here and a lot of dark fur.
02:00I've set my shadow at about 20, little bit higher than I do want some
02:03other images, because I know when I print this I'm going to print it in black and white.
02:06It's actually going to be a multi-tonal image, so I'm using a lot of ink, so I
02:10know my shadows tend to fill up.
02:11Instead of around 95% I'm up to 85 to 90% for my shadows and I just know this
02:16from long experience of printing with my printer where I want that shadow value.
02:20And you can do experiments with your own printers and figure out where you like
02:23your shadow values in certain types of images.
02:26And I use my Histogram tool along with my Pipette to set my highlights and
02:30shadows and then I came in on this particular image.
02:33Notice I've got a reverse S curve here when I took my Contrast tool and I backed
02:37it off all the way to about -20.
02:39Look at the difference on the image on screen, see how you get that nice
02:42softness in the fur when you back off on that contrast.
02:45A lot of images you really want to reduce contrast and not increase it, so on
02:50this particular image I took it to about -20 to retain all that softness in the
02:53fur and then click OK.
02:55And now I'm ready to sharpen my image, but all of this has to occur first before
02:59we go and apply our sharpening, because the look and feel of the fur for
03:03instance is going to be different depending upon how I set my highlights and
03:06shadows and particularly my contrast, and when we set our sharpening we want to
03:09have all of that done so we can see what the sharpening is going to add to what
03:13we've already set in our image.
03:14Notice that there's all sorts of autos in here, Auto Sharpen, Auto Sharpen More,
03:19and then even more, and then less and even less, same thing with the
03:23Descreening, here's Automatic Descreening and then Automatic Descreening
03:26(intensive), in text and then just straight Descreening.
03:29What we're going to be doing here in these two movies is talking about
03:32Sharpening and Descreening I'm going to show how to use both of the dialog
03:35boxes, so you can retain control.
03:37Hey, I would encourage you to experiment with these other ones, no doubt about it.
03:41I want to show you what you can do with manual control as you get more-and-more
03:45comfortable setting some of these values you're going to want to retain
03:47more-and-more control.
03:48Okay, the regular Unsharp Mask dialog box looks like this.
03:52So let's start there and then we'll move into the Expert Mode, and I'll talk to
03:56you a little bit about that.
03:57First thing you want to do is choose a critical area inside your image, maybe a
04:02couple of them, when you click on Prescan and nothing happens in your Prescan it
04:05gives you this rectangular box which you then go over and click on the portion
04:09of the image that you would like to see.
04:11For instance, let's click on the whisker and fur area right over here, and what
04:15it does is it does another Prescan, but applies the controls that you have here.
04:20Now with the basic controls you get an Intensity and a Threshold control, as
04:23well as a Matrix and then you can save Presets like you can all over SilverFast,
04:27which is really nice.
04:28So notice this is a Monochrome image so work in Monochrome Mode.
04:32Intensity, the way this works is sharpening works on percentage of increasing
04:36contrast is that when a Sharpening Filter looks at an image like this it finds
04:41high contrast edges and then makes the lighter, lighter and the darker, darker
04:44when you compare this is sharpened and this is unsharpened.
04:47And then Threshold determines where or which grayscale values in this image will
04:51actually be sharpened.
04:52A Threshold value of 0 means every single pixel in the image is going to be sharpened.
04:56And the reason why I clicked here is I wanted to show you this background.
04:59One of the things you have to be careful of is if you just pay attention to
05:03these high contrast areas like this you can really end up over-sharpening your image.
05:07Notice the whiskers look nice, but look at how the pattern has been created in the background.
05:11Notice if I raise my Threshold here and you can go Intense and if I come up
05:15here and I raise the Threshold to 2 or 3% notice how the softening of the background occurs.
05:21We're not getting quite as much intensity of the sharpening on the background.
05:24I typically set my Threshold to 2 or 3 %, what that means is there needs to be
05:28a 2 to 3% difference in grayscale value before the sharpening will be applied to the image.
05:33Then the Matrix is called Radius, in Photoshop if you're familiar with Radius
05:37and it basically you're determining the width over which the sharpening will be
05:41applied, and typically if you're scanning at 100% you'll want a 3x3 pixel radius
05:46or Matrix, if you're enlarging images say up over 300% you may want to go to a
05:515x5 and you are up over 600% then you may want to go to a 7x7, and you can
05:56experiment and it's different with various kinds of images.
05:59For most of the images you'll be scanning unless you're really going about 300%
06:04or 3x3 radius of a Matrix is just fine.
06:05So this is the basic controls for controlling Unsharp Mask.
06:09In Intensity, an increase in sharpness of 50% is typically a good place to start.
06:14In SilverFast, you can experiment with various kinds of images.
06:17Let me introduce you to the expert version of this software a little bit because
06:22there are some things that you can really help to fine-tune your sharpening.
06:25For instance this over-sharpening is set at 100%, I'd like to use this along
06:29with my Threshold to control the softening of the background, as we see right here.
06:35Notice if I push all the way down to 0 there is almost no sharpening occurring
06:39here and there's very little sharpening occurring there.
06:41But if we raise this to about 20% we're still going to get some decent
06:45sharpening here but the background is going to be softened quite a bit.
06:49So I'll use the combination of Threshold Intensity and Oversharpen, and
06:53sometimes I'll start with 50% and then I may go up to like 75% on the sharpen
06:58after I've done a little bit of Oversharpen adjustment, so I get more
07:01sharpening on the high contrast edges and the over-sharpening is helping me to
07:04protect my soft background.
07:06And this Sharpening up to is a real important setting.
07:09I will typically with an image like this, because I've got lots of dark areas
07:12and I want them sharpen but I don't want sharpening to go all the way into the
07:16complete dark area because what sharpening does in solid black or really dark
07:20areas like maybe on Zip's nose here is it starts to add a pattern to it.
07:24So I may sharpen up to maybe 90%, 85 or 90 %, and on some images I only go up to 80%.
07:30So on this one I'm going to go up to about 85%, 85 or 90% somewhere in there.
07:35Then there's no sharpening after that and then I don't have any problem with
07:38creating patterns in my dark areas of my image.
07:41At any point you can click on Prescan and go into a different portion of your image.
07:46And notice we're getting some sharpening here in the eye, but we're not getting
07:47any patterns in the black area, so that's good.
07:51Now this light Contour and dark Contour typically, for an image like this that
07:55has an equal amount of both black and white in it.
07:57I'm going to leave it at 50%, but if I want to get more sharpening in the light
08:01area then I may raise the percentage in the light Contour or raise percentage
08:04in the dark Contour.
08:05I'll raise the dark Contour percentage for instance if I've got text in an image
08:09and I want to get more sharpening in the dark area.
08:11And one thing I almost always turn on is soft shadows, and what this does is
08:16smooth the shadow area of the image.
08:18Your eye doesn't see a lot of sharpening in the shadow area anyway, so I'm all
08:22about protecting the dark area of the image, and particularly within image like
08:26this where I have lots of dark areas with some fine details of the fur and I
08:29don't want to create patterns in there.
08:31So these would be some good settings, at least good starting settings on this image.
08:34I know there is a lot of information here, maybe you want to just start by
08:38experimenting with some of the automatic tools and then come with the basic
08:41Unsharp Mask tool and then you can experiment with these other values as
08:44I've explained them.
08:45And let's go ahead and just complete the scan then applying this Unsharp Mask
08:49and notice I'm indicating this as SH, that's my indication for, hey, I've
08:52already sharpened this image, so be careful about sharpening it anymore, just my
08:56kind of shorthand to myself, and there we go.
09:00And let's take this all the way up to 100% and looking at 100% is where you
09:04really get the best idea about what the image is actually going to look
09:08like when it print.
09:09You'll notice you get some really nice sharpening detail along the edges, but
09:14there's no modeling in the black areas, the nose looks very natural, beautiful, hi Zip!
09:21So cute!
09:21All right, but there we go, there is the beginnings, intermediate, and export
09:25portions of applying Unsharp Mask.
09:27By the way all sharpening tools are slightly different, but all the concepts
09:31are basically the same so everything that you've learned here and you can apply
09:33it and use in other sharpening tools even if the names of the values are
09:37slightly different.
Collapse this transcript
Scanning printed/screened or patterned images
00:00Here I'd like to address some of the tools and processes for removing patterns
00:05inside of images that we're about to scan, and in particular, I'd like to
00:08address the challenge of removing halftone dot patterns from printed images.
00:12Images like this, and this was from a book from the 1920s, it's got all sorts of problems.
00:16It's low contrast and there's lots of shadow detail has been lost and high light
00:20detail has been lost, but the most significant problem here is if we magnify
00:24this, we see what this image is made up of.
00:26It's a previously printed image in a relatively coarse lined screen,
00:29somewhere between probably 80 and 100 line screen on this book and that's
00:33what the image is really made up of, is these black and white dots from which
00:36the image was originally printed.
00:37When you scan printed image like this at standard continuous tone image
00:41resolutions for a scanner like 200 to 300 pixels/inch, it definitely picks up
00:45that halftone dot pattern.
00:47So what we want to do is to try to remove that pattern, not only because this
00:50look bad, but if we try to reprint this already printed image, it's creates
00:54what's called a moray pattern, because this dot pattern interferes with the dot
00:57pattern that's being used in the current printing device.
01:00It gets ugly in a hurry, so we need to remove this if we can.
01:04Let's put this image away for a second.
01:05Now let's go on over to the SilverFast interface and see what we can do here.
01:09First, I've done a preview scan and I've set my frame on that image and first
01:14thing we'll do is adjust the brightness and contrast and set highlights and
01:17shadows, but in images like this that are nothing but dot pattern basically, I
01:21don't try to do a numeric setting of the highlights and shadows.
01:24I still use this tool with the levels, but basically I use the histogram as my
01:29guide for setting highlights and shadows in this image, and I just drag the
01:33highlight over to just the beginning and if you watch this image over here,
01:36you see, dramatically improves the overall brightness and contrast of the
01:39image and I'll do the same thing on the shadow end, just so that the data starts to bump up.
01:44Be little careful in the shadow end on these kind images, just move it over so
01:47you start to get that data, because most of the shadow data is filled in,
01:50anyway, no sense making it worse, and then we can click OK and it's perfectly
01:54fine to come up here and add a little bit of brightness to the overall image.
01:58That's no problem, using the Curve Gradation tool.
02:00Then we're going to the Descreening filter, which is underneath the Filter menu
02:04here, and this de-screening filter works in this fashion.
02:08We are going to do a couple of things.
02:09First of all if you know what the screen pattern is, you can set that LPI, the
02:13Lines Per Inch and I'm not really sure what it is here.
02:16I think it's between 85 and 100, so I'm going to do a detect screen, and then
02:21I'm going to click Prescan, and you'll notice nothing happens, but don't be
02:24frustrated and keep clicking Prescan.
02:26What Prescan does is it produces this little rectangle that you then move over
02:30the image to select the area where you would like the prescan to occur.
02:34Now you could click up here, now let's go ahead and do that and see the result
02:37and you get an idea of how this technology works.
02:41And what SilverFast does is on the left it shows you the not de-screened
02:44image, that is the patterned image, and on the right it shows you the
02:47de-screened version.
02:49It worked pretty darn well, looks good, doesn't it?
02:51But that's probably not the most effective place to really click on the Prescan,
02:55a better area to click is something like this where you've got some detail, and
02:58I'm going to click here, because not only does it show some edge detail, but
03:02there is also a pattern in the basket that I want to monitor while I go through
03:05this process as well.
03:07Pretty good, and look at the line screen.
03:09It tells us it's 106, and we're pretty close.
03:11All right, we can just stop there if we want to, but there are some other things
03:14we can do here, that's going to give you a pretty good quality image.
03:18And we could go down here to Adaptation and Sensitivity, but I've used this
03:21dialog box enough that, what I tend to do is this, and you can make up your
03:25own method if you like.
03:26you're fine, after you get some practice.
03:28I like to turn on my use Unsharp Masking, this is the Unsharp Masking tool that
03:32we talked about in the previous movie.
03:34Now watch this image as I click on, Use Unsharp Mask.
03:37Do you see how it sharpens up.
03:39It actually shows you a preview of what's about to happen. It's fairly cool.
03:42What's important about using Unsharp Mask is the danger of using too much of
03:46it, because remember what sharpening does, is increase edge contrast between adjacent pixels.
03:50And remember this original image was black-and-white pixels.
03:53So if you would have sharpened for instance, the not Descreen version, it would
03:57just make matters worse.
03:59If you apply to much sharpening, it can maybe bring back that pattern, so I'm
04:03very careful, but I would like it to be a little bit sharper, if I can.
04:07So typically with the images like this, I'll keep this at about 50%, keep my
04:11Threshold at 1, you can play with the Oversharpen, you can drag this all the way
04:16over if you want and you can see the impact on the screen up here with no
04:20sharpening and then over sharpening, you can drag this all the way up to 100%.
04:25And what's nice here is the light and the dark contour.
04:28I'd leave that at 50%, particularly with images like this, because what it does
04:32is it progressively decreases the amount of sharpening as you get close to real,
04:36real high contrast edges.
04:38So it's a very sophisticated tool and it works very well.
04:41Rather than going directly to these tools, I really try to use Unsharp Mask, and
04:46let me just zoom in here.
04:48I want to go up just a little bit, because I want to show you something.
04:51Notice if we go with Retain edges, and Retain edges is another type of
04:54edge sharpening tool.
04:55If I turn this on notice what happens to these edges, do you see how they start
04:59to get a little bit to Oversharpened and particularly if we drag these over
05:04here, and particularly if we do the Retain Text portion, which make it even
05:08sharper, and notice that we could, in this image we could take and include the
05:12text here, and we could zoom in on the text and take a look at it.
05:15But my experience teaches me that I generally don't use this as much as I use
05:21the combination of the Descreening and then the Unsharp Mask and I tend to get
05:25pretty darn good results when I do that.
05:27There are some other details you can set here, you can set the matrix, I've had
05:32very good luck using the 3x3 matrix you can choose a 5x5 or x7, experiment with
05:38various kinds of images, because there' all sorts of different kinds of
05:40screened in pattern images.
05:42There is also an expert mode here that you can get into and out of, we have been
05:47in the expert mode that allows us to control the light and dark contours and I
05:51like to work with the Oversharpened and then setting the light and dark and
05:55contours, so that we don't get super amount of sharpening along that real high
05:58contrast light and dark edges, so there we go.
06:01So we're going to do a combination of Descreening and then Sharpening and it's
06:04going to occur in that order, and that's particularly important how you want to do that.
06:08And then we're ready to scan our image and we're going to call this -- we'll
06:12just call this a DSS, which is Descreened and Sharpened and then I'm going to
06:16show you some variations on these scans that I've already created.
06:19All right so what SilverFast does now is it captures the image and it kind of
06:24shows you onscreen as it goes through it.
06:26Scans it to the file and you can see the halftone dot pattern very clearly, and
06:29then it goes through it's descreening process, and there we have it.
06:33Let's bring this up and compare it to our original image.
06:37Not too bad, got rid of all that halftone dot pattern, and image like this, a
06:41descreened image, it's a very, very poor quality to begin with.
06:43It's never going to have the kind of sharpness that you have in a regular scan
06:47from continuous tone image, but you're going to be able to print this and it's
06:50not going to have that horrible moray pattern that going to be created when you
06:53try to print an image like you can see in the background over here.
06:56All right, so there is descreening plus sharpening through SilverFast.
Collapse this transcript
Scanning positive transparency film
00:00In this session let's discuss scanning slides.
00:02Now, scanning slides is in many ways very similar to scanning reflective work in
00:07terms of the concepts of the image and the tools that we are going to use, but
00:10there are some differences in terms of the amount of magnification and the
00:13loading of the image.
00:14First and foremost, one of the fundamental differences or challenges we have
00:18with scanning, particularly small dimensional films like slides, is that we are
00:22going to typically engage in a lot of magnification.
00:25Because you can imagine the dimensions of a slide and say we are going to
00:28magnify that up to 5x7 or 8x10, where there is a lot of magnification.
00:32And that means that if there is any dust or dirt or any foreign object on there,
00:36where they are going to be enlarged, they are just going to pop and show up.
00:38So the first thing you'll want to do is don those lint free gloves, and when you
00:42mount your slide inside your film holder, you want to make sure that, that slide
00:46is now nice and clean.
00:47Start off with blowing it off with your canned air or your hand pump, and then
00:51I almost always clean up the slide with my lint free Q-tip and the emulsion cleaner.
00:56Make sure you use the proper emulsion cleaners for hard film emulsion.
01:00If you have an older slide, then you have to have a different cleaner for that.
01:03So make sure it's very, very clean, because everything is going to show up.
01:06Then the second thing that's a little bit different working with slides is that
01:10you're probably going to be loading your slide into a specific film holder,
01:13whether it's a dedicated film scanner, which is what we are using here, a
01:16Plustek, or if you are loading it into a flatbed scanner, your slide is
01:19typically going to go in a slide holder.
01:21And what you want to pay attention to is two things.
01:23one, the orientation, the direction in which you load your slide into your
01:27film holder, and then how you insert that film holder into the dedicated film scanner.
01:32Typically with the flatbed scanners, there is kind of a clicking position, so
01:36you can't get that wrong, but with a dedicated film scanner, you can put it in the wrong way.
01:40And the reason why this is so important is that when you are working with slides
01:44or any kind of film, there is a natural curve to it, because of the emulsion,
01:47the difference between the emulsion side and the backing side, and film scanners
01:51are built in such a way that they naturally can accommodate for that, and if you
01:54put it in upside down, it won't focus properly.
01:57So read about the mounting of the image in your film holder for your particular
02:02scanner, and if you don't have the instructions, go to the website and download
02:06it and read it, and if you're still not sure, you can run a test and see.
02:10Scan the film two different ways, and here let me show you a demo.
02:13Here we have an image that's scanned with exactly the same settings, but one
02:18right side up and the other right side down.
02:20And the one on the left has the proper focus, and this was scanned on the
02:24Plustek with the emulsion up and in proper direction.
02:27And the one on the right was scanned in the improper direction.
02:30And just looking at these two images, you can see that this one is overall
02:33sharper than this one.
02:35They were scanned at exactly the same way.
02:37This has an overall softness to it, where this has more sharpness.
02:41And you can see this in detail if we Zoom in here, and let's take this to about 450% or so.
02:50There we go.
02:50And we are going to put this right up here.
02:52I am going to take this image and we'll Zoom in to about the same amount, about 450.
02:59And then we are going to juxtapose these two images.
03:02side by each is the French- Canadian saying, I love that expression.
03:06And let's look at the hair.
03:10Look at the details of the hair here.
03:12Notice how much sharper this hair is and how much softer this hair is here, and
03:16just kind of move your head back from your monitor and look here, you can see
03:20more detail, more sharpness here than you see here.
