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The perfect combination by Eddie Ephraums, from Ag26 |
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Again, for the purposes of this article, knowing the resolution that the Ag is printed at, I chose a scanning resolution of double that figure. (Note: this is standard practice for reprographic work.) So, in the Resolution and Size option of the Agfa scanner’s Fotolook software I selected 300ppi as my setting and chose an appropriate image size, depending on how big I anticipated the pictures might be used in the magazine. As the screen shots show, in Fotolook (like most scanning software) there is the option to control the scanning density range: one can go for either Automatic or Manual. I have tried both and found that with Fotolook the Automatic mode works extremely well without compromising image quality. However, I would suggest you check your own software to see if any usable shadow detail might be lost in Automatic mode. The first scans I made were of some XP2 negatives, developed at my local Snappy Snaps lab. The second set was of Delta 3200 film developed at home in Hutchins' pyro developer, which comes as an easy-to-use two-part concentrate. Viewing the XP2 negatives in Channels, it immediately became clear that the red channel gave the best quality image with the least need for manipulation in Levels to get the required contrast. On the other hand, viewed in the green channel the image showed the least contrast and required the greatest changes in Levels. This noticeably increased granularity to the detriment of the final image. The blue channel gave a contrasty image, but also one that appeared to have more granularity. With these XP2 tests complete, I set to work on my pyro negatives. One of the first things I did was to sharpen the scans using the Unsharp mask - but slightly altering my normal settings of 75 and 1.0 to 100 and 1.0. I reckoned that this would enable me to see more clearly any potential differences between the image as they were viewed in each channel. As it happens, it wasn’t necessary. The differences were clearly visible. Next Page >> |
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• Using the Automatic density setting in Fotolook gives a promising looking image. This pyro-developed Delta 3200 negative has a strong, stained image colour that should respond well to treatment using the Colour channels tool in Photoshop. © Eddie Ephraums Page 3 0f 4 |
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