Linoscan or Other Scanner Question

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I recently purchased a Linoscan 1400 scanner from B&H. I have had tremendous problems in getting it to work and have spent many hours on the telephone with Linoscan tech support. Last night I removed the SCSI card terminator at the suggestion of the tech support person at Linoscan, which the owner's manual says must be used or else the card and scanner may be damaged, and that allowed me to seeming make a final scan. However, after the scan is completed the image in the scanner window is very pale, not saturated like it is in the overview and pre-scan stages. Can someone with more experience than I have, which is almost anyone on this list who uses a scanner, tell me whether this is normal or whether the image after the scan is completed should look like the image that you want to work with in Photoshop. Or, if it is supposed to look like that as I suspect it is, does anyone have any ideas as to what I might do to correct it? As an aside, I've been very disappointed with both the seller of this product (B&H) and Heidelberg/Linoscan. Both have given me a very hard time about returning it and at this point neither will take it back though I haven't yet put my lawyer hat on and yelled, screamed, etc.

-- Brian Ellis (bellis60@earthlink.net), February 05, 2002

Answers

I am a little confused about "the image in the scanner window is very pale, not saturated like it is in the overview and pre-scan stages." How does it look in Photoshop? My software presents no image of the final scan other than what it dumps into PS.

Did you scan a positive or a negative? A good positive will, when opened in Photoshop, look very good or at least as good before any manipulation. A negative, even if you picked the best profile for that film may not so look so hot before manipulation.

If you did not profile the scanner first, (presumably it came with some way to do that, targets and software, etc.) then all bets are off. But I imagine the tech support people brought that up.

Somewhere among the Leban (sp?) lists is a Scanners' List. Also you might try the PS forum run by Adobe. Don't give up. It's a wonderful area of photography.

-- John Hennessy (northbayassociates@earthlink.net), February 06, 2002.


Hi Brian, I have the same kind of scanner and i am able to use it with the scci card/adapter. Let me ask you some few questions in the hope that I will be able to offer some solutions. with the preview, make sure you select whether you are scanning transparency (negative) or original(photo) Note, if you it is black and white, you have to open the green selector buttons to click on negative and then gray. For colored negatives, it is self explanatory. The next stage is prescan final stage is the scan At times the image may appear gray or soft. You can do the final coorection in photoshop. If you still need more help, you can contact me off the list using my e-mail address. Mo

-- mo kenny (mokenny74@hotmail.com), February 06, 2002.

Brian,

I have the Linoscan Sapir Ultra 2, which is essentially the same scanner that you have. I am running my scanner with Win98 SE. Are you running a PC or Mac? If you're running a PC, I'd check a couple of things. 1. Conflicts due to shared interupts - most PCI slots have shared IRQ's. Look into your system information to see who all is sharing the IRQ. Perhaps moving it to another slot will help. By the way, I assume that you are using the recommended SCSI ID setting of 5. 2. Proper seating of the SCSI board - it's worth pulling the SCSI card and re-seating it. 3. Does your system recognize the scanner (look at the device manager)? 4. Are you using the Linoscan driver or the MS driver? I use the Linsoscan driver. 5. I presume that you allow the scanner to come up fully before turning on your PC or Mac. Are all three green lights on when you power up your system? If not, it would suggest a scanner problem.

Most of these things are pretty obvious and I suspect that the Linoscan tech support people and you ahve addressed them, but they are a starting point.

I have been very happy with the scanner and both Newcolor 4000 and the later version Newcolor 5000. My only complaint with the latter is that it does not support generating 14 bit scan files. The scans are performed at 14 bits/channel, but only 8 bits/channel are made available to the user. I have also been quite happy with the technical support.

You can contact me off-line if you have detailed questions.

Bruce

-- Bruce M. Herman (bherman@gci.net), February 07, 2002.


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