03:22These two works were scanned exactly the same, but this one is slightly out of
03:26focus, because the film is in upside down.
03:29So it really does make a difference, and you can't recover all of that
03:32detail with just sharpening the image, because you've lost it during the
03:35actual scan process.
03:37Back to SilverFast, really pay attention to how you load your film.
03:41Next, we are going to go to the General tab, as you see here, and make sure
03:44we have the proper device, which if you don't SilverFast probably wouldn't be working anyway.
03:48We are just going to scan one image here rather than working in Batch Mode, and
03:52make sure this is set on Positive.
03:54Now, remember, I mentioned that one of the issues with scanning small pieces of
03:58film is we're going to have lots of magnification, so one of the things I
04:01typically always do is I'll go into my Options, which is SilverFast
04:05Preferences, as we've talked about, and I always set a High resolution prescan of at least 4x.
04:10And sometimes if I'm doing big magnifications I'll go all the way up to 8x.
04:13And the reason for this is so I can zoom in and look at critical areas if I need
04:18to without having to re-perform the preview scan, as we've talked about.
04:21Oh, one of the thing to mention is sometimes with films I use a different
04:25Gamma-Gradation, and a lot of times with the flatbed scanner I use 1.8 to
04:292.0, and sometimes I go up to 2.2, and it really depends upon the film and the scanner.
04:34If overall your images are coming out a little bit darker, you're always having
04:37to do a lot of lightening with your Curves tool when you're working with films,
04:41come in here and you can set a different Gamma-Gradation.
04:43you go to a little bit higher number and overall your scans will be lighter. Okay.
04:47Good!
04:48Let's move over to the Frame section then and let's talk about setting up the Frame.
04:51And we'll choose our bit depth, and as we've been typically doing, go 48 to 24,
04:56so this is one of those things that's no different, and use the same kind of
04:59decision making for our properties here.
05:01Absolutely going to go with no Sharpening here.
05:04And the reason is two things.
05:05one is, I have told you in my workflow, I like to sharpen after the scan,
05:09because I can see the entire image and things go a little bit faster.
05:12Plus, if I am going to do some image editing, I don't want to apply Sharpening
05:15until after I finish with that.
05:16Also, for this particular image, this is a soft focused images, isn't it.
05:20It's the sunset image, and we don't want a lot of Sharpening anyway.
05:24And if I am going to apply Sharpening to this image, I really want to do it when
05:27I can see all the pixels. So no Sharpening.
05:30And then we'll set the Name Sunset Portrait _RGB, and then I am going to set my Scale.
05:35And what I want to do is I am going to do a square frame on this image, and then
05:40I am going to take this up to 8x8 here. Here we go.
05:46And notice the Scale is 838%.
05:48Yikes, wow, that's a lot, right?
05:51And if we want maximum quality, say we are going to go to a commercial
05:54printing press and this is going to be on a page and printed, so use a Quality
05:57Factor of 2.0 times 150.
05:58And notice this says 300 pixels per inch, but the real optical scan resolution,
06:04if we hold down our Ctrl key, is going to be 3600.
06:06This is another reason to use dedicated film scanners.
06:09They typically have very high optical scan resolutions, because they expect to
06:13be doing a lot of enlargements, because we are starting with 1"x1" and going up
06:17to an 8"x8", so it's over 800%.
06:20So I may come back up here.
06:22I am going to put in my scan resolution post scale on this image, so I am going
06:26to put in 300 pixels per inch to remind me what the final output resolution this
06:30file is going to be after scaling, so Sunset Portrait_RGB_300.
06:34So now we are ready to evaluate and do an image adjustment here.
06:37When I look at this image, first I do a qualitative adjustment and I ask myself,
06:41are there any neutrals in here?
06:43And there really aren't.
06:44I really think this is kind of a beige dress.
06:46It's not a white one.
06:47You might think it was white, but even if it were, it's probably going to have a
06:50colorcast because it's a sunset shot.
06:52And this is one of the issues that you always ask yourself is, does the
06:55image have a colorcast?
06:56Here the answer is obviously yes, we can see that visually.
06:59And then the second question is, do we want to keep it or do we want to get rid of it?
07:02Well, even if we had some neutrals in this image, which we really don't, maybe
07:05something back here is a neutral, but it's not a critical portion of the image
07:09so we wouldn't use it for evaluation anyway, but even if we had neutrals, we
07:12want to maintain the colorcast of this image.
07:14It's a nice sunset shot, so it's going to have the yellow reds in there, so we
07:18would want to maintain it.
07:19So the question becomes more of a qualitative one or a creative one, how much of
07:22that colorcast do we want to maintain, do we want to modify it a little bit? Let's see.
07:26Also, let's look for Highlights and Shadows, as we always do.
07:30Critical areas in this image, I'll look right here and I wonder if this is a
07:33blown out highlight area.
07:35And let's use our Densitometer, remember, this is Photoshop's Info tool
07:38called the Densitometer.
07:39I'll look through here and look at the RGB values right here.
07:42We're actually in luck.
07:44When I looked at this, I thought, ooh, it's blown out, too bad.
07:46But no, there is detail in there.
07:48Everything is in the 240s and 230s and 220s.
07:50That's terrific, so that's good.
07:53And of course we'd want to make sure we maintain all the shadow detail here, but
07:56really what the key part of this image is the Skin Tones.
07:59Most of the Skin Tones are really not well lit, they're kind of in shadows, so
08:03we might want to take two different sample points.
08:05one on her cheek and one down here and kind of compare them and then split the
08:09difference between them in terms of what the RGB values are.
08:12So let's set Highlights and Shadows and then set some Skin Tones and go about
08:16adjusting the image, and we are going to use our wonderful tool here, the
08:19Highlight and Shadow tool.
08:21We click on that, and we can see, oh boy, that's great!
08:23The brightest portion of the image is right in the hair, and if we hold down our
08:26Shift key and click there, boom!
08:28It places our first color sampler point right there in the hair.
08:31And then we decided we wanted to have two Skin Tone sets right there, number
08:36two and number three, and then we're going to go set our Shadow Point and we'll
08:41Shift and click right there, in this place right down here in the darker area of the hair.
08:45Perfect!
08:46I mean, those are kind of the two areas we'd want to maintain and evaluate and
08:49make sure we get correct.
08:50it's the highlight in the hair and then the shadow area.
08:53So now let's take a look at our values and discuss them.
08:57We expect there to be a colorcast here, and it should be pretty large Red
09:00colorcast in probably all these, but particularly in the Highlights and the Skin
09:04Tones, let's look at the Highlight value. 239, 226, 245.
09:08Well, the high number here, 245, is just about at a 4 or 5% white Highlight, so
09:13we don't want to go any lighter here, because if we do, then we are going to be
09:17blowing out the Blue portion and then it won't print properly.
09:21We could adjust the colorcast here, but the colorcast adjustment we would make,
09:25if we make one, it's probably going to be more likely in the Skin Tone.
09:27So we're going to leave the Highlight pretty much the way it is.
09:30Let's look at the Shadow, move over there. 46, 32, 32.
09:34If we want to increase contrast in this image a little bit by darkening the
09:37Shadow, we've got some room to move here, don't we?
09:39We can go all the way down to about 15, if we want to.
09:41We don't need to go all the way down to 15, maybe down 20, so maybe we'll do that.
09:45Now let's look at Skin Tones.
09:46All right, 219, 188, 172, so here we've got about a 16 point difference between
09:53the Blue and the Green, and then the Red is much higher, as we expected.
09:56It's in point number two.
09:57And point number three, we have about a 12 point difference here, and then, oh,
10:01almost a 40 point difference in the Red here.
10:04So it's pretty high in the Red.
10:05Now, this certainly meets our criteria for Red being greater than Green being
10:09greater than Blue, doesn't it? You bet!
10:11But the red is very high.
10:12The question is, do we want to maintain all that redness in the skin or do we
10:15want to just back it off a little bit?
10:17Well, let's see, so we have done our kind of a qualitative and our numeric analysis.
10:21We know where we are headed.
10:23Look at the Highlight, when we go to our Histogram tool, which is like Levels in
10:26Photoshop, we're not going to touch the Highlight, we've already decided that,
10:29we don't want to blow it out anymore.
10:31But the Shadow, we've got some room to move here.
10:33So let's move the Shadow up so the lowest value is about 20, so I just monitor
10:38that point number 4 as we come in here, and then take a look at the image.
10:42And this is when it's really super helpful to have a calibrated monitor, so
10:46that you really get a pretty good representation of what that image is actually
10:49going to look like.
10:50And notice we have increased the Contrast, but it's not a super increase in Contrast.
10:54It just gives us a little bit more punch to the image.
10:56So I'm happy with that.
10:57That's the only adjustment I am going to make here in the Histogram.
11:00I am going to click OK.
11:01Let's go to our Curves tool now and take a look, and let's start with working on
11:06our Reds a little bit.
11:07I think I'd like to maybe reduce our Reds just slightly.
11:11Still maintain that colorcast, but where that 40 point spread down here is pretty high.
11:16So maybe just lower this about 5 points and let's take a look at the Skin Tone.
11:20You can use this slider here remember, do a raise and lower if you want to.
11:23Or you can use the Command key and click to drag the whole curve down, whatever you like.
11:29And look what happens just on screen, if we just lower this about 5 points, you
11:33see how it softens that overall Red just a little bit?
11:35So let's just lower it, just a little bit, maybe 5, 6, 7 points. There we go.
11:40And then, because it's a nice soft portrait, let's lower the Contrast just a
11:44little bit and let's just lower this to maybe 5 points in the Highlight, and
11:49then go to the three-quarter tone and maybe raise that about 5 points, just a
11:52very subtle flattening of that curve to give you even more softness to the Skin Tone.
11:57Typically with portraits remember, we don't increase Contrast on the quarter
12:00tone to the three-quarter tone, we lower the Contrast. Well, there we go.
12:04So we've made a nice little fine-tune adjustment to our image and we're ready
12:08to go ahead and scan.
12:09So just check the name, check to make sure the output and resolution is properly
12:12done, and boom, we're ready to scan.
12:15And we'll save this as a TIFF of course, as always, so that we don't get any compression.
12:20You can see how valuable performing a numeric analysis of our image is.
12:24We use both our creative sense as well as the numbers to produce an image so
12:28it's pretty much exactly what we would like to have.
12:30And here is the image in Photoshop.
Collapse this transcript
Scanning negative transparency film
00:00Here we are going to address scanning negatives, and if you watched the previous
00:03movie on scanning slides, I've got a lot of the same things to say about
00:06scanning negatives as far as the basic setup is concerned.
00:09When we scan, particularly small dimension negatives, we are going to typically
00:12be enlarging them a good deal, and 500, 600, 700, 800% enlargement is not
00:17uncommon, going from small, like 120 film size, up to a 5x7 or 8x10.
00:22That means that we want our images to be super clean, because anything that is
00:26on that negative is going to be enlarged.
00:27And here, when we take this particular negative and we look at it, look at all
00:30the garbage on that film.
00:31I could spend hours trying to clean that puppy up.
00:34And even if you could clean it up, you lose so much quality, because so much of
00:37the detail gets lost, so you really, really want to clean up that negative once
00:41you get it inside the film holder.
00:42Just like our discussion of film holders for slides, you have the same emulsion
00:47side up or emulsion side down question, and it really depends upon your scanner
00:51and how it's set up in the software or where the detection device is.
00:54So be sure that you pay close attention, because if you don't pay attention to
00:57that, you'll end up with this.
00:59On the left-hand side here we see an image that was placed in the scanner
01:02properly, and let's just Zoom in here and take a look at the details here on the side.
01:07And here's the exact same image, but it's scanned improperly, with the improper
01:12side up, and look at it, about the same magnification.
01:17And just compare the details along the edges here.
01:19See how much sharper this is.
01:20That was the proper alignment and orientation of the film in terms of the scanner.
01:25Scanner just couldn't focus.
01:27Even though a lot of the dedicated film scanners have automatic focus, they can
01:31only focus so far, and if the emulsion is in the wrong direction, you're just
01:34going to get a poor quality scan. Okay.
01:37So back to SilverFast then, let's talk about setting up our software
01:41for scanning negatives.
01:43And even if you are not using SilverFast, if you are using some other
01:45application, you'll have some of the similar set up value.
01:48SilverFast probably has a couple of bells and whistles that others don't
01:51for scanning negatives.
01:52But the first thing you'll want to do is go to the General Frame and choose
01:56Negative, and what that does is invert the image and create a positive out of it.
02:01And assuming we've done our basic Prescan, then we'll go back to Frame, and we
02:07can decide whether we want to scan the entire image or just part of the image,
02:10and here I've done a little bit of manual crop.
02:12And for this particular image, I am not exactly sure what I want the final crop
02:15to look like, so I'm just going to do a quick manual crop here and I am
02:19ultimately going to end up with something like a 5x7.
02:22So what I am going to do, in this case I am going to get close, so I'll put
02:27like 600% enlargement, so I get a 5.6 by 8.3, and I'll complete the rest of the crop later on.
02:33This means that I am not going to be doing a lot of interpolation later on.
02:36I am just going to be doing cropping.
02:38If you know exactly the dimensions that you want, go ahead and scan it, but I
02:41don't know how much of these people I want in the final image or whether I want
02:44a little bit more sky, I just don't know.
02:46We'd do a rough crop here.
02:48make sure we have enough pixels to give us the output dimension at which we want
02:51to finally print it.
02:52Remember, if you are going to output this image to multiple dimensions, you have
02:568x10 and 5x7, then always scan for the largest dimension that you want.
03:00Notice that we'll set 300 pixels per inch as the final resolution after
03:05the scaling is done.
03:06And if you hold down that Ctrl key, this number then becomes actual optical
03:10resolution at which the scanner is going to be working, which is 1800.
03:13So SilverFast does the math for you, which is nice.
03:16We'll name it Fireworks_RGB_300 and then we're ready to start setting our Exposure.
03:20And in SilverFast, when you choose Negative, this NegaFix dialog box comes up.
03:25And one of the things that's a little bit different about negatives compared to
03:29slides which are positives is that there's an enormous variety of film emulsions
03:33available for negatives.
03:35So what you typically need to do is you'll come down here and set these three
03:39basic features of the film.
03:40it's called the film term, and you'll want to choose the manufacturer, in
03:43this case it was Kodak, and then choose the Film Type, which was Gold, and
03:48then the ASA, which was 100.
03:50What this does is it tends to neutralize the image, because every film emulsion
03:54in negative film has a different colorcast to it.
03:57That may be the only controls that you have on your scanning software.
04:00In fact, some scanning software don't even have that, they just kind of have a
04:04negative, you choose negative, and then go from there.
04:06And you can still accomplish good scans.
04:08It just may take you a little bit more work.
04:09Now, what you also have here is an Exposure correction, and it starts at 0, and
04:14you can go up and down, up to three f- stops, lighter and darker on your image.
04:20So it's kind of like a Curves adjustment, but it's really called Exposure
04:24adjustment, so it's very similar.
04:25If you are not happy with the way the image looks you can say, oh, I'd like to
04:28brighten it one f-stop.
04:30It goes up by a 10th of an f- stop, so we may take this one up.
04:33And then this also has a Tolerance adjustment here, and the Tolerance adjustment
04:38is really about colorcast, and these two actually work together.
04:42If you've got one of the more recent versions of SilverFast AI or Studio, it has
04:47this CCC, which is the Automatic Color Cast Correction.
04:50Notice when I turn this on, the image tends to neutralize a little bit.
04:54If you look at the sparkles here without it, there is a little bit of a red cast
04:58to it, and you can turn it on and it takes off some of that colorcast.
05:02This is also a colorcast adjustment as well.
05:04If you push this all the way to the right, you can take out more colorcast.
05:08So these are some automatic or semiautomatic tools that you can bring to bear
05:12for taking out colorcast in the film.
05:14The reason why it's been added here is that it's very common for negative
05:17films to have colorcast.
05:19By the way, if you're not sure what your Film Type is, well, just try different
05:24ones, because even though it's a Kodak, you may not know it's Kodak.
05:27But if you choose Ilford, the world is not going to come to an end.
05:30It's just going to put a little bit different colorcast in the image.
05:32Anyway, so that's the basic set up.
05:35And from here, then we go to our standard tools for evaluating and adjusting images.
05:40And we'll Option+click on our Highlight tool to set the lightest point of the
05:45image, and it brings up our Fixed Pipette with that value, and then we'll
05:49Option+click on the Shadow area, which puts the shadow portion.
05:53And if there is some critical portions of this image, like I might decide, all
05:56right, I am going to put a third point right up here at the top of the image,
06:00because I want to make sure that I maintain Shadow detail on this blend that is
06:04lighter, lower in the sky and then goes darker.
06:07All right, let's do a quick eval of our values that we see here in our Fixed
06:11Pipette, and this is one of the reasons why it's so important to do these color
06:14correction by the numbers, because you actually see what the values are.
06:17And notice that this is indeed blown out.
06:19It's pure white, and you can decide whether you want to leave it that way, or
06:22you can tone it back a little bit.
06:24Look at the shadow of value number 2, notice that we're down to 9 and 7 and 10,
06:29and down here, point number 3, which is our sky, we see, well, the values are
06:33pretty good, they are all up above 15, so we are looking pretty good in terms of
06:37the Shadow detail there.
06:39There is no Shadow detail here when we go to print, because it's below 12, so
06:43that's going to be between 95 and 100%.
06:45But notice that's not a critical portion of the image.
06:48If you want to move your hand over the rest of the image, you can look at some
06:51of the other values up here in the densitometer.
06:54So then to complete this we might do just a little bit of adjustment.
06:57We'll select a Scan Type of 48 to 24 bit.
06:59If you want to do a lot editing on this, of course you can go to 48 bit color if you want to.
07:04We'll stick with the standard 48 to 24.
07:07Then let's go to our Histogram tool, and notice we've got a full range of data
07:11here, all the way from Highlight to Shadow.
07:13Doesn't surprise us that we have got our data bumped up against the right side,
07:17because we have got values in the high 250s here.
07:20If we wanted to lower these values a little bit, we can do that.
07:22We can't do it here.
07:24you can do it in the output compression of the color space.
07:27Watch this, if we wanted to lower these down to the mid-240s, so we had some
07:30data in that Highlight, there we go, you can just move the Output slider until
07:35these values move to the 240s.
07:38Same thing with the Shadow.
07:39Watch the Shadow values here.
07:41If we wanted that to be at least 95%, we can do a fine-tune adjustment there.
07:46And just always monitoring that point number 3, just to make sure that this
07:49doesn't drop down too low to make sure we've got plenty of Shadow detail there.
07:52For my inkjet printer, if I've got something above 15-20, I am typically pretty good.
07:57I know everything above 20 is going to print just fine.
