I have been fighting with my Dimage Scan Speed ever since I ordered it last year. I am tired of the dark scans, and having to manually adjust them with Photoshop 5.5. My manual adjustments are less than satisfactory. Minolta tech support doesn't seem to be interested.

In a photographic sense I would say that the scanner is 3-4 "stops" underexposed. I can't find new drivers (ala 1.1) but I can't tame this beast anymore. My previous experience was with a Nikon LS-20, but it wouldn't focus properly, even after I sent it back for repair.

What should be my next step? Polaroid SprintScan? Money is not a factor...

-- MikeB (airlinestuff@yahoo.com), May 07, 2000

Answers

Mike, I'm not familiar with the Minolta scanner, but I would also post this in the Adobe user-to-user forums.Even with mediocre scans you should be able to bring out at least most of the image information with Photoshop. I use two Kodak 3570 film scanners for 35mm to 70mm and a couple of Linocolor Saphirs for 4x5 and 8x10 film scans and occasionally have to do extensive work in photoshop, but many of the negatives I scan are 50 to 60 years old. Try out Adobe http://www.adobe.com after entering this site go to "support" and about 2/3 of the way down you will see the Photoshop forums. You will have to register in order to log in, but I have learned just a tremendous amount there and I spend several hours a week (sometimes a day) browsing the posts, and I do recall seeing several about the Dimage, but I don't recall seeing very much negative feedback. Hope this may help some.

Fred

-- fred (fdeaton@hiwaay.net), May 07, 2000.

Interesting. Almost every scan I have gotten from a slide has been dark. I have had scans made from a nikon ls2000, ls1000. photosmart scanner. i now use the same scanner as you. What settings are you using? If you are using 16 bit linear space, your slides will Be darker especially if you are using a gamma space of 2.2 or larger. I for one expect to adjust my images in photoshop because in my opinion it does a better job of image correction than the scan software. This is what I do. I have my monitor calibrated at gamma 1.25, I am working in adobe color space, and import my scans using either 16 bit linear mode if I am using minolta's scan software, or I use viewscan with a multiscan setting of 8, 48 bit tiff, files and a flim setting of none or e-6 slide with no color adjustment. However, I do expect to do all my corrections in photoshop so it is not a problem for me as the control is much better.

-- Jonathan Ratzlaff (jonathanr@clrtech.bc.ca), May 07, 2000.

Thanks guys! Now I know I'm not alone. I've got an Acer Scanwit 2720s scanner, and this gives very dark images from slides too. I thought it was just a quirk of Acer's Twain interface, but I feel a lot better knowing that your far more expensive scanners have the same problem.

The Acer driver has a "curves" tool built in, and adjusting the gamma curve to a fairly vicious hump corrects the problem. The settings can be saved and re-loaded, or just left as default, so it's not really a problem once a good setting has been found. I can do the same thing in Photoshop on 36bit scans, and the end result is the same. Photoshop will save a curves profile for re-use as well, but making the adjustment in the scanner driver is a lot quicker. Surely Minolta has a curves facility in their driver?

I think a lot of the problem rests with the fact that a digital image represents brightness linearly, whereas most conventional photographic processes have a logarithmic response. A change of pixel value from 1 to 2, or 2 to 4 represents a doubling of brightness, but it's almost impossible to see these changes on a monitor, even when it's viewed in total darkness. Steepening the gamma curve in the shadow region and flattening it off in the highlights makes the monitor image far more visually acceptable. I've found that printed output shows more shadow detail than even a correctly adjusted monitor though, so your on-screen image may look slightly dark, even though the printed result is fine.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), May 08, 2000.

If my Minolta Scan Speed was a bit heavier, I'd use it as a boat anchor. I saw the beautiful scans here on this site, but the garbage I get is so bad I thought the scanner was defective, so I sent it to Minolta for servicing. They said it was fine, and that the dark reddish tinge I see is "normal." Also, in all versions of Windows 9x, the Device Manager shows the scanner as improperly configured. Minolta says that's normal too.

FWIW, the setup procedure replaces your latests twain drivers with a set that is several years old. I've tried both sets, and the result is the same -- wretched.

-- John Woram (jworam@msn.com), May 08, 2000.