Coolscan settings

Finally, I'm getting scans, especially, black and whites, that are meeting my expectations. How? You ask. First, under prefs/color management I set it to use my calibrated monitor icc profile. Second I'm scanning everything including b&w negs as color with all settings except Ice checked (when doing b&w negs though it works with chromogenics). Works fine! Here's an old Tri-X neg scanned with the above settings ...

 

Thanks Ned! But don't forget that I always pulled film in bright light. This was shot at ASA 200 and underdeveloped 15-20%! Gotta maintain some shadow detail and keep those highlights under control. :biggrin:

 

Here's a slide done after using the monitor profile in color management. I purposefully used a slide with a high contrast and tricky lighting.

 

Yeah Chris, I'm going to keep at this until I can get predictable, consistent results. I've even been thinking about trying out trial versions of Vuescan and Silverfast. Until I started using the monitor profile all my b&w stuff was coming out flat and needed too much processing in Photoshop. Not anymore, just a few small tweeks in levels and curves needed now.

 

Yes, Gavin, I'm converting to greyscale in Photoshop! I'm scanning in as a 16 bit color neg. If you have a calibrated monitor I think that you should use its icc profile in color management as this makes a huge improvement in the accuracy of the scans.

 

Another thing you can do is use the grey eyedropper in curves to get your greyscale and then convert to greyscale,