07:59There we go, there is our basic adjustment for Highlights and Shadows, not
08:03too much to do here.
08:05I might come in and go to our Curves tool, and I might go to our Contrast tool
08:09and just increase contrast just a little bit on this image.
08:12Remember, a little bit goes a long way on this Contrast tool, and you can see if
08:17you like a little bit more, a little bit less contrast.
08:19Monitor your values here.
08:21notice how when we do this our number 2 values drop down a little bit.
08:24So if we increase Contrast, you want to make sure those stay up above 12.
08:27You can come here and just fine tune that again to make sure they go up above 12.
08:31There we go.
08:32We set our film terms, we've removed some colorcast, we've done a little bit
08:36of Highlight and Shadow adjustment, and pumped up the Contrast a little bit
08:39using our Curves tool.
08:41Let's go ahead and talk about Sharpening.
08:42If I don't intend to edit this image later, then I am going to go ahead
08:45and apply Sharpening.
08:46But if I am going to edit it, then I am going to wait till later on in my
08:49workflow, and as you know, that's my typical ammo.
08:52I like to apply Sharpening after the scan.
08:54All right, Let's complete the scan.
08:59You notice these scans when you go to film a little bit slower than the flatbed
09:03scanner, because we are scanning at such high resolutions, it takes a little bit
09:06long for the scanner to capture that data.
09:08And there we go, there is our fireworks on display.
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Capturing high dynamic range (HDR) scans
00:00Here I'd like to show you how to create an HDR or High Dynamic Range scan.
00:04This is probably the simplest of all scans, because the intention of creating a
00:07High Dynamic Range scan is to just capture as much data as you can and offload
00:12the editing of that data to another application, be it Photoshop or Lightroom or
00:16the HDR program that LaserSoft makes.
00:19Basically all that you need to do, in fact, the only thing that's active in
00:22this dialog box, if you go to HDR Scan, is to set up your Frame here, set up
00:27any Scaling that you might want to do, and here we'll just take this image at
00:31100%, 8x9 frame, 240 pixels per inch, for a resolution for printing on a high
00:37quality inkjet printer.
00:38And then normally we would set our Scan Type at 48-24 bit or 48 bit color.
00:43What we'd do here is 48 bit HDR, or High Dynamic Range color.
00:47And notice what happens to all the tools when we select that.
00:50All the tools up here just go away, you have no way of actually editing your image.
00:54All you can edit is down here with the Scale and the Output and the Resolution,
00:58and we'll just do it at 100%, and that's all you need to do.
01:01And then you are not adjusting any Highlights or Shadows or Brightness or
01:04Contrast, you are just trying to collect all the data that's there, so the
01:07scanner will capture as much as it possibly can and then deliver that to your file.
01:11Then all you need to do is click Scan.
01:13And if I create HDR files like this one, I'll always label them somehow as
01:18an HDR file like this.
01:21I use my standard editing scheme such as Tina_KBay_RGB and then hyphen HDR to
01:27let me know that this is an HDR scan and then at what resolution I created this image.
01:31Of course I save this as a TIFF, and then the scanner just captures all the
01:37data that's there, and makes no attempt to adjust it whatsoever, and just
01:40delivers it to the file.
01:41And as far as your workflow is concerned, you intend to open that up in another
01:45application to edit it.
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Setting up wet scans
00:00Here I'd like to introduce you to and show you how to create a wet scan mount.
00:04The concept of oil or fluid mounting scan has been used for decades by high-end
00:09drum scanner operators to create the very highest quality scans from films.
00:13The way this works is you have a more simplified, more direct light path through
00:17your film which reduces dispersion and reflection of light, and therefore
00:20reduces optical aberration such as Newton rings.
00:23In addition putting in a wet scan mount gives you a much flatter surface which
00:27gives you more consistent focus, and you'll get greater detail than you seek in
00:31a dry scan, you get better color saturation, superior sharpness, improved
00:35contrast, much expanded dynamic ring, and even you can minimize and even
00:39visually remove scratches because the oil fills in the scratches.
00:42Let me show you a demo about how this works.
00:46Here we have this beautiful micaceous schist, this white mica-schist and this
00:50represents a nice dry scan.
00:53Notice everything looks very nice, but when we add moisture to this, look what
00:59happens, look how all the sharpness goes up, the detail, better contrast,
01:02better color saturation.
01:03This is the difference between the dry scan and a wet scan.
01:06It's really worthwhile when you want the highest of qualities.
01:08If you'd like to see a little bit more detail about how that light path works
01:12and you get the reduction of the reflection.
01:14Look at page 11 in the ScanScience book that comes with your course.
01:17A really great news is that wet scanning is now available for desktop scanners,
01:22you don't have to be a high-end drum scanner operator, you don't have to pay a
01:24$100,000 or more for a scanner, you can do it with the scanners you've got right now.
01:29Now to make the wet scanning technique work, we need to make a wet scanning
01:32sandwich and the way this sandwich works is we take a piece of optically pure
01:36glass, we add some scanning fluid, and then the film, more scanning fluid, and
01:41then optically pure plastic overlay and we make a scan sandwich and that's what
01:46creates that beautiful light path through the film.
01:48If you'd like to see a little bit more detail about that, look on page 13 in
01:52the ScanScience book.
01:54I want to note that there is a PDF of the entire fluid science book provided
01:57by ScanScience for everyone who takes this course, please read it, enjoy it,
02:01learn from it, there is enormous amount of information, but please don't copy
02:04it and redistribute it.
02:05All right, so if hopefully I have convinced you that the beauty that you can get
02:10from a wet scan mount, let's talk about how to accomplish this.
02:13First let's talk about the tools for wet scanning.
02:15Talk about the work setup space.
02:17First thing we want to have is a really, really clean environment, right?
02:21Dust-free, and earlier we talked about the fact of covering up your scanning
02:25environment when you're not using it, it goes two to three times when you are
02:28talking about wet scanning, because any time you add moisture to this whole
02:31environment, where it's just going to collect dust and it's going to go right to your film.
02:34All right, so assuming this is all dust- free now, we are going to keep it that
02:38way, you have a nice big table, nice solid table to work with and then we are
02:43going to have a glass workspace like this.
02:45There is a couple of ways you can get this.
02:46I like to use frosted glass like I have here because it creates a little bit of opacity.
02:50It allows me to see things a little bit easier, particularly since it's
02:53glass-on-glass sometimes you can lose that.
02:56And then get some bounty, bounty quicker picker, amazingly the stuff you can get
03:00in almost any grocery store is almost lint-free.
03:02It's not as good as pec pads, all right, but it' good enough to use as a
03:08surrounding border here, and the reason why we put it on here and tape it down
03:12is so that any fluid gets off to the edges is just absorbed by the bounty.
03:16So we have a nice glass working surface, what else you can use is the kitchen
03:20cutting boards, the glass cutting boards you have in kitchens, those works very well too.
03:24All right, in addition to that we are going to have some tape that we can use
03:27for taping down our edges and even taping our scanner if we get done.
03:30I have some canned air and I use this quite a bit in this process for cleaning things.
03:35And then we are going to have a lens cleaning fluid, for cleaning of our glasses.
03:39And then we are going to have the pec pads that we see here for cleaning things.
03:44And then we also need some fluid scanning solution of course to actually put
03:47in our sandwich, and then we are going to need a magnifying glass for looking at our sandwich.
03:52It's a nice pair of tweezers for lifting things up.
03:55And we want a real high quality squeegee, nice soft rubber, make sure that edge
03:58is very consistent and not damaged and I suggest you get a new one and just use
04:02it for this purpose, don't use it for anything else.
04:05And then I also like to have these real high quality cotton swabs, the once that
04:10are pretty lint-free for using this process, and then finally a nice razor
04:15blade, you can hold it in your hand and use that for lifting up some of these
04:18pieces to just make that process quite a bit easier.
04:21Now in addition over here, we've got a few other things you can use, a nice
04:24light table, a portable light table is good, and you can use a hair-dryer to
04:28help with the drying process, a little bit more on that later.
04:31All right, so there are all the tools and supplies that we need.
04:35Let's go ahead and actually make us a wet scan mount.
04:38All right, the way this process works, and the pieces that we put in here, so I
04:43mentioned is we have some optically pure glass and then we have the film, and
04:48notice how I've got the film set over here and it's curved side up.
04:51If you remember our discussion to film, almost all film has its natural curve to
04:55it, because the emulsion side which is on the concave upside, when it dries, it
04:59kind of puts a little bit of natural curl in that film.
05:01That's the one you want to protect.
05:03And I am actually putting this down on a piece of bounty, which is fine but it's
05:05got to be plastic side down, not emulsion side down.
05:09So we are going to arrange all the pieces here in the order in which we are
05:12going to construct them.
05:13So the glass plate goes on the bottom, that forms the bottom of the sandwich,
05:17then the meat of the sandwich is the actual film, and then we have our first
05:22plastic overlay which is piece of optical plastic, nice and clear.
05:26And then we have a second overlay that we are going to use for the throw-away if
05:32you will, or the part that we are going to use for flattening out the film, but
05:37we are not going to keep it on there for the final sandwich.
05:40Okay, so those are all the pieces to the pie, and let's go ahead and
05:43construct our sandwich here.
05:45All right, we begin by taking the fluid and moving everything into place, I put
05:50them about half-an-inch or an inch apart so they are easy to get at, and then
05:53take the optical fluid and we are going to just spray it right on that glass
05:57plate that goes on the bottom.
05:59And don't be afraid for being generous.
06:01It's fine, it's better to have a little bit too much than not enough and we
06:04are also going to spray it on the piece of film, remember that this has emulsion side up.
06:10It's very important, and then we are going to spray it on the first overlay that
06:14we are going to put down.
06:15Next we are going to construct the sandwich, and to do that we're going to use
06:19the tweezers to pick up this edge, just the edge like this, then use your
06:24other hand to grab the edges of the film and then we are going to rotate the
06:28film over, and this is important, you can actually put the film down either
06:31way, but my experience is that it's best to always put the emulsion down on the glass itself.
06:37With some scanners, if you do it this way, you have to end up inverting the
06:41image in Photoshop after the scan, but that's okay.
06:44You will end up with a better contact and a better light path if you put
06:47the emulsion side down.
06:48And when you put it down like I have done here, if you do it progressively so
06:52that one end to the other rather than just dropping it all the way down there,
06:55you are more likely to get the air bubbles out of there, you may not get
06:57involved but you at least reduce the number of them.
07:00Okay, so now we've got the bottom of the sandwich, we've got the meat with the
07:03film in the middle and then we just need to put down the next piece which is
07:09our plastic overlay, make sure that there is a plenty of fluid on there, there
07:12we go, there we go.
07:16
07:22And you will notice what I am using throughout this entire process, these
07:28lint-free gloves, always, always, throughout the entire process, never have your
07:32lint-free gloves off.
07:35There we go, we've created our sandwich.
07:37Now what we need to do is make sure we get all those air bubbles out of there.
07:41In order to do that, this is what we are going to use our second overlay.
07:48Spray plenty of fluid on there and then flip it over and put it on top, there we
07:54go, this is called the Sacrificial Overlay because we don't actually use it in
08:00the final sandwich, there we go, and then just spray a little more luminal
08:04fluid, mounting fluid on top, and now we to go our squeegee.
08:11Now with hand I am using my left hand here, I am going to hold the left side
08:15of the sandwich, just on the edge of the film there and then let's move
08:19everything over into the middle, there we go, and then we are going to take
08:25the squeegee, start in the middle and move out to the edges like this, don't
08:29start it on one end and drag it all the way across because you are likely to
08:32have some air bubbles in the far end and trying to get them all the way across
08:35is just not going to happen.
08:36So you don't have to press too hard, you get a feel for it after a while, all
08:42right, and then swap ends.
08:45If you are not ambidextrous enough to swap ends you can always rotate this so
08:49you can move to the other side of the table, there we go.
08:54And throughout this entire process from beginning to end, I am always worrying
08:59about dust, I cleaned everything off from the beginning to the end, and of
09:04course I am talking throughout this process, aren't I? Bad idea.
09:09Notice I am leaning over all this and while I am talking spit is constantly, and
09:14this is small I know, but it's enough that you can damage this whole process if
09:17it gets on the film.
09:18You know and the other thing that you might consider particularly you've got
09:21long hair there is a sense of leaning over this film all the time, when you lean
09:24over, you are not aware of it, but debris, little tiny debris is constantly
09:27falling off your head, you don't realize but then you see it on the film.
09:31So having a hair in it, if you do this very much and particularly if you have
09:33long hair, good idea to silence and wear your hair-net when you do this.
09:39Then we will go to our razor to help pick us up and there we've got our sandwich.
09:45Now at this point we are going to move our sandwich over here and we are going
09:49to take a look at it over our light table.
09:51All right, what I am looking for is air bubbles.
09:59And this one looks good, some days I am just better than others, all right.
10:03And if it don't quite get all the air bubbles out, you can put it back and
10:06run the squeegee again.
10:07All right, this time we've got it right.
10:09And then of course we are going to want to take that, we get done with the
10:15squeegee, you want to take that top layer of the sacrificial overlay off, so we
10:19just have the sandwich itself.
10:23Now the process is just kind of little bit of drying out and cleaning up and
10:26this is when we can use little cotton swabs to help us dry the edges.
10:31All right, the scanning solution is fairly volatile, so it's going to evaporate
10:36pretty quickly, which is what you want to happen.
10:38So I can just take the cotton swabs along the edges, and it will take about ten
10:44minutes or so, depending upon the atmospheric temperature and moisture, all
10:48right, for it to dry out.
10:49And if you want to, want to speed things up a little bit, first we can take our
10:56sandwich over to here and use our hairdryer, and this is a perfect hairdryer for this.
11:02It's a Revlon 1875, and it's got a low setting which is what, what you want and
11:07then it's got a Hot, a Warm, and a Cool. Put this on Cool.
11:10Hot and Warm is not good, you don't want to even go with the Warm you want to go
11:13with the Cool setting and just very light, and don't put it right up close to
11:17it, keep it back at a distance, just that air circulating passed it like that.
11:21It will dry in a real hurry, no problem.
11:23And again 10 or 15 minutes and if you've got a large enough space, you can have
11:31two or three of these going at a time, you can let one dry and you can get
11:34another one going if you want to, okay.
11:36And then after the drying occurs, then we are going to be ready to take our
11:44sandwich, our wet sandwich and put it inside when one of the mounts that we
11:48are going to be using.
11:48Now after you create your sandwich, you've got about, probably about two hours
11:54of shelf time that you can use for that sandwich, after about two hours the
11:59edges start to dry out too much and as the fluid kind of evaporates in the
12:03edges and spreads out and you may not end up with a complete fluid sandwich around the edges.
12:08But you've got about two hours of time.
12:10So my suggestion is, make sure you don't mount this until you are really ready to scan it.
12:14Don't mount it and then go to lunch and forget and did you get your sandwich
12:18ready to scan there.
12:19All right, so after this sandwich is dried out, now you're ready to put it
12:23inside of your mount for your scanner, and you'll notice that in this
12:28particular case I'm using a film- holder and this just fits right inside the
12:33film-holder and these last plates are designed to be at exact length to go
12:38inside the standard film-holder.
12:40Couple of things I want to say about various kinds of scanners that you could work with.
12:44You can do this fluid mounting system with a flatbed scanner or with a
12:47dedicated film scanner.
12:49But if you are going to do much of this I really recommend you do it with a
12:52dedicated film scanner.
12:53Here is the reason, most of the dedicated film scanners have automatic focus
12:57and obviously since we've put the film in the sandwich, it's at a little bit
13:01different focal plane and an automatic focus of scanner will automatically adjust for that.
13:06A lot of the flatbed scanners are single focus or may be dual focus and
13:10sometimes you have to shim the entire sandwich to get ready in the proper focal plane.
13:16So you can do it with the flatbed scanner, but if you do much of it, you can
13:19have a much easier time, much more efficient workflow just working with the
13:22dedicated film scanner, there is no doubt about it.
13:25Remember earlier we talked about the flatbed scanners are really made for
13:27reflective scanning and everything else is kind of an add-on.
13:31Well it applies here as well.
13:32so nice dedicated film scanner will work great.
13:36Oh, by the way I should mention that in this particular scanner and this is true
13:39for all other film scanners, sometimes when you have the closing top like this,
13:43after you put it in this sandwich, like this sometimes you can close these tops
13:46sometimes you can't, in this particular case with the Plustek you actually have
13:49to take this top off before you can put it in.
13:51All right, so if you refer to the scan book that you have, the PDF version,
13:56it's got lots of details about working with various kinds of scanners and how
13:59to handle them for the fine-tuning process of actually putting them inside the scanner.
14:03So it's going to depend upon the scanner that you have.
14:06Are you going to do this for every single image that you have?
14:08Probably not, you are going to do it for the highest quality ones, the
14:11artwork that you had a picture of, that you want to get the best quality scan
14:16in order to reproduce that.
14:18The ones where you want to have the best focus, the best detail, the best
14:21saturation, superior sharpness, improved contrast and that expanded dynamic range.
14:26Well there is the wet scanning technique.
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6. Scanning Projects: Start to Finish
Scanning, converting, and using simple line art
00:00In this chapter we're going to be doing start to finish projects, which means
00:04we're not only going to be setting up the scan but when we are going to see what
00:07we can do with those images after the scan and by doing that it will give us
00:11even more insight as to why we make some of the decisions that we've been making
00:14during the actual scanning process.
00:16Let's start this chapter by doing a scan of the simple Line Art image.
00:20And just remember back to our previous discussions, when we scan simple line
00:24art, it's all about reproducing the edge.
00:26This feather for instance that we're going to scan here.
00:29It's not about what's going on in the interior it's about the edge that's
00:32what creates this image.
00:33So the decision that we want to make during the scan a sharp and smooth and
00:38consistent edge as possible.
00:40Not only for the pixel-based image that we end up with but also you want to take
00:45this pixel-based image and convert it into vectors.
00:47Why, because this image is a simple line art, if you want to scale, skew and
00:52rotate it so that we don't get degradation of our edge we convert it into
00:55vectors then we can scale and skew and rotate it to our heart's delight plus as
01:00you're going to see it makes it very easy to add colors.
01:03And even if this image were a colored image, I'm going to scan it one bit
01:07black-and-white and then we're going to apply the colors later and that's an
01:10important point to make.
01:11If you start with simple line art even if it has colors assigned to it, if you
01:15know what those colors are either CMYK values or spot color values we don't try
01:21to reproduce these colors during the scan, we try to do that when we're working
01:24in something like Illustrator.
01:26In order to get our high-quality edge, we're going to come over here and we're
01:29going to choose our scan type and for working with Line Art typically we're
01:34going to go with 8-bit grayscale for detailed line-art and one-bit
01:37black-and-white for a Scan Type for simple line-art.
