Category: Computing

 

Setting a new machine for Mac OS X users has always been relatively simple and iCloud continues to improve the experience, the latest version of Windows I hear have also caught up in this respect.

At the weekend I was checking my Lightroom settings and made sure that all my presets and profiles were correct.

The Lightroom presets are quite easy, there is an option to keep them with your catalogue, so you will get a setup for each catalogue or the default which puts them in your ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom.

 

It was just a matter of copying over the folders I needed.

Checking out the printer module in Lightroom, while my presets were there, of course my printer profiles were missing.

Now profiles live in /Library/ColorSync/Profiles

 

 

I tend to create a folder under here called Papers and I move all my printer paper profiles in to that.  Some companies you just download the icc file and drop it where you want, other like Epson install it (Epson when are you going to sign your installer!).  The Epson installer creates a folder called EPSON Stylus Pro 3880 and places it directly under the Profiles folder which I move to the Papers folder.

So thats my Lightroom all setup on my new machine, with scanner, printer and monitor all profiled and setup correctly.

For the last few years digital sensor improvements have been slow but steady.  Its hard to find a bad camera today.

The latest buzzwords are Back Side Illumination and Stacked Sensors.  The Nikon V1 was one of the first cameras to use the new BSI sensors, but what does this mean.

In a typical sensor you have the sensor pits, but the available surface area has also to be shared with the supporting electronics, reducing the area for light collection.  In full frame sensors and medium format the area lost is inconsequential but as the sensor gets smaller the percentage area lost increases.  BSI and Stacked sensors, basically moves more of the supporting electronics underneath allowing more available area for light collection.

There are three pieces of advice I can give you for scanning.

• Scan Once
• Cleanliness
• Treat as a RAW file

So what do I mean by this.

Well scanning is time consuming so do the proceedure once at the highest native resolution of your scanner.

Clean your scanner plate with a soft cleaning cloth then clean your slides/film. Once mounted in the frame clean again. Don’t be surprised that after the scan you made need to clean again and rescan.

Maximise the quality of the scan. Your not after something that looks fantastic that’s your usual editing softwares job. You are after a flat low contrast file which you can work with in a flexible way.

As you can see from the histogram this image is finishing at 232 not 255 so adjust the sliders to maximise the scan over the images histogram range.  I also give the mid tones a slight boost and also turn off sharpening and noise reduction.  Our third party tools offer far better quality and options then what comes with the scanner software.

I quickly flick through all my images in the slide/film holder setting the histogram appropriate for each image.

I then select batch scan; I scan to a folder which I set as a watch folder in Adobe Lightroom, once each image is scanned it gets auto imported into Lightroom with my default copyright and develop settings preset I have created for this.

 

One of the things I was pleased to see about my new scanner was that it included a copy of Silverfast Scanning software.

As usual I downloaded and installed the Epson drivers then downloaded the Silverfast software and installed it.  It was at this point I hit a problem.

When I entered the license key it would not accept it.  You had to have installed from the CD.  So what if you have a very modern computer.  My Mac is seven years old and has a CD drive, but my wife has a modern Mac with no drive.  My work laptop is a new Lenovo machine which like a lot of current machines also has no CD drive.

Well Epson did include a note with a URL to go to if you have a machine with no CD drive, unfortunately the URL did not work.  After a little digging I found that if I registered the serial code listed on the CD of the Silverfast software I could then request a CD less upgrade code.  This I did which then meant I could register the software and start using it.

In this day and age where people are moving away from physical media they really need to make this easier.

Over the last few year computer and computer accessory companies have been getting better. Clearer instructions and simpler more straight forward software. 

Epson printers have for many years been excellent products but with poor instructions. Of late and certainly with my Epson 3880 they were much better but it seems the scanner department still have some way to come. 

Lots of bits of paper but no real single simple setup guide. 

I was very pleased to see as well as the Epson software a copy of Silverfast and iOne profile targets. 

As is usual for me I ignored CD’s and downloaded the latest versions from the web. This led to other issues which I’ll detail later in the week.