[filmscanners] RE: Tips needed on difficult scan

["michael shaffer" <rarewolf@roadrunner.nf.net>]

Ken Durling writes ...

> ...
> I have a slide that I've been spending hours trying to yield what I
> can see through the loupe on the light table, but it's evading me.
> It's a very high contrast sunset shot taken on Velvia, with one side
> very dark under dense clouds, and the opposite side has brilliant -
> one might say "blown out" - area of sunlight.  Along the bottom of the
> photo is a lot of city detail, ... and I'd like to retrieve it.
>
> My main problem has been trying to bring out all the detail in the
> city - which is in the relatively dark area of the photo.
> Secondarily, the finding a contrast range that doesn't blow out the
> sunlit areas too severely, while not darkeneing the shadows too much.
> ...

  This sort of image demands working selectively and with Photoshop's
highbit (16bit) tools.  That is ... scan your image into a low contrast
(full histogram) 16bit TIF ... when opened with PS, create a duplicate and
convert the dup to 8bits.  The 8bit image will allow you to create a variety
of selections (e.g., the city foreground), which cannot be created with the
highbit image, but can be loaded into the highbit image (PS|selection|load).
With these selections loaded, you should be able to create precisely the
preferred contrast and brightness (or gamma) for the regions you are having
difficulty with ('levels' or 'curves').

hth & cheerios ... shAf  :o)
Avalon Peninsula, Newfoundland

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