01:40This will give us more editability to 8-bit but we're not about
01:43editability we're all about reproducing our edge, so we're going to choose
01:46one-bit black-and-white.
01:48And that's how we're going to name our image, Feather, numerological name, a bit
01:52depth black-and-white, and now let's decide on resolution.
01:56There are two characteristics if we want to pay attention to in our scan to give
02:00us the best quality most consistent edge possible.
02:03One, is when we want to use the optical resolution of the scanner, and two, we
02:07want to make sure we scan this at 100%, no scaling.
02:11Both of those will minimize the amount of interpolation that occurs along that edge.
02:15The optical resolution of this scanner is 1200 pixels per inch, but as you
02:20demonstrated in Chapter 5 we can choose 600 which doesn't involve any
02:25interpolation, the placement of the pixels is the same the pixels are just
02:29a little bit larger.
02:31And typically with simple line art that takes us to vectors, 600 is going to be fine.
02:36If you're not quite sure you can scan it at both 6 and 12 and then compare the results.
02:41Here I think we're going to do very well at 600 pixels per inch.
02:43So we're going to choose 600 pixels per inch, no scaling, black-and-white
02:48one-bit, and then I'm going to take it to vectors so I'm going to go ahead and Scan and Save.
02:55All right here's our feather black- and-white 600.tif in Bridge and I love
03:04working on a Bridge because Bridge is kind of the nexus of a creative suite if you will.
03:08You can save an image out of one application like in this case a scanning
03:12program and take it right into another application and use one of those tools.
03:16In this case, we're going to be going to Illustrator.
03:18Illustrator is a vector drawing and editing program.
03:21In order to take this pixel-based image and take it into Illustrator we're going
03:26to go tools>Illustrator and go to Live Trace, and we're going to choose
03:33Vectorize layers into a single document and we'll choose the basic CMYK, so we
03:39can assign spot colors to this, cyan, magenta, yellow and black process colors
03:43or if you wanted to go RGB you can go that way as well.
03:46We'll take it to the print version in this case, all right and then over
03:50to Illustrator we go.
03:51By the way if Illustrator wasn't launch you'll automatically launch Illustrator.
03:55We'll just take the default settings here.
03:57Well, we just click on Expand and let's go and take a look at that edge, look
04:04at that, beautiful.
04:06The reason why we're getting that high-quality edge let's just go back to
04:08Bridge for a second.
04:09Let's go ahead and open this image and look at it in Photoshop, see those
04:14beautiful pixels and the nice smooth consistent edge.
04:17That's because we use the optical resolution of the scanner and no scaling.
04:22So we take that pixel-based image, we convert to vectors and we get this
04:27really smooth slick edge.
04:29Now as for as editing and assigning colors are concerned, you can just come in
04:33here in the Direct Selection tool, we'll assign the Green, we'll take the stem,
04:42and assign may be a Yellow, and we can assign a dark green to these, beautiful.
04:50So you know, in this way this workflow makes an enormous amount of sense because
04:54instead of trying to reproduce these colors on a scan, if there are spot or
04:59process colors, it's almost impossible to reproduce them exactly.
05:03But this way, you scan in Black and White, you create the vector and then you
05:06assign the colors and they are going to be perfect.
05:08They will be spot on, if you will.
05:09So there you go, they're scanning simple black-and-white, Line Art converting
05:13to Vectors and then editing them in Illustrator and now so you know we can
05:18scale, skew and rotate this to a heart's delight and those vector paths will
05:21remain very high-quality.
05:23I mentioned if you've got some stuff on the actual scan that you don't want,
05:28you'd select them and they become vectors and just edit, and they're gone.
Collapse this transcript
Scanning and using detailed line art
00:00In this exercise, we're going to scan a piece of complex line art and then we
00:04compare this image of the octopus with a feather image that we did in the
00:07previous movie, we see there is a world of difference between them.
00:10With a feather, that image is all about reproduction of edges.
00:14This image is all about reproduction of the detail that's on the inside of the octopus.
00:19Unlike the feather where it really didn't make too much difference as to what
00:22the outline of that image was in terms of the dimension because we intended to
00:26convert it to vectors anyway, here with a complex image, we may indeed want to
00:30pay better attention or more attention to our actual output dimensions.
00:35If you had a very small image, and you intend to use it at a much larger
00:38dimension, this is the place to scale it because you're working with original
00:42raw data and particularly if you're capturing more than 8 bits per pixel on your image.
00:47So this original image is about 5x7 and we are going to reproduce it at 5x7.
00:51But if we wanted to go to 10x14, we can certainly do that, and the scanner is
00:56the best place to do it rather than in Photoshop, because this image is not
01:00going to go to vectors.
01:01It's going to stay in pixels, and because pixel-based images are all about the
01:04detail, whereas vector-based images are all about the edges.
01:07So we'll create a 7x5 outline of our frame and then we're going to choose our scan type.
01:14Unlike the simple line art image in which we use 1-bit black and white, for this
01:18one, to get our detail, we are going to go with an 8-bit grayscale image.
01:21True enough, you can choose 16-bit and deliver 16-bit from the scanner.
01:25I think we are going to be just fine going 16-bit to 8-bit.
01:29And again, you can test those two with your editing and your output devices to
01:33see if there's a difference.
01:34We are not going to do any filtering, no sharpening, we could sharpen it
01:39here, but this is absolutely one of those images where if I am going to apply
01:41Sharpening, I am going to do it later, I am going to do it in Photoshop, and
01:44I will show you why.
01:45Now, we could just do a scan, and we'd probably be okay, but we might actually
01:49want to just use the image the way it's scanned, so we might as well optimize it a little bit.
01:54So let's go up to our Histogram tool as it's called in SilverFast similar to
01:58what we have in Levels in Photoshop.
02:00Notice that we've got some blank space on the highlight, and on the shadow end.
02:04Watch the background over here, this is a great way to remove background like
02:08if you've got a little bit of a gray background, or a light-colored background,
02:11you can knock that background completely out of it, so you just end up with the line art.
02:15Boom!
02:15Get rid of the paper, get rid of, or if it's a dirty image, or it's on a piece
02:19of low-quality paper, you can just completely take the paper out of the
02:21picture, which is great.
02:23With that one simple move right there, you can make your life a whole heck of lot easier.
02:27This works great on faxes, on low- quality paper, you can get rid of background
02:31just by moving that highlight in.
02:33On the shadow, just increase the contrast of this a little bit.
02:37We don't want to move way up in to the data, and I will show you why in just a
02:40moment when we get into Photoshop.
02:41We'll just move up kind of to the beginning of the data, and there we go!
02:44Notice the contrast of that is much improved now.
02:47So with just a little bit of an adjustment, just a little touch up of the
02:50histogram, we've knocked out the background and improved the contrast of the image.
02:54All right, now let's discuss Resolution.
02:57With a simple line art image that we take the vectors, if the scanner has an
03:00optical resolution of say 1200 pixels per inch, we've demonstrated I think
03:04conclusively that 600 is just fine.
03:06But in images like this where we have got lots of detail, then we're going to
03:09go with the full 1200.
03:10We're going to take this all the way up, but we don't need more than that.
03:14We really don't.I haven't scanned a line art image that ever needed more than
03:171200 pixels per inch.
03:19They may exist, but I haven't found them.
03:20Notice that already we are going to have a 48 MB file here.
03:23But 1200 is good given lots of detail, and lots of grayscale values to work with.
03:28So 16 to 8-bit, 1200 pixels per inch, get the frame set, name the file, logical
03:34name, bit depth and resolution and click Scan.
03:38Save this out as a TIFF of course, no compression and we could save it out as a
03:42JPEG, but I never do, because remember, the TIFF is completely uncompressed.
03:45There is no sub-sampling or down- sampling, or compression of your data at all.
03:50This scan is going to take a lot longer than the simple line art scan that we did.
03:55Why?
03:55Because with a simple line art scan, one, we're at 600 pixels per inch, so it's
03:59going to be one-quarter of the amount of data just in terms of resolution and
04:03here we've gone from 1-bit to 16-bit in terms of the capture.
04:07So that's 16 times as long.
04:09So it really is going to take a lot longer to create the scan.
04:12It will be worth in terms of the detail that we have inside this image.
04:16So the scanner is going through two processes.
04:18one is scanning at 1200, and then the second one is capturing at 16-bit and then
04:22it's going to convert it to 8-bit when it gets all done with the scan, and
04:26that's why we end up with such a high- quality 8 bits per pixel in terms of the
04:29grayscale value on our images.
04:31All right, So here we have our octopus, our 8-bit octopus delivered to us and
04:41just one more comparison, and notice the difference between these two pieces of
04:45line art, we have the edge-based line art which is simple and then the detailed
04:48line art which has all this complexity in it.
04:50All right, So let's toss our feather and just focus on the octopus for now.
04:55What I'd like to do is I'd like to zoom in, so you can take a look and see what's here.
05:00When we zoom way in there, compared to looking at like this where everything
05:03looks like a small hard dot, in fact, they're really not small hard dots at all,
05:08there is good continuous toned grayscale, and gradational edges in this image.
05:12And because we did that little bit of adjustment in the histogram, we end up
05:17with really nice high contrast image with a nice white background, and if we
05:21bring up our Info tool for instance and we look at the background, it's very,
05:25very little grayscale value there at all.
05:28If we send this to print, it won't reproduce as a grayscale value at all, and
05:31then if we zoom in on the image, we see we get lots of gradational pixels,
05:35gradational values to work with.
05:38This is the beauty, one of the beauties of working in capturing an 8-bit grayscale.
05:42Now first, a word about print.
05:44if we don't do anything else to this image, the advantages of having it an 8-bit
05:48grayscale versus 1-bit black and white is this image is going to print and look
05:53much better as a grayscale image than it will as a 1-bit black and white image.
05:57Some people will be tempted to scan this in 1200 and 1-bit black and white to
06:01get all those hard edges.
06:03But when you print those hard edges with just black and white pixels, it looks rough.
06:07It doesn't have the same quality, and texture to it that this does.
06:10So I rarely if ever will take an image like this, and convert it in a
06:131-bit black and white.
06:15Some cases like if I just want to use it for a fax, I can do that.
06:18So let's go through a couple of adjustments here inside of Photoshop now that
06:23we've got this data, and I am just going to do some duplicates.
06:27The first thing that I might do is just go ahead and just take this to black and
06:31white, and notice that this is a 1- bit grayscale image, so it's 8-bits per
06:37pixel, and I will just put the channels out there just so you can keep track of
06:41what's going on here.
06:42Then let's go Image>Mode and go to Bitmap.
06:45There is a couple of ways we can do this.
06:46So we can go, I hate the word Bitmap.
06:48It's 1-bit black and white.
06:50We can take this image and just use a 50 % Threshold and then just click, boom!
06:56And notice how much harder that is.
06:58Let me back up, there is the grayscale, there's the black and white.
07:02Now, let's go back to the grayscale, zoom in a little bit, and go 1-bit black and white.
07:07See you end up with those hard edges, and on screen it looks sharper and then
07:10actually, if I were going to send this as a fax, this is a perfect image to
07:14re-create this as a fax because on a fax, you don't want any grayscale, you want
07:18black, you want white.
07:19So if I were to use this for my fax logo, that's how I would go.
07:23There are some other things we can do here.
07:28We're going to keep this one as grayscale for now, and I am going to zoom up
07:34just a little bit, and I am going to bring up my Layers panel, and I am going
07:39to get rid of the Channels panel just for now, so we don't have too much
07:42complexity up here.
07:45Let's go to Curves and notice what we can do with Curves.
07:50We can do this in Levels as well, but I like to do it in Curves because we have
07:53control of all the mid tones.
07:55I can take and I can control how much of this is black and how much of this is
07:59white by moving the Highlight & Shadow sliders like this.
08:02So that's one thing you can do.
08:05So we can make it darker, and then make it darker still, and lighter.
08:10We are treating it like it's a continuous toned grayscale image. Why?
08:14Well, basically because it is.
08:16So we can make adjustments like with curves and levels.
08:19Typically, you'll want to look at this at 100%, all zoomed in, you can see
08:23exactly what's going on, and see how you are increasing, decreasing the
08:26thickness of those edges.
08:28This is what the grayscale values allow you to do inside your image.
08:31So we could even not even adjust the highlights and shadows, and just come in
08:35here and we can increase and decrease the thickness of those edges by just doing this.
08:39See all the editability you get.
08:41If you scan this in 1-bit black and white, you will never have that capability.
08:45So I am going to just lighten it just a little bit, so it gives us a lighter version.
08:50Notice that I'm using an adjustment layer, so that we have full editability of our file.
08:54Notice we have lighten this a little bit, taken out some of the darkness of the
08:57image, so it will print on a low -quality device. There we go!
09:02It's another version.
09:04The adjustment layer gives us full editability as nondestructive editing.
09:08One of our choice here and these are just some among many, and we are going to
09:13call this one the Sharpen Version.
09:16I am sure you say, really cool!
09:17Watch what we can do with a continuous toned grayscale image like this with
09:21a Sharpening Filter.
09:23All right, Come up here, go to Sharpen, go to Unsharp Mask, and I can take this
09:30to 500% and notice what that does to the sharpness of the image.
09:35See this is why we didn't want to do the sharpness, and we go to 100% so you can
09:38see what's going on.
09:39This is why we didn't want to sharpen during the scan because we have full
09:44control of this here.
09:45Now, I am going to back out, so you can see the whole image and watch.
09:49With the Radius, I am going to go from 2 to 10, from 10 to 25, from 25 to 50.
09:59I can get full creative control over what this puppy looks like.
10:03Again, let's zoom in, and take it through that same process. 10, 25, 50.
10:07That would be another great fax image, and it would also print very well,
10:20because although it looks like pure black and white, notice you still have a
10:23little bit of a grayscale value on the edge.
10:25So when it prints, you're going to end up with basically what is an anti-alias
10:28print version and it's going to look really nice.
10:31You are going to have that nice softness, just a tiny little bit of softness,
10:33but with a really high detailed image.
10:36Point being is that when you scan an 8 -bit grayscale or the detail line art
10:40images, you can bring it into Photoshop and just basically have your way with it.
10:44So there is working with detail line art, and just a few tips and tricks on
10:48how you can work with it in Photoshop and I am sure you will come up with your
10:51own as well.
Collapse this transcript
Scanning landscapes
00:00In this movie we are going to use these two photographs of the beautiful Surfers Beach.
00:04That's along the Southwest coast of Kodiak Island, Alaska.
00:08In this exercise we are going to do a start to finish project working on landscapes.
00:12And here I thought we'd scan two versions of the same image.
00:15a grayscale version that we have up on top, and a color version.
00:19The nice thing about SilverFast is it's easy to scan two images.
00:23they don't even have to be the same kind of images and you can apply completely
00:27different settings to each one.
00:28For instance, here I've got my frame set in a 7x3 inch frame, set around the
00:33grayscale image, and we are going to choose 16 to 8 Bit for Grayscale.
00:37This is the kind of image where there is a lot of dynamic range, where I might
00:41be inclined to scan this as a 16-bit image and then work in it in Photoshop.
00:46For the purposes of this class we are still going to stick 16 to 8 bit, but
00:49this is the kind of image where I will in some cases actually capture 16 bit
00:53and then receive 16-bit from the scanner and then edit it in Photoshop, because
00:58sometimes I get a little bit better results in my final print when I have such dynamic range.
01:03Or if you wanted to you can just go with a 16 bit HDR grayscale, but you would
01:08do all the editing somewhere else.
01:09But here we want to perform most of the functions during the scan, so we'll go
01:13with 16 bit to 8 bit, and we'll start with our grayscale image.
01:17We look at it and evaluate what are the most important areas of this image.
01:21Well, obviously the surf is huge, as we can see that, and that's really what
01:24this image is all about.
01:26But the background mountains, which are very high contrast here, form a really
01:30nice high contrast buffer, antipode, if you will, to the beautiful bright white
01:34surf, the way I have constructed the grayscale image.
01:37So we are going to want to get the surf correct, no doubt about that.
01:40We are also going to want to make sure that we maintain detail in these dark
01:44mountains back here.
01:46Another place that we are probably going to pay some attention to, because we
01:48can't tell just by looking at it if the mountains are darker, or if this area is
01:52darker in here, I mean, we can look at it with our Densitometer, with our Info
01:56tools to see what we've got, 60s down in there, and 40s, and then 20s and 30s. Okay.
02:00So the mountain is definitely going to be darker.
02:02Go ahead and start by setting our Highlights and Shadows, and by the way, I
02:06should just mention before we go any further, I am not Sharpening here, no way
02:09am I going to do that, because I am going to really want to see all of the high
02:14full pixel value detail when I go about Sharpening this spray foam here, and
02:17that's what we'll go ahead and do in Photoshop is some Sharpening.
02:20So no Sharpening, 16 bit to 8 bit, and let's go ahead and set our Highlights and
02:24Shadows for our grayscale in bits.
02:26We move down to one of our favorite tools here that's Set Highlights and Shadow.
02:29Hold down our Shift key, click there, and it finds the lightest portion of the
02:33spray here, and then we'll do the same thing with the Shadow, boom, and it finds
02:38the shadow back here in this portion of the mountains.
02:41When we look at those two values, and here we have our Fixed Pipette, which
02:46shows us the Highlights and Shadow points.
02:48We are at 226, and it's all grayscale, so it's all going to be the same, and then 25.
02:54That's actually not a bad value.
02:56I can take this down to 20 and still be comfortable with how it's going to
02:59print on my inkjet.
03:00So we can make that a little bit darker, and we can certainly make this lighter. we're at 226.
03:05We can take this up to 239, 240, no question about it.
03:09Let's go do that then.
03:10Let's come in here, go to our Histogram tool, which is similar to Levels in
03:14Photoshop, and while we monitor the Highlight, we are going to pull the
03:17Highlight value in here, and we'll take that up.
03:21And I know I am going to be sharpening this image a little bit later, so you
03:25know what, I'm not going to go all the way to 240.
03:26I am going to take this to about 237.
03:29But even notice that, watch the image just visually over here as we take it
03:33from here, do you see how we are increasing the Brightness because we are
03:37bringing that Highlight in?
03:38But I am not going to take it all the way, 239, 240.
03:40I am going to take it 236, 237, somewhere in there.
03:44And the Shadow, just lower it to about 20.
03:46I really don't want to go below 20, because I am afraid of that filling in when
03:50I print this as a multi- tonal image. There we go!
03:53So that's setting Highlights and Shadows, and with an image like this, I am
03:57going to want to pump the Contrast just a little bit, although the basic image
04:00has such good Contrast, we certainly could get by with doing absolutely
04:04nothing if we want to.
04:06If I were going to apply this in Photoshop, then I'd probably want to have this
04:09as a 16 bit image, but just for grins, in case we wanted to just scan and print
04:13this, and give it a little bit of a boost, maybe 2%, 3%, maybe take this up to
04:1710, no more than that.
04:19And when you watch the image on screen, you see just a little bit of a change.
04:23A little bit goes a long way with that Curve tool, and then we will click OK. Good to go.
04:28Let's do the same thing, but do it on this image here.
04:31Now, watch this, Shift key, click, and notice that the highlight went to
04:35exactly the same place. No surprise there.
04:38And then Shift and then click, notice where the shadow point went here.
04:44Because look at the difference in the contrast in the black and white image
04:48versus the color image.
04:50See, this is a much higher contrast image, so now the detail is actually in the
04:54wave, which is why you always want to do that Highlights and Shadow Points on
04:58each image, just to make sure that you know what you've got.
05:00So we are going to do a similar kind of adjustment on this image, but we can
05:04probably apply a little bit more Contrast on this one, because the original
05:07image doesn't have as much Contrast.
05:09When we look at the Highlight, we're almost down to 200.
05:12So we've got quite a bit of lightening that we can do on this image.
05:15And notice that the Shadow Point though, the darkest value here is 27, so we
05:20are not going to want to darken that too much more, but we can certainly bring up the Highlights.
05:25The other thing that we will want to pay attention to here, since this is an RGB
05:29image is, if we want this to look and print white, then we're going to want to
05:33neutralize that water.
05:34Notice right now, if we evaluate the wave RGB values numerically, 27, 37, 43,
05:38there is a little bit of Blue-Green cast in this image, which by the way, if
05:44you've looked very much at the numeric values of landscapes shot during the day,
05:48Blue-Green Cast are very, very common.
05:50When the human eye looks at this, it interprets that water as white, but as
05:54you'll see, we're going to increase the Brightness and overall Contrast in this image.
05:58We're really going to make that water pop, much like it pops up here.
06:02So to do this, we are going to go to our Histogram tool, but instead of working
06:06on the Master Histogram, we are going to work on the individual histograms, and
06:10watching the Highlight value, Highlight point number 3 and 4 here, 203, on the
06:17Red Channel, and we've got Red, Green, and Blue Channel.
06:24We're going to move this to the left, watching the Red value at point number 3.
06:31And again, we are going to take that to about 237.
06:33Go to the Green, do the same thing, and we're doing the individual channels
06:38because we want to neutralize the Highlight.
06:42Take that to 237, and then the Blue, I'll take that to 237 as well.
06:50All ready, I think you can see how much brighter this image is, how the
06:54waves are really starting to pop more and the overall Contrast of the image has improved.
06:58In terms of the Shadow, we can come in and we can compress the Shadow a
07:01little bit if we want to.
07:02We can neutralize this water if we cared to, or not.
07:06And honestly with 31, 43, 49, we can take that Shadow and move it in just a
07:11little bit, but I am not going to change it a whole lot.
07:14I don't want to go anything below about 20.
07:16Notice I'm working on the Master Histogram here. Why?
07:20Because I don't really care about neutralizing the water down in here.
07:23In fact, whatever colorcast is there I am happy to maintain, but I did want to
07:27neutralize the top, the white spray foam.
07:30So we've maintained the colorcast down here by working on the Master Channel
07:33and the Shadow, but we did individual histogram manipulations to neutralize the white spray.
07:40Then we will click OK on this tool and we will go up to our Curve tool, and we
07:45will go to the Master Histogram here, and using either the slider right here.
07:53By the way, you can use this as a logarithmic slider.
07:56Notice, it says L for logarithmic.
07:58Notice that the slope changes on here, or when you click here, it's more of a
08:02linear tool, if you move it up and down.
08:05You can do it either way.
08:06As a logarithmic tool it makes more of an adjustment in the Shadow.
08:09For an image such as this, it doesn't make too much difference.
08:12For images that are a little bit higher contrast, such as this one, it makes a
08:14little bit more difference if you're doing overall brightness.
08:17I am pretty happy with the brightness of this image, we are just going to do a
08:20little bit of a Contrast enhancement.
08:22So we are going to put that right back at 0 and just a little bit of Contrast
08:27punch, and a little bit of nice shape curve there.
08:29Maybe to take that to 10, just like we did the first image here. Okay.
08:33There we go.
08:35This is an RGB image and we've set our frame.
08:38Both of these images we are going to a set at 240 for outputting on an inkjet.
08:44So 240 for that one.
08:46And when I'm setting resolution based upon an inkjet as opposed to prepress,
08:51instead of using the Q-Factor of like 1. 5 or 2 and then the line Screen, I just
08:55put the Q-Factor at 1 and then just put the pixels per inch here.
08:58And just to check, to make sure, I just hold down that Ctrl key to make sure
09:03that, that value is going to be right at around 240.
09:05Now, we've got a little bit of scaling going on here, from 7.9 by 3.9 to 8 by
09:103.9, so we are going to end up with 240 pixels per inch, but it's going to scan
09:15at 266, to accommodate that 1 .5% of scaling of the image.
09:20All right, There we go.
09:21We've got both images set up and we just hit the Scan key, and then SilverFast
09:25is going to allow us to save each image out as a TIFF, and there we are.
09:29And we can dissolve back into here to Photoshop and there is our two images.
09:34the black and white grayscale image and the RGB color image.
09:37At the end of this chapter I will show you how you can set up using Job Manager
09:41so you can cue as many images as you want to, and then it will automatically
09:45just go from one image to the other.
09:47So there's scanning our landscapes.
09:48Now, once we have brought them into Photoshop, then we want to apply some
09:52Sharpening to these images, and as I mentioned, I like to do my Sharpening in Photoshop.
09:56I'll just sharpen one of these.
09:58To complete this job in Photoshop before we use it in print or in the web,
10:02particularly going to print, we're going to want to apply some Sharpening to this image.
10:06And I'm just going to sharpen the color image to show you what my thought
10:10patterns are about it and we are going to use a standard tool called Unsharp
10:13Mask in order to accomplish this.
10:15And then I'll just mention how I would change it differently, and it's not much,
10:19using the Sharpening tool for the grayscale image.
10:23First of all, what I'd like to do is I'd like to keep an original image in
10:27an unsharpened form, and I will actually designate this is as a sharpened image, like this.
10:33So when I'm looking at it in my file list, I can see that it's sharpened.
10:36And I am going to bring up my Layers panel right here.
10:40And then I do this.
10:42I go underneath Filter and I do Convert for Smart Filters, and I will click OK.
10:47What this allows me to do now is, I can go underneath Filter, and then Sharpen,
10:53and then I use either Unsharp Mask or Smart Sharpen.
10:56I am going to use Unsharp Mask here, because it's a little more intuitive than
11:00Smart Sharpen is, but all the same thought patterns will go into it.
11:03500 is a little high.
11:04That's cool though. Wow!
11:05All right, That's a little more like it for a landscape.
11:10That 500 gave us an interesting result.
11:13The reason why I'm doing this, I converted my image to Smart Object, was now
11:18when I apply a filter like Smart Sharpen, I can apply that filter and edit
11:22it nondestructively.
11:23So I can apply one value, maybe do a print if I don't like it.
11:27I can come right back in here and I can go right into my Unsharp Mask or my
11:31Smart Sharpen filter, and I can change the values without actually affecting the
11:35pixels in the image until I actually go to output.
11:38So it's a great way to sharpen your images, but again, I always like to leave an
11:41original image in an unsharpened form.
11:43All right, Let's discuss Sharpening for an image like this, and by the way, the
11:48best percentage to look at Sharpening is at 100%.
11:50Notice I've got 100% down here in the lower left-hand corner.
11:54That gives you the best overall visual impression of what the impact of the
11:59Sharpening is going to be.
12:00Although often I will do, as I'm doing here, I will Zoom in just to get a
12:05look-see at what it's doing to the pixels, and luckily the Unsharp Mask Filter
12:10here in Photoshop allows me to see what the Sharpening does to the image.
12:14Here's an Amount of 100, and what that 100 means is, if you recall from our
12:18discussion earlier, is it increases the Contrast along the high contrast edges by 100%.
12:24The Radius of 1, which is what we use for all images that are 100%.
12:29only if we are applying Unsharp Mask during a scanning process, where we are
12:34doing a lot of scaling would we have a Radius greater than 1.
12:37Then importantly, in an image like this in particular, is using the Threshold value.
12:41On a lot of landscapes I will have the Threshold value of 0.
12:45What that means is, it sharpens the whole image completely consistently.
12:49I might be able to do that here, but I want to sharpen this area of the image
12:54more than this area down in here.
12:57So I might put in a Threshold value of 2, which means it needs to be at least
13:01two differences in grayscale value between two adjacent pixels before the
13:04Sharpening will be applied.
13:06How much Unsharp Mask do I want to apply?
13:08Well, it kind of depends on the image.
13:10For this image, if we go up to 200 %, and then we look at that 100%, I
13:16think that's too much.
13:18My creative judgment is that looks unnatural.
13:21And notice that viewing it at 100 % gives me the best view of what's
13:25actually going to occur.
13:26When I go back down to 100, I'm getting some nice Sharpening of that spray, but
13:31it doesn't look oversharpened to me.
13:33So an Amount of 100, a Radius of 1, and a Threshold of 2 for Sharpening this image.
13:38And in point of fact, in some cases I won't do it here, because it's really not
13:42a Photoshop class, but for images like this, I'll very often selectively sharpen
13:47the foreground over the background.
13:49I might make a mask of this portion of the image, a nice feathered mask,
13:52and sharpen just the waves, or sharpen the waves more than I'd sharpen the backgrounds.
13:56There are lots of things you can do in Photoshop.
13:58Hence, this is the reason why I don't want to sharpen during the scan, to get a
14:01lot more creative control of how I want to sharpen my images.
14:04Now, one thing to mention here when you're Sharpening RGB images is that
14:09sometimes when you sharpen RGB images you will get colorcast shifts along the
14:13high contrast edges.
14:14There are a couple of solutions to addressing this, and one of them is this.
14:18I am going to take this image.
14:20I am going to back it down here.
14:22I am going to make a copy of this.
14:23And we are going to make a Lab version of this image.
14:28And we are just going to bring up Channels, and I am going to go Image>Mode, and
14:33go to Lab Color Mode.
14:35What this does is it takes my RGB images and it separates them into three
14:39other channels, but most importantly what it does is it puts the grayscale
14:42values on one channel.
14:44Then if I know how much Unsharp Mask that I want to apply to this image, I can
14:49bring up my Unsharp Mask tool, apply it to just to the L Channel.
14:53Therefore, there's no color shifts along high contrast edges, because there is
14:57no Sharpening being assigned to either the A or the B Channel.
15:00This is perhaps the safest way to apply Sharpening to a color image, if you end
15:05up having some color shifts along high contrast edges.
15:08It looks exactly the same.
15:09It's going to be the same values that you had.
15:11In fact, you can convert this back to RGB again if you want to, or you can take
15:14it onto CMYK for printing right from here.
15:17So if you do notice some color shifts in your printer and your web images, it
15:21doesn't always happen, but sometimes it does, you can apply Sharpening to a Lab
15:26version of this image.
15:27Again, another reason to apply Sharpening in Photoshop.
15:31it gives you much more control.
15:32Now, all the Sharpening evaluation and the values that I applied to the color
15:36image, I would apply to the grayscale image as well.
15:39I just don't have to worry about color shifts along high contrast edges.
15:42All right, So there's scanning grayscale landscapes, color landscapes, and then
15:46applying some Sharpening in the post-scan in Photoshop.
Collapse this transcript
Scanning product shots
00:00In this movie we are going to address scanning photographs of product shots.
00:03We are going to do a continuous tone color image.
00:06Products not always but very often represent some unique challenges in terms
00:10of scanning and particularly in terms of highlights and shadows and sharpening issues.
00:15So let's just dive right in.
00:16I've already set our Frame here.
00:18The original image was 5x7 so we are going to put out Output at 5x7 because
00:21maybe that's how we want this to go in the catalog as a 5x7 image.
00:25And while we are here let's go ahead and set.
00:28We are going to go to print.
00:29Let's set our Quality Factor at 2 and we will set our Line Screen say at 150 so
00:35we will get a 300 pixel per inch scan and hold down the Ctrl key.
00:39We will actually scan at 320 because we've got a little bit of a scale of about 101.4%.
00:44And we will name it Martinelli's Bottle_RGB_300.
00:50So that's all squared around.
00:51We will go up to our Scan Type. Go 48->24.
00:53Again if you want to do a bunch of editing afterwards in Photoshop or if you
00:59wanted to print high bit depth images then you could scan in 48-bit.
01:01But we are going to go 48->24 and I think these results will be just fine. Thank you.
01:05All right, So let's look at our image and do a visual eval first.
01:10Since it's a product shot one of the key things about product shots is there is
01:13usually logo and/or type and here we have both.
01:17We have Logos and we have Type.
01:18We want to make sure that's sharp and just as a side note as far as photography
01:22is concerned if you are in-charge to the whole process and you are doing film
01:26based photography and then you are scanning that make sure that you have got
01:29enough bit depth so that you get good sharpness of the logo all the way around a
01:33bottle, a three-dimensional object like this and make sure that you capture
01:37plenty of data all the way from the highlights to shadows.
01:40So the highlights aren't blown out and the shadows aren't filled in.
01:43And this is an example of a very good product shot.
01:45One of the things we run into quite frequently in product shots is reflection
01:49such as we see here and very often these are what we call specular highlights.
01:53There are two kinds of Specular, which tend to be blown out pure white with not
01:56much detail in them and then Diffused highlight which is the lightest portion of
02:00image that still has detail.
02:01To this point in the course we have been primarily dealing with diffuse
02:04highlights, first of all I want to do this product shot to discuss it.
02:08The other thing that we often have in product shots is attention to shadow
02:11detail where in some other kinds of images it may not be all that important but
02:16in these kinds of images is it and with a bottle like this where we have got
02:19shadows and highlights and specular highlight it's kind of get the whole package
02:24in here for us to worry about.
02:25We've got reflective surfaces like the foil and this is all about getting
02:29the proper lighting.
02:30These reflections are fine.
02:31If you get too much of reflection off the foil that's not good.
02:35So, good photography needs to be done.
02:37And this is a nice product shot that was done by Lucas Deming the
02:40photographer at Lynda.com.
02:41So thank you Lucas. Good job.
02:42All right, So we've done our visual evaluation, our qualitative evaluation so we
02:46know what's important.
02:47Let's go ahead and start setting our sampler points and let's do our Shift+Click
02:52on our favorite tool right the Highlight Shadow tool here.
02:55Click and it's not unexpected that the highlight is going to go right there in the reflection.
02:59Before I go any further though I know one of the key portions of this image I
03:03can do it usually is this white area on the label right and I know I've got some
03:07light coming from this side because well, I can see the reflection here.
03:11So I'm going to go ahead and put a color sampler point right here as well
03:14because that's the one I really want to pay attention to.
03:16When we look at these two values notice this one is at 228, 227, 225 and this
03:23one is at 233, 228, 223. Interesting!
03:26They are almost identical.
03:27We have just kind of switch to couple of values here like there, they are identical.
03:30Well, good enough but we are going to monitor number two. Why?
03:34Because that's the diffuse highlight.
03:36In an image like this we have specular and diffuse.
03:38If you take care of the diffuse properly the specular will normally take care of itself.
03:43We will see what happens.
03:44All right, Then of course we want to get a Shadow Point in here and we will
03:48Shift+Click on that Shadow Point because we want to make sure we maintain
03:51shadow detail there.
03:52Let's look at the value. 27, 24, 26.
03:53All right, We've got a little bit of room.
03:57We can darken up a little bit but don't want to go below 15 on that one, most
04:01likely that's about 96% shadow.
04:04How low we go once again depends upon the output device.
04:07If I am going to my Inkjet printer I am probably not going to go below 20 there.
04:10If I am going to a process color press with just cyan, magenta, yellow and black
04:13I can take it little bit lower.
04:15My Inkjet are now pinched to fill in those shadows little bit more than a
04:18commercial printing press does.
04:19So it's all based upon the output device we are going to.
04:22So we are going to prepress with this one.
04:24So let's go ahead over to our tools and start fine-tuning our settings and
04:28these aren't bad settings all the way they are because the photography is so well-done.
04:31So what would do here?
04:33First of all this is a white label. Isn't it?
04:35Maybe that's the point that we are going to pay attention to.
04:37233, 228, 223, little bit of a red cast here and you know what probably
04:42because of the reflection of the light of the apple is casting a little bit of
04:46a red cast right there.
04:48So difficult to see that visually but we can see it numerically.
04:51So to make sure that label pops, what we are going to do is we are going to take
04:54out that little bit of a red color cast here.
04:56So we are going to go and work on these individual channels and the
04:59highlight separately.
05:00If you go to the red channel and we are going to punch this up to 238, 239
05:03because I am thinking ahead a little bit I think I am going to be lightning
05:07this image a little bit.
05:08It's not bad but I would like to lighten it and add a little bit more contrast.
05:11So I think I am going to just take this to 239 thinking that we'll get the rest
05:15of the way to 242 when we go into our Curves tool.
05:18And then we go to the Green.
05:19We will take that to 239 as well and the Blue take that to 239.
05:25And see by getting these three numbers to equal this is called neutralization of
05:28course we take out any color cast, any red color cast because we don't really
05:31care about the apple what we care about is that white bottle. There we go.
05:35Now let's look at the shadow and to do the shadow, point number three, we don't
05:39want to neutralize that.
05:41It's got some color to it.
05:42We want to maintain that color.
05:43So we are going to do the shadow adjustment on the Master RGB channel.
05:47Now let's say we can drop that down to maybe 15.
05:49So I will drop this down to the lowest values at 15 which is going to be the green.
05:53There we go.
05:54So none of these we have increased the contrast here a little bit by lightening
05:57up the highlight, darkening up the shadow looking pretty good.
05:59Let's look at these three values here 233, 237, 241.
06:04They have hardly changed although the Blue came up a bit and these came up
06:08a little bit but notice they are all still actually printing as a diffuse highlight.
06:12But we don't really care if that one's neutral what we care about is this one being neutral.
06:17Our eye doesn't expect that to be neutral gray, the eye does expect this to be neutral gray.
06:22All right, There we go.
06:23And then we will go to our Curves tool.
06:25And in a case like this where we've got lots of darkness in here instead of
06:29going with just the normal I am going to go with a logarithmic curve to lighten my image.
06:35So I am just going to move this up maybe about 5 points here and notice we've
06:39gone from 239 to 240 over here.
06:42See the brightness of the image just a little bit and it brightens the shadow a
06:46little more than it does the highlight.
06:48Then we'll go to our Contrast tool and I am just going to add little bit of
06:51contrast between 5 and 10 and notice that boom, they are all perfect.
06:55Our white highlight is right at 241, 242.
06:58Perfect 5% white highlight.
07:00And we will just check our shadow here.
07:02Make sure we are around 15.
07:03All right, It's bumped up a little bit. We are fine.
07:05Yeah, we are good to go there.
07:07So we've got a nice neutral label.
07:10We've got good brightness, good contrast. We will click OK.
07:13Now since we are going to scan this and go right to press, we are going to go
07:16ahead and do some sharpening here.
07:18I know shock and surprise, I am actually going to sharpen during my scan.
07:20Now you could use some of these built- in sharpening and honestly SilverFast
07:25sharpening algorithms are pretty darn good but no matter how good they are
07:28I never trust them.
07:29So up comes the Unsharp Mask tool which is SilverFast's very
07:33sophisticated sharpening tool.
07:34Let's call Unsharp Mask because it comes from prepress and remember all the
07:37knowledge and wisdom that goes into its program comes from the prepress world.
07:40So the first thing we want to do is check off Monochrome because we really want
07:43to see the impact of the Unsharp Mask on the color portion of the image and then
07:47if you have watched some of the earlier videos on sharpening in this course you
07:50know that when you click Prescan nothing happens.
07:52It waits for you take that little rectangle and click on where you want to see the preview.
07:57And I am going to click on a critical area here and also show this reflective
08:02gold band which we want to make sure is not too overly affected by some
08:06sharpening we might apply.
08:08The left side shows the unsharpened version of the image and the right side
08:12shows the sharpened version of the image.
08:15What we are going to want to set first is some starting values of Intensity and
08:18typically that would be between 50 and 100% particularly for a product shot.
08:22Remember we are emphasizing, making the type pop because it's a logo.
08:26So right and this is one of the things that product shots tend to have and very
08:29often the logos have line art and sometimes we both like we have here.
08:32So we want to make sure we end up with nice sharp edges and notice at 75% look
08:36at the difference in sharpness between these two.
08:38That's pretty significant.
08:39But we want to be careful of is applying too much sharpening so that we start
08:44getting modeling in areas like this and see there is a little bit in here. We don't see here.
08:48All right, And then this is one of the values we can adjust here and that
08:52is Threshold with the Intensity of 75% increase in contrast along high contrast edges.
08:59So it's going to increase the contrast between adjacent pixels.
09:02Then Threshold says and we are going to set this at about 3 and what this means
09:06is there needs to be at least 3% difference in grayscale value before the
09:10sharpening will be applied.
09:11And in some cases I will go as high as 5 on an image like this in particular.
09:15So we can go all the way up to 5 if you want to.
09:18So that soft areas are like this and the white background will not be modeled by the sharpening.
09:23Notice by putting 5% this now appears very smooth whereas the high contrast type
09:28edge is still sharpened.
09:30The other adjustment you can make here is this Over Sharpening slider.
09:33You won't find this in a lot of scanning programs.
09:36Its kind of unique to SilverFast but if you have SilverFast and you are using it
09:40notice you can take this all the way up to 100% and then you can back it off and
09:44you can watch those smooth areas.
09:46By putting this at 5% that's pretty much taken care of it.
09:50If I put this back down at 2% notice at 34 see the modeling if I go higher and
09:56higher we get more and more modeling.
09:57By reducing the Over Sharpening I remove some of that modeling
10:02My experience teaches me I would rather do with little bit higher Threshold and
10:06then move the over sharpening up until I just start to see some of that modeling up here.
10:11Here we go.
10:11So 75, Threshold to 5.
10:13I can maybe even take this up to 100% after a while.
10:17So I start between 50 and 100, maybe move up to 100 and get some nice sharp type here.
10:21Threshold to 5, Oversharpen.
10:23Now this is very important, the Sharpen and the Dark Contour. Why?
10:26Because we've got important shadow area here that we want to make sure is not modeled.
10:31So if you recall our shadow point here was down at about 95%.
10:38So I am going to say let's sharpen up to about 80 or 85% and after that
10:43don't sharpen at all.
10:44That way the very dark portions of the bottle will be left alone.
10:48And on the dark and light Contour I am pretty much going to leave those just the
10:52way they are set at 50% equalize them because there aren't any light areas that
10:55I want to emphasize and certainly no dark areas that I want to emphasize, which
10:58I would raise them about 50% on one of the other if I wanted to do that.
11:02I'm going to click on soft shadows particularly on an image like this.
11:05What that does is create smooth gradations on any of the dark shadow areas in
11:10the image and which in this case there is lots of in this bottle.
11:13All right and keep the Matrix at 3x3.
11:14and if I use this a couple of times, and I am doing a lot of these kinds of
11:18shots and I like this and I can save this is a preset and label it and call it
11:23bottles whatever I like. There we go.
11:25So I am going to click OK and we are ready to scan.
11:28So we are just going to check our values here.
11:30These one needs your one more check as sometimes when you apply sharpening,
11:33sometimes the highlights move up and the shadows move down a little bit.
11:36In this case, we are good to go because remember we put that threshold which
11:40protected the white area in particular and we would make sure that not too much
11:43sharpening was applied to the shadow area.
11:45So this tells us that we've accomplished our task and then we will go ahead and click Scan.
11:49And there we go and well, look at this at 100% and notice we end up with some
11:55real nice sharpening of our image.
Collapse this transcript
Scanning combo/complex images
00:00In this exercise we're going to work with a complex image, and by complex I mean
00:04kind of an image that has it all.
00:06We have Highlights and Diffused Highlights as you see here.
00:09We have Specular Highlights, reflections off the glass.
00:13We have some product shots here, like we've got a light area here, we've
00:16got type down here, we've got Skin Tones, we've got lots of Shadow detail in the jacket.
00:22You name it, it's in this image.
00:24Let's see how we would evaluate this image and measure it and then go about
00:28adjusting it and then finish up with the scan.
00:30And once again, let's assume that we are going to go to prepress with this.
00:34All right, So we'll start with, again, our favorite tool, and that is the
00:37Highlight and Shadow tool, Shift+click, boom, sets the lightest area in the
00:42image, and it sets our Fixed Pipette here.
00:45Look at the RGB value, just to kind of get a start here, 228, 226, 227, not bad,
00:51right, pretty darn neutral right from the get-go.
00:54And let's do the Shadow.
00:5524, 24, 27, and also we've get those two points set.
01:02Now, what else did we want to have for color sampler points if get up to 4 here?
01:05Well, certainly we are going to want the Skin Tone, aren't we, no doubt about that.
01:09And what else might we want here?
01:10Well, we would like the white wrap on the top of this bottle to be neutral as
01:15well, just like the shirt.
01:16So why don't we put one control point there, and I am clicking there first
01:21rather than on the face, strictly for organizational purposes here, is so that
01:26I've got the two Highlights one on top of the other in the Fixed Pipette.
01:30By the way, I should mention that I always put my Diffused Highlight as point
01:34number 1, and then I typically will put my Shadow as point number 2, so I can go back and forth.
01:38I usually set those two points first and then do everything in between.
01:42All of my images are corrected that way, whether I do it in scanning or Photoshop.
01:46If I am working in adjustment layers in Photoshop, for instance, any one of my
01:50.psd layered files, so I've got adjustment layers, I go in, I know when I bring
01:53up the Info panel, number 1 is always the Diffused Highlight and number 2 is
01:57always the Shadow Point.
01:59So Shift key again and let's put a color sampler point right on his cheek.
02:03Just to remind you about setting color sampler points on Skin Tones, we want
02:08to make sure that we have a position that's kind of average for the whole face
02:12in terms of lighting, and we want to avoid any reflections or any deep cast shadow area.
02:17So for instance, we would want to avoid this area right here, because there's
02:20a bit of reflection there, and we'd want to avoid the cast shadow on the side of his nose.
02:24So anywhere around in here is a pretty good place to take a look.
02:27So let's evaluate our numbers here.
02:30228, 226, 227, that's pretty close to neutral, but it's a little dull, isn't it?
02:35We can brighten that up for sure.
02:3724, 24, 27, pretty neutral, which is fine.
02:42Again, it's a little light.
02:43Overall the contrast of this image is lower than it can be, and we'll fix that.
02:48Color sampler point number 3, which is certainly not a Highlight, but it's
02:51around a quarter tone.
02:52203, 200, 199, a little bit of a Red cast here, which is why it's good
02:59we clicked on that.
03:00And then let's look at the Skin Tone.
03:02Remember for Skin Tone, Red should be greater than Green should be greater than Blue.
03:05Well, certainly we have that, Red is greater than Green, greater than Blue.
03:08Notice from Blue to Green, 139 to 157, that's about a 20 point spread, isn't it?
03:14We go from 157 to 200.
03:17That's a little over a 40 point spread.
03:19And we don't want the ratio of Red to Green to be any more than double that of
03:24Green to Blue, except for in the case of when you are scanning photographs of
03:29Irishmen with red hair, who have been out in the sun for too long.
03:32Other than that, we don't want to have that much Red in an image, although
03:37Roberto's skin certainly looked human, I think it's probably a little bit
03:41too Red by the numbers.
03:42Remember back here in this kind of quarter tone, neutral area, the Red was a
03:46little bit high, well, both the Skin Tones and this confirm that, don't they?
03:51One kind of supports the other.
03:52So I think we can go ahead and adjust our Highlights and Shadows and then come
03:55in and maybe do a little bit of the Midtone adjustment on the Red Channel before
03:59we finish up with Brightness, Contrast, and Sharpening.
04:02So let's go to our Tone Compression tool, the Histogram, a.k.a., Levels in Photoshop.
04:07Honestly, look at that, they are so close to each other, but I am going to be
04:10anal, you could use the Master Histogram here.
04:13I am going to pull this up to around 238, 239.
04:15And then I am going to pull this up, 238, 239, 240.
04:19In fact, let's take this one to 240, why don't we?
04:23240, 241, and we'll go back to Red.
04:29And then Blue, we'll come up here, go right to 240, because we are going to
04:34prepress remember, so we can hold that 5% white highlight at 242.
04:37I am just giving it a little bit of room to move when we go to curve, still
04:42lighting a little bit, otherwise it will print just fine, 240 is 5.5% white
04:47highlight, so it will be good to go.
04:49And then Shadow, and we might take this Shadow Point down into the jacket if we
04:53wanted to, but since it is right on the edge of the product shot, we'll leave it there.
04:58But I will go to the Master Histogram here to lower that, and we are watching
05:03these values right here at this point.
05:06We can take those down, so that the lowest one is right around 15. Good!
05:11Recheck the Highlight.
05:12239, 240, okay, so we'll click OK here, and let's go to our Curve tool now, hold
05:21the Gradation-curves, so we are fast.
05:24We're going to go to our Red Curve, hold down the Command key, or we can use
05:30the slider down here.
05:32One of the nice things about using the slider, particularly in the logarithmic
05:35mode, is that it does tend to adjust the Shadow more than the Highlight, as we
05:40lighten and darken, or as we move a curve one way or the other.
05:44That's particularly important for doing overall Brightness and Contrast.
05:47If we're just doing a color curve, we'll just Command+click and pull this down.
05:52Don't have to lower it too much, but just a little bit to take some of that Red off of there.
05:57And I am watching this right here.
05:59we are over 212, bring it down to about 207, we have brought from the 209, down to 203.
06:05So we have taken a little bit of that Red out of the skin, and you could take
06:07more if you wanted to, but I think we'll leave it right there.
06:10And then let's go back to the Master Curve and I will use the L Curve here to
06:15lighten overall just a little bit.
06:19Notice by lightening just a little bit here, we are creating some contrast
06:22between the jacket and the background, which is nice, gives the overall
06:26impression of the image a bit more contrast.
06:28And notice what happened to our Highlight values, we've moved up to 241, almost 242 there.
06:34Shadow, we may want to fine tune that a little bit when we get done here.
06:37Do we want to increase Contrast? No.
06:40Why?
06:41Well, we have a push/pull here, don't we, in this image?
06:44We'd like maybe a little bit more Contrast because of the bottle, the product
06:47shot, but we don't want more Contrast because of the Skin Tone.
06:50Which one is going to win out here?
06:52I am going to say we are going to just go with the Skin Tone, because this image
06:55has good contrast in it already.
06:57And we've taken care of improving the contrast with overall Brightness, and we
07:01are setting our Highlights and Shadows, but I will go back here and fine tune
07:05the Shadow a little bit, and we are watching these values right here, and I am
07:09going to take that back down to around 15, 16, something like that. There we go.
07:14So sometimes I'll go back and forth a couple of times with these two dialog
07:18boxes, doing overall Brightness of an image and then fine tuning the Shadow
07:23Point, get it just the way I want it.
07:25But I am not going to give me an S shape curve, because I want to protect the Skin Tones.
07:29Okay, there we go.
07:31And final, as we are going to apply Sharpening, the Sharpening we talked about
07:36earlier on the bottle right down here, I am going to use pretty much those same
07:40values in this image, and I am going to use about 100% increase in Sharpness,
07:45but I am going to use that 5% Threshold, and that 5% Threshold is going to
07:49protect the shirt and certainly going to protect the Skin Tone and also the
07:53wrapper on the bottle. It goes to 100%.
07:58Threshold of somewhere between 3 and 5 would be nice for this image.
08:02And we'll come and we'll look at the Oversharpening here.
08:055% has really taken out most of the impact of the Oversharpening, so not
08:11much impact from that.
08:13But notice we are getting some nice increase in focus and Sharpening here on
08:16the type, so we have it a little bit soft here, and that's really what we are looking for.
08:20And if you want, we can do just a check, we can take a look at the Skin Tone.
08:26We can click on that area.
08:27Make sure we are not getting any modeling.
08:32We might want to do some retouching on some of these pores and stuff later
08:35on, afterwards in Photoshop, but no modeling in the Skin Tone, things are just sharp.
08:40Good to go!
08:41And off to the scan races we go.
08:45Remember, if you get a set up like this, and you like it, and you've got similar
08:49kinds of images you want to scan with the same settings, use the Save Setting
08:53menu right here to save them and recall them at any time that you like. Here we go.
09:00And there is Roberto in all his glory.
Collapse this transcript
Adjusting distressed images
00:00Let's investigate scanning images that are distressed or damaged and maybe even
00:05in a need of a lot of photo restoration.
00:07In fact, the image that we're going to use here that you see in the Preview
00:10screen is an image that Janine Smith sent to me, and Janine Smith teaches a
00:14class at Lynda.com called Photo Restoration with Photoshop.
00:18And this is one of the images that she works with in her class.
00:21So we're kind of combining efforts here.
00:23She sent me this image do a high- quality scan and then, I'm going to send it
00:27back to her and she is going to use it into her Photo Restoration class.
00:30So when you get done with the scanning course, be sure to go check out Janine
00:34Smith's Photo Restoration with Photoshop course to see how far you can take this
00:37image with a good quality scan.
00:39So we better do a good job here, Janine will not be happy.
00:43I'm actually going to do two scans.
00:45One scan is I'm going to do is good a job as we kind of get ready to just take
00:49it, scan it, and go to print.
00:51And then we're going to evaluate that image in Photoshop a little bit and
00:54maybe see what we can do to fine-tune that to make it even a little bit better
00:58for photo restoration.
01:00So let's evaluate this image and see what we've got.
01:03Obviously, very, very low contrast, the image is very faded, like it has a color
01:07cast as we saw because almost all faded images have color cast to them.
01:12And you can really see this on color images that tend to get very green and blue
01:16as they age a lot of times.
01:18Others get very, very red.
01:20This one has got a real red color cast to it.
01:22It's hard to tell how this one actually started out.
01:25It might have actually started out as a single ink or as a sepia image, it's hard to tell.
01:29And of course, this poor gal is turned right now through her head, but
01:32Janine will fix that.
01:34We can do similar types of analysis with this image that we do without this.
01:38We can go check out what the highlight and shadow values are, so let's go do
01:42that and see what we get.
01:43There's the highlight, of course, we gave it to us on the tare.
01:46All right, And then shadow, so we get a shadow value here on the dress.
01:54Sometimes on images like this when you go to look for the shadow value, if it's
01:58got type on it like this, it'll actually choose the type.
02:01If it does that, you can do this, set your highlights and shadows and the pull
02:05this back down if you want that to be part of the scan.
02:07So you can always eliminate some portion of the image before you set
02:10highlights and shadows if you're getting a highlight and a shadow in the area
02:13that you don't want it.
02:14Now I could do that here, for instance, where I can get rid of all of these, if
02:18I wanted to see well, what's the lightest portion of this image, outside of that
02:22area right there so I could pull that or maybe what we'll do is pull this in
02:26here, there we go and then do a highlight check.
02:31When we see that highlight goes right down there.
02:34And then we'll do the shadow up right there, here we go.
02:40We're not concerned so much about that value right there.
02:43And if we set that, we can always use it later, but we're going to do put our
02:47number one value down here in this portion of the image which is part of the
02:51paper that surrounds it but it's not part of the tear.
02:53All right, So is there any other portion of this image that's important, well, I
02:56would probably put one right on this gal's face, maybe on the light portion of
03:01her face just to make sure, we've got grayscale values there.
03:04When all is said and done, there we go.
03:08So there's our highlight, there's our shadow, and we've got one in the tear.
03:11It'd be nice if we had some data to work with there, but we'll see.
03:15And then we have the type at the bottom.
03:17Where do we go from here?
03:18Well, let's go over to our Histogram tool.
03:22You can really see the color cast in here because of the offset of the red in
03:26relationship to the green and the blue.
03:27This is a very yellow image and of course you combine red and green together to
03:31make yellow and these are offset way to the right of the blue.
03:35So the histograms agree with our visual evaluation of having a strong red, green
03:39or yellow color cast.
03:40The first adjustment we're going to make here and understand there is really no
03:44highlight in this image.
03:46It's just kind of the lightest portion of the image which is down that's not
03:49really a highlight in the image.
03:50This is a shadow portion of the image but it looks to me like it's really kind
03:54of the damaged portion of the image which is likely going to be taken away.
03:57So that's not super-helpful to us, is it?
04:00We might move that in just a minute.
04:02What we do have is histograms and very often with images where we don't really
04:06have highlights and shadows or we don't have neutrals, boy, the histograms come
04:10in super-handy to help us evaluate and then adjust images.
04:15Well, since these are so offset, we're not going to just do a master histogram.
04:19That doesn't help us very much because it keeps the color cast.
04:21We're going to go into the individual channels.
04:24And on our first correction, remember I told you we're going to do two.
04:26In the first one, I'm going to take this highlight, I'm going to pull it all the way in.
04:30A lot of times these flat areas here is noise in the image, you're not quite
04:35sure where the data starts and where it doesn't, but I'm going to bring this in
04:39right to the start of where the significant data is in this image where it boom, jumps up.
04:43Remember, this first one is scan and take it to print, not intending to do much in Photoshop.
04:48And then I'm going to take the shadow and again, move it in and particularly
04:52where you've got the broken data that's very often noise, but I'm going to going
04:55to bring it into where the significant data jumps up under the red.
04:59I'm going to do the same thing on all three channels.
05:03Red, Green, and then Blue.
05:11What this basically does is it lines up all the highlights and shadow points
05:14in the three images.
05:15And notice it takes out a lot of that color cast of that image just by doing that.
05:19I'm putting all the way up to the beginning, and then I'm going to click OK.
05:24Huge improvement in this image already!
05:26Notice that we have our number two point over there and we look at in some detail.
05:30It does look like a damaged point, so we might move it over here, maybe in the
05:33shadow portion of the dress to see where we are.
05:35There is our highlight which is down there in the fold.
05:40Point number four is probably one of the most important points we've got here. 242, 241, 235.
05:46That's a very light portion of the image that we want to look at.
05:49We want to make sure there's plenty of data there to print and to work with.
05:53So we wouldn't want this to go any higher than this 242, 241 because that's
05:57about 5% white highlight.
05:59If we're any lighter than that, well, we probably want to go back and make a
06:02fine-tune adjustment with our histogram.
06:05Could we improve this image a little bit more?
06:07Well, we could come in here into our curves and we could lighten the overall
06:12image and we could improve contrast.
06:15That might do a little bit of a contrast improvement.
06:18Little bit goes on right there.
06:19Am I going to sharpen this image? Probably not.
06:23In fact, the images that have this much damage and repair, sharpening them just
06:27brings out the damaged areas more than anything else.
06:29So I'm not going to apply any sharpening to this.
06:32I might do some descreening if there were any patterns in here.
06:36I'm not exactly sure what Janine is going to do as far as repairing this image.
06:40So I'm going to leave this the way it is.
06:42But remember, this one actually is going to go to print.
06:44So I'm not going to anything else.
06:46I'm just going to do a basic tonal adjustment in this image and we're going to go to scan.
06:50And let's see, we've got a 2 inch x 3 inch image and we'll do 300 pixels per inch.
06:55I do a full scan and with an image like this we're just going to go to print,
07:00we'll do 48 -> 24 Bit Color.
07:02So I'm going to click Scan and we're going to call this one Torn Woman_RGB, take
07:12out the 16, all right, we're going to 24 bit, and then click Save.
07:19So vastly improved, still need lots of work in terms of retouching.
07:22But what I want to do now is I want to bring up the Layers panel and I want to
07:27add a curves adjustment layer.
07:30Coming up, tick over the image just a little bit, but most importantly what I
07:34want to do is take a look at the histogram.
07:36The other thing that you can view in Photoshop is just go into and choose Histogram.
07:44Both of these are useful.
07:46This one useful for kind of tweaking, and this one for just looking at the data in the image.
07:50Notice that we've got a little spike here in the highlight, little spike in the shadow.
07:55What that means is we've pulled the highlights and shadow values and just a
07:59little bit too far by looking at the histogram.
08:01This is why the Histogram is such a valuable tool, because rather than kind of
08:05measuring these values all over the image, we can look at the Histogram and see
08:08the distribution of data across the entire image.
08:11If we print this image like this, it's a dramatic improvement from what we had. No doubt about it.
08:16The image that I want to send to Janine, I want it to be as good as it can possibly be.
08:20So I'm going to back in and I'm going to back off in those Highlights and
08:23Shadows just a little bit on these three channels.
08:25But notice how these three channels now line up, all right, because we did
08:29a Histogram adjustment on the individual channels, took out the horrible color cast.
08:34So let's go back and redo the scan just a little bit different this time.
08:38And in fact, what I want to deliver is a 48 bit color image.
08:44So I'm going to give Janine lots of grayscale values to work with.
08:48We won't see much impact on screen here, but we are going to give Janine far
08:52more grayscale values to work with.
08:54Then let's go back into our histogram here and I'm just going to back this off,
09:01our histogram, just a little bit in the highlights and shadows, just a tad.
09:08We said we're not quite sure what's data and what's noise in here, and red and
09:13green, same thing, just back off a little bit.
09:16I want to do as much tone compression as I can get away with, so I'm stuffing
09:20lots of grayscale values where the image data actually is.
09:23I don't need a lot of grayscale values out here in the flats.
09:26But I don't want to do too much tone compression.
09:28So I'm going to click OK, and in fact, I'm going to come in here and I'm just
09:34going to take out all the Contrast Correction because I'm going to leave that
09:38for the final analysis after Janine finishes her editing. There we go!
09:44We're going to save this out as a 48 bit image, so we're going to call this RGB
09:50and then Hyphen, either 48 or 16 bit per channel or total 48 if you want.
09:56And that tells you that you've scanned this as 48 bit, so that you know that
10:00it's ready for editing and I'm going to click Save here. There we go!
10:08And let's look at this image now, this is the 48 bit one.
10:11And when we look at the histogram, there's still just a little bit of tick
10:15up, little bit less.
10:16So one more and after you get used to this, after a while you get real good at
10:21choosing in how much you want to back off, so we just go a little bit more.
10:25And we're doing it progressively so you can see the difference and with just a
10:29little bit of adjustment and a little bit more.
10:31Okay, and then scan. There we go!
10:44That's just about right.
10:46It's just a tiny little tick up here and a tiny little one in the Shadow, but
10:50you can see what happens as we move those highlights and shadows out a little
10:53bit more and little bit more.
10:54So I'll probably perform the scan one more time and take out those ticks
10:58completely, but you get the idea about how to get as much tonal data as you can
11:01in your image without the tick ups on the end.
11:04And then we're going to send this to Janine and she is going to use it in her
11:06course and she is going to make it look really good.
11:09So there's scanning distressed images.
Collapse this transcript
Scanning images with no neutrals
00:00Here I'd like to investigate in the image that offers a challenge.
00:03in fact, a couple of challenges.
00:04This is a kind of image that has really no neutrals in it and really doesn't
00:07have a usable highlight in it.
00:09In most images of vast majority and we can usually find a highlight, we can find
00:12something that's neutral to help us with our color correction.
00:15But there are images like this that really don't offer much help.
00:19Luckily, we've got a really important tool to help us.
00:22First, image evaluation is always first.
00:25And this is a slide, by the way, just to let you know, so we've set this on film
00:29and a Positive slide back to Frame.
00:32And we've set our frame here and we'll scan this for print, so 300 pixels per
00:38inch at a 150 line screen.
00:40And then let's go ahead and change the name to Dark Woman.
00:44All right, And then we can rename her to maybe Light Woman later on.
00:48So we've renamed it Woman, we've put down the logical name, a color space of
00:52RGB, and then the final resolution which would be 300 pixels per inch.
00:56And what's the key portion of this image?
00:58Well, clearly, it's the skin tone.
01:00There's no doubt about it, and the hair.
01:02We're not quite sure how much detail is in this image, but we're going to find
01:06out exactly how much we have to work with in just a moment.
01:09But this image is all about the skin tone.
01:11So the one portion of the image that we have to help guide us is the skin tones,
01:15and we want to get that right.
01:16It would also be nice to improve the overall brightness and contrast of this
01:20image, no doubt about it.
01:21Well, let's begin as we always do by at least looking for the lightest
01:24portion of the image.
01:25I'm going to Shift and click there and sure enough, it's in the background here,
01:29so that's not going to be super-helpful to us.
01:32And then let's find the shadow, Shift +click there in the foreground, and
01:36we've got 18, 29, 31.
01:38pretty dark, but still the shadow detail, and then watch the Densitometer, let's
01:43move this down just a little bit.
01:45What I always like to do is move my cursor over the image and see if I get much
01:50change in the Densitometer or Info readings, right, the tonal range readings.
01:55And I'm not getting huge variation, but at least it's not just flat line.
01:59What that means is there is some detail there that can be brought out.
02:02So that's a valuable tool and we can go in the background and look at the same thing.
02:06We're not getting as much variation back there as we are here. Okay.
02:11So we know we've got some shadow detail to bring out here and as we move towards
02:14the head, we see even more detail.
02:16So that's good news.
02:18We don't really need this point back here, we can go ahead and leave it at 1 if we want to.
02:22We'll come back and chat about that in just a second.
02:24But we certainly want to set a couple of skin tone points here and here to make
02:30sure that we get the skin tone correctly.
02:32Well, let's look at the skin tone even before we've done anything else to this
02:35just to see what we've got for starting point.
02:37All right, Red is greater than Blue is greater than Green.
02:40So that's good news.
02:41At least, we're working with humans here, and notice that the Red is right about
02:4650 points higher than the Green, and the Green is about 50 points higher than
02:51the Blue, at least right now.
02:53So there's about equal separation there.
02:55And here, we've got about 40, 35, or 40 points of separation, and big separation
03:01over 50 points here.
03:02It's actually the ratios, and particularly in point number 4, it's
03:05actually pretty good.
03:07The Red to Green to Blue ratio is pretty good.
03:09So let's attack the overall brightness and contrast in the tone compression.
03:13We can do this with just a master histogram if we want, or we can do it with
03:17individual histograms.
03:18Either way will work.
03:20I'm going to be inclined to go take a look at the individual histograms.
03:23Red and Green and Blue.
03:26And what this tells when I look at these histograms is so much information here.
03:30See all this Red here in the histogram?
03:33Not nearly as much Green and even less Blue.
03:36Well, of course, we have all this Red in the histogram here.
03:38Why, because that matches up with the skin that we've got here.
03:41And just visually, this looks fairly Red to me, although it's hard because it's so dark.
03:46I'm going to go ahead and do a correction on the individual histograms.
03:49And I'm going to move this and we've got this long flat line area right here.
03:53And I know from experience that probably the first half of this is likely to be noise.
03:57So I'm going to move it halfway in here and then we'll look at the values
04:01that we're going to get.
04:02Shadow, no, we're not going to move that at all because we've already got a
04:05spike in the shadow there.
04:07Let's move to Green.
04:07I'm going to do the same thing about halfway through that data.
04:11We're going to assume this is mostly noise.
04:13We do have some shadow adjustment here.
04:15We've got a pretty sharp change from flat line to data, so we'll move that
04:19right up to the data.
04:20And Blue, we'll do the same thing as well.
04:22The reason why this works here, we don't have to worry too much about the
04:27highlights, is that we don't have any critical neutral diffuse highlights to
04:31worry about blowing out.
04:33If we just quickly refer back to this here and we look at our value, we are
04:36blowing it out to 255.
04:38But I'm not going to worry about it because I'm really much more concerned about
04:41what's happening here.
04:43We can fix something like that in Photoshop, we're just filling that in using
04:46the Stamp tool to get rid of that later on.
04:48So I'm really focused on the skin tones.
04:50All right, So I'm pretty confident that we've set our highlights and shadows
04:55where most of the data is in the image.
04:58Let's go back and take a look at our values again.
05:00Look at our Shadow value first.
05:0223, 15, 27, all right.
05:02Well, we don't want to go any darker than that, do we, because we've one at 15 here.
05:08So that's good, that's fine.
05:09We'd lightened that up.
05:11And let's look at skin tones.
05:1286 to 133 to 202, 87 that's almost 90.
05:1790 to 130, so that's 40 points there.
05:22And then we've got 30 to almost 200, so that's about 70 points there.
05:27That's more than double.
05:29So notice by the correction that we've done so far, this image does have a fair
05:33amount of Red in it.
05:34When we move those skin values into the midtones or at least get in there, to
05:38the midtones, the Red is very, very high, particularly on point number 3
05:42which is on her forehead.
05:43It is not quite as bad on point number 4.
05:44So I'm going to click OK.
05:46I'm going to be pretty happy with that as far as setting the upper and
05:51lower tonal ranges.
05:52And then I'm going to go to Curves and let's click on the Master Channel, and
05:57normally, I would work on the individual channels and work on the skin tone, but
06:02this time, I'm going to make an exception.
06:04Why, because this image was so dark, just moving the Reds from like the
06:09three quarter-tone into the midtone has already changed the RGB ratios
06:13pretty significantly.
06:14It's raised the Reds, and I'm thinking as we move this up, as we lighten the
06:18image, it's going to happen again.
06:20So to prevent us from having multiple rounds of back and forth, I'm going to go
06:23ahead and first do a master channel lightening of this image and then we'll take
06:27another look at the skin tone values and then make our skin tone adjustments.
06:31And this is a great image to demonstrate the difference between a linear and a
06:34logarithmic adjustment of the master curve.
06:37Let's start with the Linear and I'll just click here and drag this.
06:42And remember, you can do the same thing by just holding down your Command
06:44key and just dragging.
06:47But here I'll use the slider because I want to show you the difference in the curve shape.
06:51And that clearly lightens our image, no doubt about it. But watch this.
06:54When I go to Logarithmic, watch the shadow area.
06:57Do you see how the shadows lightens more with the Logarithmic curve?
07:02And that's what, that's the difference.
07:04Typically, scanner's response to grayscale is faster and better and more
07:08response from highlight to quarter to the midtone and it tends to be less from
07:13midtone down to shadow.
07:14So we make these Logarithmic Curve adjustments and it's a great tool.
07:18We get preferentially more lightning in the shadows and it's perfect for images
07:22like this where it's a low key image, where we need more lightening in the
07:25shadows and less in the midtone and even less in the highlight. Okay.
07:29So good!
07:29So let's go ahead and drag this over until we get an overall brightness that
07:33kind of suits us and let's revisit our sample points.
07:37Notice in sample point number 2, now that we've lightened it, we're up to 44, 31, 55.
07:42So we could darken that some more if we wanted to.
07:44It's at about a three-quarter tone now which is fine with me.
07:47And now let's look at the skin tones and see what we've got. Okay.
07:52Point number 3, 118, that's about 120 and 156, that's about 155.
07:57So that's about 25-30 points of movement there, and then from 156 up to 211,
08:04that's 45-55, about 60 points.
08:08So that's about double and we look here, 117 to 157, so that's going to be 40
08:14points of change, and 157 to 213, it's 50-60 points of change.
08:22So particularly, in point number 4, the Red values are a bit high on the Red values.
08:28And that means I'm going to go to my Red channel here and normally, I would just
08:32drag this down manually, but because we've already placed a Logarithmic curve
08:38using the Master Channel, I'm going to use the Logarithmic curve to lower the
08:41Red channel a little bit.
08:43And I'm just going to lower it at about 5 or 6 points.
08:46They tick out some of the real obvious Red color cast on her skin.
08:51So if we just make a real fine-tune adjustment, but when you've got that much
08:53Red in the image, it doesn't take an awful lot.
08:56And this is a creative adjustment at this point.
08:58When making it by the numbers, there's no real target value necessarily because
09:02the Red is greater than Green is greater than Blue and the separation of the Red
09:06is greater than separation of the Green and the Blue.
09:08So that's all good.
09:09But I see that the Red is a little bit higher than I would like it to be.
09:12Now even though this woman has definitely got red hair or auburn red hair, so
09:16she is likely to have a little bit redder skin, but I'm going to back it off
09:20just a little bit so it doesn't appear so red.
09:22So what we've done now is we've used both our histograms and then some
09:27specific RGB values.
09:29Without these specific values, we'd be just shooting in the dark in terms of how
09:33we should be adjusting this image.
09:35And sometimes I go back and forth, I'll come back to the Master Channel on this,
09:39I might lighten it just a little bit more, and then go back to the Red channel
09:43and I might bring the Red channel down just a little bit more because it kind of
09:46depends on, I might go back and forth a little bit till I get what I like.
09:49I'm constantly referring to my values here.
09:52I'm looking to point number 2 here, I'm just checking out the Shadow value once
09:55more and I'm going to leave that at a three quarter-tone.
09:57There's so much darkness back here.
09:59I don't want to make it any darker.
10:01I'm going to leave it a three quarter-tone.
10:03And as far as this little white area back here which is 255, I'm not going
10:08to worry about that either if my scanning software gives me the ability to edit that.
10:12And SilverFast actually does, we're not going to go there.
10:15But that can be taken care of in Photoshop.
10:17I can just use the Stamp tool and take that right out if I want to, if
10:20that's distracting. So there we go!
10:22I'm going to click OK.
10:23Am I going to sharpen this? Not on your life.
10:27One is this image is very soft to begin with and I don't want to lose that soft feel.
10:31This is a low-key soft image.
10:33If I'm going to apply any sharpening at all, I'm likely to apply it on a mask.
10:37Then I'm going to make in Photoshop the woman.
10:39I'm not going to be sharpening the background at all and it's going to be very, very slight.
10:43So no sharpening here, so None, 48 Bit -> 20 Bit, named it.
10:48Okay, we're going to keep it.
10:49Let's see at the same dimension, but why don't we scale this up centered to
10:53slide probably to let's take it at 500%.
10:56So it's about a 5x7, maybe take it up 550.
11:00And here's where you can use scaling percentage to help you determine if you
11:04don't want to use output.
11:05So if you know you want to print this at a 5x7, so take it up and take the
11:08scaling up until this moves up above the 5x7 that you see here.
11:12And then we'll do it at 300 pixels per inch for printing and then we'll hit the Scan button.
11:18And there we go!
11:18There is our finished image.
11:20And just to review, we used our histogram to help us evaluate, we used our
11:24Info tool, our Densitometer, and SilverFast speak to see that we have data
11:29back here so we knew we could some of it out, and then we used Logarithmic
11:32curves to help lighten the image.
11:34And then we used an individual Red channel curve to pull the Red down a little
11:37bit to just take some of that hot red out of the skin.
11:41We didn't apply any sharpening to keep it nice and soft.
11:43Again, I mentioned if this was distracting to you, we can take the Rubber Stamp
11:47tool and we can just take that puppy right out.
11:52And then we've gotten rid of that distracting white highlight afterwards
11:56in Photoshop.
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Post-scan touch-ups
00:00Even though this is not a Photoshop class and it's not really an image editing
00:03class, I would be remiss if I didn't cover just some basic touchups for touching
00:08up images in the post-scan.
00:09Throughout this course I've been harping on cleanliness is next to godliness and
00:13wear your lint free gloves and clean your images and clean your scanner to the
00:17point that is probably sickening to you.
00:19But the fact is it really is important.
00:21But the other real world fact is that, no matter what you do, unless you work
00:25in a really, really clean environment, you are likely to end up getting some
00:28dust in your images.
00:29Heck, even I forget sometimes to change my gloves enough, or I forget to clean
00:33the scanner one last time, or I am putting the image down and a piece of dust
00:37floats in, so you end up with.
00:38And here's that picture of Roberto that we scanned, and sure enough, we've got
00:43some dust and scratches here that need to be fixed.
00:45So I am just going to show you the quick and dirty ways to take these out, and
00:48it's really effective.
00:50First thing I want to encourage you to do however is make a duplicate layer and
00:53we're going to call it as Background- touchup, so that you don't injure the
00:58original image, and you can always go back to the background if you want to.
01:01And basically the tool that you are going to use here is a Spot Healing Brush.
01:04I am going to go ahead and close the Layers panel.
01:06we know which layer we are working on.
01:08And this works really, really well.
01:10And basically just take this tool and make it a little bit larger than the dings
01:13that you're working on.
01:14And this tool honors the current underlying tone, and in a lot of cases, like on
01:21this jacket, that underlying tone is what creates the fabric itself.
01:25So you don't end up ruining the fabric, unlike using the Rubber Stamp tool.
01:29So I typically don't use the Rubber Stamp tool, I'll use this tool here.
01:34And notice, the more dust there is, the more time it's going to take.
01:37So hopefully this makes the point about why we really do want to get as much
01:41dust off of our images as possible.
01:44And notice when you apply Sharpening, it just makes them worse, as we saw here,
01:49as we see in this image.
01:50So use that Spot Healing Brush tool, and it's very, very effective.
01:57And after you've done this a couple of times like this, then you'll more likely
02:01remember to clean your scanner and wear those lint free gloves.
02:04All right, So there's touching up.
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Scanning images for multiple uses
00:00In this exercise, I like to address the whole concept of multiple use of images,
00:04but first let's go ahead and get this image ready for scan and then we'll talk
00:08about using it on multiple devices.
00:10I would be remiss if in my own scanning course I didn't actually scan a picture of my GF.
00:15So here she is Tina in her Santa hat, very cute and when we evaluate this image
00:21obviously we've some nice diffused white highlight here, and it looks like we
00:25might have a little of a reflection right there.
00:28All right, this image is all about the skin tone, isn't it?
00:31I'm looking at this and just on screen it looks a little red to me.
00:35When I use my densitometer I look at it, it varies 125 to 139.
00:39That's about 10 and then boom, all the way up to 184.
00:42So red is greater than green is greater than blue, but it's a little bit too red.
00:46So we'll probably going to be doing some adjustment there, but let's go
00:49ahead and say highlights and shadows as we want to do, and Shift+Click on
00:53the highlight and ooh! What's that?
00:55Oh, look at that, there is a reflection of the tooth.
00:58Well, that's not very useful.
00:59First of all, teeth are not white, contrary to probably your opinion. So what we do?
01:03Well, let's get rid of that and then a little trick I showed you earlier.
01:07We can move the selection area up like that.
01:10I'm wondering about that right there though.
01:13We click again, yeah, sure enough.
01:15What I really want to do, I know that this is a white highlight, so I'm just
01:19going to keep moving this up or move it in until I can finally find the lightest
01:23portion of the Santa hat. There it is.
01:26All right, so I'm going to use that as my target diffused white highlight.
01:30We'll set that in the high 230s and then we'll do a skin tone.
01:34This is one of those images where you're going to be careful where you click,
01:37because notice this is well lit and this is not.
01:41And be sure you click on the well lit portion because you get different ratios
01:46when you are working in a cast shadow area versus a well lit area.
01:50If you ever have a choice unless it's just a real small part of the image,
01:54always choose the well lit area to basically do your measurement and adjustment
01:57for your skin tones.
01:58All right, then let's do the shadow, right down in there and let's see we're in
02:02the 30s so we've got some room to move there.
02:04The Highlight point number one, remember always do the diffuse highlight
02:07at point number one. 226, 225, 226.
02:08Wow! That's neutral.
02:11But it's a little low, so let's go in and make our adjustments and since they
02:17are somewhat the same, we'll just do a master histogram adjustment and take that
02:21right up to high 230s. 237, 236, 237.
02:25Is that good enough?
02:25Yes, a one-point move and the scale is only 4/10th of a percent, so not a big deal.
02:31And do we care about the neutrality of the shadow?
02:33No, so we'll just do a Master Histogram movement right here, and we'll
02:38bring that to the 220s.
02:39Let's say that we're going to print this on Prepress but I want to just get to
02:43the three quarter tone, so low 20s. There we go.
02:46All right, so improve the Brightness and Contrast and click OK, and let's look
02:51at these skin tone values.
02:53Now that we've done Highlights and Shadows, always do it in that order
02:56of course, 181-195.
02:59We're going to use point number two, remember that's the well-lit point.
03:02So that's about 15 and then we've got 30, so that's about a little over twice
03:07which is not too bad, but we could lower it a little bit.
03:09Let's take a look at this, 116-131.
03:13It's about 15, right, and then look at this huge jump.
03:16There is over 50 points of jump here.
03:18So when we look at the well lit it's pretty good but this area is super red in here.
03:23So when we compare these two, we kind of average them.
03:25I think we can take out a little bit of red from this image.
03:28So let's go to our Curve tool here.
03:31We're going to use the Linear one here and we are just going to lower this, just a little bit.
03:37And look at the difference just on screen.
03:38I mean the numbers lower as well, but just that little bit from there.
03:42See how hot it is to red, if we lower just about 10 points, now it's a much more
03:47natural looking skin tone.
03:48So five to ten points is all we need to move that, and then if we want to come
03:52in, if we want to do a little bit of brightening on the image we can do that.
03:56And since this is mostly midtone, I'm not going to preferentially lighten the
04:00shadow, in fact, I don't want to preferentially lighten the shadow, so we're
04:03going to use the normal.
04:05All right, we're going to take this up a little bit. There we go.
04:07Just do overall brighten.
04:08Do I want to increase contrast, not on your life, no, because remember this is
04:12all about the skin tone, we want that to be nice and smooth.
04:14If anything I would lower, the Contrast just a little bit.
04:18Although the contrast pretty good on this image, but I'll just, just tap it down a little bit.
04:22There we go and then click OK.
04:24This image is now ready to scan and what if we want to use this image
04:28in multiple places.
04:29Well, historically if you were to ask a professional scanner operator from the
04:3390s or 70s or 80s, when you say to them, oh I want to use image at four
04:37different sizes, guess what, they would tell, you need to scan it four different
04:40times and use the exact resolution that you need for each particular size.
04:44In fact, most of them would refuse to scan it and then downsample it, because
04:48they know that interpolation leads to lower quality of the image.
04:51But most of us don't live in that world of I need to use it four times or I'm
04:55going to scan it four times because why?
04:57Well, because it impedes too much on our time for kayaking, that's why.
05:01But what we can do is make some judgments and make some workflow choices that
05:07gives us the best quality images that we possibly can get without having to scan
05:11something four or five times.
05:12Although, I will tell you that if you've very, very, very high-quality work
05:16requirements like you're scanning artwork and you're trying to reproduce it in
05:19the very best quality, then absolutely do scan it four or five times.
05:22It may be worth it for the job and it may actually be worthwhile financially to
05:25do that if you've got someone paying you.
05:27But in the world of most of us live we can't afford to do that both
05:31time-wise and money-wise. So what we do?
05:32The rule is scan at the largest dimension and the highest resolution at which
05:36you're going to use that image.
05:38So typically the highest resolution is 300 pixels per inch and for some
05:42people, it's actually 400.
05:43If your Prepress Department, your printing committee says, we wanted to use 400
05:46pixels per inch, then use 400 pixels per inch, but the default is, is 300.
05:51If you're printing on your high-quality Inkjet device like an Epson or an HP 240
05:56pixels per inch is really a good resolution for you to shoot for.
05:59But let's say we're going to print this on inkjets and on Prepress, well we're
06:03going to go for 300 pixels/inch and we're going to print this at 5x7, 8x10 and
06:09you obviously going to have to be cropped, because this format of this image is in 5x7 format.
06:14And we're also going to use this webpages and a wide variety of things.
06:19So what we're going to do here is this is a 5x7 image but we know we need to get
06:23it larger and since it's a 5x7, even though we intend to print this in the 8x10
06:28size, I'm going to use the scaling figure here.
06:30It's 101.4 and we're going to double that, so we're going to go to 203, and look.
06:38That's going to take us up to 10x14 and then we'll have to crop it at 8x10.
06:41But that's fine, that's okay.
06:43Then what we can then do when we get into Photoshop is we can downsample this
06:47to exactly one-half the size to get to 5x7, which will incur very little damage to the image.
06:53We always want to work down rather than up.
06:55Sampling up creates far more problems than sampling down.
06:59Of course, we're going to want to come in here and rename this image, and I'm
07:03going to call this, Tina_RGB_300. There we go.
07:10And Q-Factor 2, times 150 gives us 300 pixels per inch on the final image.
07:15You hold down your Ctrl key it tells you it's going to actually scan it to 720
07:19Pixels per inch, because it's going to scale the image up to 10x14.
07:22All right, we're going to scan this image then and there we go.
07:29Okay, so now we're in Photoshop and assuming we're not going to do multiple
07:32scans, although honestly, if you know beforehand you're going to have multiple
07:35sizes, as you can see using this kind of software it's going to be pretty fast
07:39to do multiple scans.
07:40Go ahead and do it, but to me you can't do that, you've already got the
07:43image and you're going to send it to somebody else or you're going to make multiple copies.
07:48Fine, good enough.
07:49I want to just make one important point about interpolation.
07:52I'm going to use Photoshop's Interpolation to work on this.
07:55For those of you who do a lot of sampling up and sampling down there is a
07:58program that used to be called Genuine Fractal.
08:00It's now called Perfect Resize.
08:02It's from onOne Software.
08:04Its algorithms are much more sophisticated than Photoshop's.
08:07But I'm going to make the assumption that you don't have that.
08:09First, we're going to protect our original image and I should put this down.
08:13I forgot to name it, 10x14_300.
08:15All right, so, I'm going to treat that as our original image.
08:21Very good, and then we are going to take this one and go down to 5x7.
08:26So we'll call this a 5x7 image.
08:30And I'm just doing Image Duplicate.
08:33What you want to pay attention to is when you go to the Image Resize dialog box
08:38in Photoshop and you're going to click on Resample because we're going to take
08:41this down from basic the 10x14 and end up with 5x7.
08:47Constrain Proportions, it would be nice. There we go.
08:49And we put the 5x7 image at 300.
08:53Pay attention to this right down here.
08:55It's easy to ignore this.
08:57It's set on best for smooth gradients, but if you're going to be going for
09:00reduction, go Bicubic Sharper.
09:03And the reason for this is that the algorithm is slightly different and it tends
09:06to retain the focus or sharpness of the image.
09:09If you're moving up which I don't you to do at all, because I want you to scan
09:13to the largest dimension and highest resolution at which you're going to be
09:15using it, but use that Bicubic Sharper for best reduction.
09:19Then when you click OK Photoshop is going to do a darn good job of
09:22down-sampling, not the best job, not a perfect job.
09:24It's going to be a little bit softer.
09:26Not as good as Perfect Resize, but it's going to do a pretty darn good job.
09:30Now if we were to go down say to our web image, what you don't want to do is use this image.
09:35You've already downsampled that one, so you put that one aside.
09:38If you want to 4x5 or some other dimension, go back to your original image and
09:43then for instance, if we use the dialog box Save for Web & Devices and you were
09:49to choose something like JPEG for going out.
09:52I'm not going to go over all these dialog boxes.
09:54That's for someone else to do.
09:56But what I want to point out to is that same choices right down here
10:00underneath Quality.
10:01And talking about Quality you maybe thinking like it's JPEG quality.
10:04No, that's up here.
10:06High, Very High, Maximum.
10:07Generally I go High or Very High for this value, but choose your Bicubic
10:12Sharper, the same one we used in that Image Size dialog box, and then Photoshop
10:16will do a decent job of downsampling your image or a better job than just using
10:20the default that comes in Photoshop.
10:22So scan to the largest dimension, the highest resolution and then make copies
10:27your images to downsample them and then use the best quality for the direction
10:32that you're moving, which is Bicubic Sharper for sampling down.
10:34All right, so these are some tips for working in Photoshop, getting the best
10:39results for sampling your images down if you don't perform multiple scans.
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Automatic scanning
00:00Throughout this entire scanning course, I've really emphasized the use of manual
00:04adjustment tools working through SilverFast, and there are two reasons for this.
00:08the first one is, indeed when you adjust your image manually using the tools,
00:13you end up with more control.
00:14Secondly, when you're trying to learn how to actually use these tools, and
00:17what they do and how they work, using them manually is really the only way to learn them.
00:21Well, it's also true that SilverFast has some very powerful and fairly
00:24sophisticated automatic adjustment tools, and I've been using them from time to time.
00:29I use them judiciously when they help save me time and I know exactly what
00:33they're going to do.
00:34Let me show you what some of these tools are and make some recommendations about
00:37when you might want to use them.
00:39There is this tool here which is the basic, the fundamental Image Adjustment tool.
00:43It's an Automatic Image Adjustment tool that adjusts highlights and shadows and
00:47also optimizes the midtone based upon what it views in the image.
00:50I'm going to click on this and notice what happens to this picture of Zip.
00:54It adjusts highlights and shadows and increases contrast.
00:57As I mentioned earlier when we talked about scanning this picture of Zip, the
01:00automatic adjustment in my view increases the contrast too much.
01:03some images, it works very well.
01:04This image, it doesn't work so well, at least for my taste.
01:07What it does is, and watch this.
01:10Anytime you want to take out any adjustments working in SilverFast, anytime you
01:14see one of these little return arrows, that means redo, and just click it a
01:18couple of times and it'll undo whatever you've just done.
01:21So you see these are the two adjustment tools that we've used throughout the course.
01:25the Histogram and then the Curves, and we've used it in ways for master
01:29histograms, master curves, and individual channels, and histograms.
01:33When you click on this tool, it makes adjustments into levels and curves and
01:37when you go in and check and see, and let's undo this so we can see what it
01:40looks like to begin with.
01:43So this is what it looks like here, and this is what it looks like here.
01:47Nothing has been adjusted.
01:49When you click here and then you go in, you see the highlights and the shadows
01:53have been moved in, and there's a bit of an S-shape curve which is the reverse
01:59of what I would apply to this image as we've used earlier.
02:02But you can see what the adjustments are and it's actually interesting to see
02:05how the Automatic tool adjusted various images.
02:08You can go in, and check and see it's actually kind of a good learning tool.
02:11That's the fundamental tool.
02:13In a moment, I'm going to show you how you can control at least partially
02:17what that tool does.
02:18The second area of automatic adjustments and they are kind of semi-automatic
02:22adjustments is in the Frame set when we choose Image Type.
02:26There is a wide variety of presets in here.
02:28For instance, if we choose Skin tones, watch what happens to the image.
02:32You see how the image softens out and the contrast is reduced.
02:36Then that's actually closer to what I'd like to use in terms of scanning this image.
02:40When we go up into Curves, notice instead of the S-shape, it's the reverse S-shape.
02:45It's softening or reducing the contrast just as we've done on a number
02:49of different images.
02:50So you can actually learn a little bit about scanning techniques by applying
02:55these various adjustments and then going into Curves and Levels and actually
02:59see what's been done.
03:00And sometimes you can use these as starting points.
03:03So you may have a image that has a lot of skin tone in it, so you may click Auto
03:07Adjustment and then choose Skin tones and use that as a starting point, and then
03:11go into your Curves and Levels and tweak.
03:13This tool can be useful that way.
03:15There's also an integrated color correction tool here called Color Cast
03:21Removal and notice when I clicked on the Adjustment tool, it didn't
03:25automatically apply this.
03:27There is the way that you can get Color Cast Correction automatically applied.
03:31And what Color Cast Correction does basically is line up the highlights and line
03:34up the shadows as best as it can.
03:36You see how when I move this left or right, it's moving the highlights and
03:40shadows and then trying to line them all up, and that's what removes color
03:43cast, when all the data in the image and the histograms line up underneath each
03:47other, then there is no preference for one color over the other and the color cast is removed.
03:52So when you're working in this Histogram dialog box, you can just drag that
03:55over there and remove all of it, or part of it, or some of it, or none of it, whatever you like.
03:59So it's kind of an automatic Color Cast Removal tool that you have some control over.
04:04And then finally, there is this tool right here which is the Automatic
04:09Highlight, and Shadow, and Mid Pip tool and the pip stands for Pipette tool.
04:13When I click on the Highlight tool, and then come over here and then click on
04:18this Highlight point here, and remember this is of course the Fixed Pipette
04:22point number one and this is number two which is the shadow.
04:26Look at the values.
04:27230, 233, 233, and then when I click there, it automatically adjusts the
04:31highlight values in the image.
04:33Now, it's up in the high 240s.
04:35When I click on the Shadow, it will automatically adjust the shadow.
04:39All right, notice it goes down to 5, 5 and 6.
04:42I would consider these values a bit too high and a bit too low for most printing needs.
04:47Then there's a Midtone which when you click on that and then come over here and
04:51click on a Midtone area, it applies that to the Midtone area of the image.
04:56So those are automatic Highlight, Shadow, and Midtone adjustments.
05:00All of these automated tools with the exception of the Image Type which is kind
05:04of preset can be controlled through the General frame and going to Options, and
05:10then going to Auto tab here.
05:13Let's just tab through here and take a look at what some of these adjustments are.
05:16The Auto Threshold for Highlights and Shadows, this is not a percentage value.
05:21It's actually set up to look at the number of pixels that are in the highlight
05:24and shadows ends and you're determining how many pixels need to be recognized
05:28before the automatic adjustment will be applied.
05:31If you click on Levels, it will actually use the level values of highlights and
05:35shadows to determine when the automatic adjustment will be applied.
05:39You can check those on if you're for instance trying to remove solid backgrounds
05:43of black or white, but the default is set on 2.
05:47I recommend that you don't really adjust that until you become far more familiar
05:52with what you're actually adjusting there.
05:54But these next two, you can adjust, and I would recommend that you do.
05:57This is Highlight and Shadow Offset.
05:59This is set at 2% and 98%.
06:01That's why things were getting a little bit too light and a little bit too dark here.
06:05I would recommend that you put these closer to this. 5 and 95.
06:08When we set that on 5 and 95, and then click OK, and then we come back to
06:14this tool, and then we click here, remember we were up in the high 240s, we click there.
06:20Now, it registers at 242, 243, 242 which is a 5% white highlight.
06:25When I click here, instead of being in 6 and 5s, it will register at 12 and 13.
06:31So now we have a 5 and a 95% highlight which I consider to be really a better
06:35choice in terms of highlights and shadow values for printing.
06:39All right, so that's Highlight and Shadow Offset.
06:42See this Color Cast Removal.
06:44Remember, when we used the automatic tool here, and then we looked in here,
06:49there was no color cast removal. It was set on 0.
06:51Well, watch this.
06:52if we click on Option, and then put the color cast on 100, and click on Active,
06:57and Apply, and OK, and then when we click this, and we go back in here, notice
07:03now the Color Cast Removal has been applied at 100%.
07:05So you can get automatic color cast removal and you can control that through
07:10your automatic options or preferences.
07:14You just put the percentage that you want correction and then click on Active.
07:18These next two, the Auto Frame Inset and then the Find Frame-- If you're using