Have scans of color slides from Nikon Super Coolscan 9000 .. how best to proceed?

[Git]

I had hoped that there would be a forum for newbies in digital editing. I have a lot of questions but on a very low level. SORRY!

I have had a large amount of slides scanned by a professional. They are 4000 dpi but seems to be only 8bit (bitdybde 24 and not 48) and size appr. 55 MB. Also they seem to be in sRGB. I am not sure how best to treat them. Up till now I had my Camera Raw preferences set to Prophoto and 16 bit (all my own digital files are Nef 16 bit and I have understood that I could bring them into the Prophoto color space in ACR in my PS CS5 without already then harming them).

1. Should I continue in the sRGB color space or can I let them be taken into Camera Raw in the Prophoto color space?

2. Until I realized that they were only 8 bit I continued to take them into ACR as 16 bit. Should I change that also?

I realized that future scans should be 16 bits. I also thougth that they should be nefs but I have since then learned that the scanner nef is not a real nef (i.e. = the camera nef). I plan to ask for only digital ice and not much else in the scanning process even if I have to admit that the color of my 50 years old Kodachrome slides have come out surprisingly good with the corrections done in the scanner. So I guess that I should continue having them scanned as tiffs?

I simply want to start out with the best possible originals to go back to when my editing skills improves.

I have NeatImage and Noise Ninja as plugins in my CS5. I am uncertain as to wether to use the sharpening and noise reduction in the ACR or wether to instead do the noise reductions with one of these plugins in PS followed by sharpening (and then not do any capture sharpening in ACR).

Finally: I have enjoyed - and already learned a lot from the forums and the tutorials. Thank you.
Git

[Mike Buckley]

1. Should I continue in the sRGB color space or can I let them be taken into Camera Raw in the Prophoto color space?

You can use Prophoto but it won't help. That's because the original image is a narrower color space, which is the limitation that will always be present. You can go from wide to narrow but not from narrow to wide.

2. Until I realized that they were only 8 bit I continued to take them into ACR as 16 bit. Should I change that also?

I'm not sure, but I think the same reasoning applies as above. Once you are limited by the 8-bit file, I think opening it as a 16-bit serves no purpose.

I plan to ask for only digital ice and not much else in the scanning process

That's what I did. I explicitly instructed the staff not to do any sharpening or correcting. I do recommend instructing them to crop to eliminate the slide mount, but only because that saves you the step of doing so.

Sorry that I don't know anything about using ACR or CS5, so I'll pass on responding to those issues.

[Git]

You can use Prophoto but it won't help. That's because the original image is a narrower color space, which is the limitation that will always be present. You can go from wide to narrow but not from narrow to wide.



I'm not sure, but I think the same reasoning applies as above. Once you are limited by the 8-bit file, I think opening it as a 16-bit serves no purpose.



That's what I did. I explicitly instructed the staff not to do any sharpening or correcting. I do recommend instructing them to crop to eliminate the slide mount, but only because that saves you the step of doing so.

Sorry that I don't know anything about using ACR or CS5, so I'll pass on responding to those issues.

[Git]

Thank you for your reply! At leat I know how not to have the remaining slides scanned now. I had hoped that I would not have to remember to change my ACR preferences when working with the scans of the slides. I.e. use ProPhot0 as I usually do. As for the bits, I am not quite sure yet. I have all my other files as 16 bits but the slide scans unfortunately are only 8 bits (next time I shall ask for 16 bitts). Here I should probably also only work with the bits they are "born" with but what makes me not so sure is that I have read somewhere _ I think in another Forum - that converting the files to 16 bits for the photoshop editing would make them less susceptible to damage during the editing (posteriorization etc). Maybe that is just nonsense and only shows that I know too little. Thank you for taking time to help me.
Git

[Ady]

I plan to ask for only digital ice and not much else in the scanning process even if I have to admit that the color of my 50 years old Kodachrome slides have come out surprisingly good with the corrections done in the scanner.

If you have any more Kodachrome transparencies to scan I would have the scanning company continue do the colour correction.

The colour cast of Kodachrome can be tricky to eliminate without skewing the overall colour and it can be particularly tricky to balance the blues and greens. This is why folks who do scanning on a commercial basis will invest in original manufacturer IT8 calibration targets (or high quality IT8 targets such as those from SilverFast) to ensure accurate colour reproduction straight off the scanner.

For this reason I would hope they would strongly recommend that they continue to do the colour correction on any further slides you have, especially Kodachrome.

Cheers,
Adrian

[Simon Garrett]

Just to add to what Mike said: I agree about not converting to ProPhoto. You can't add colours that aren't there. However, might be worth editing in 16-bit. As with converting to a wider colour space, you can't add information that isn't there. But 16-bit arithmetic operations involve less rounding error, so editing results may in some cases be better.

[Git]

If you have any more Kodachrome transparencies to scan I would have the scanning company continue do the colour correction.

The colour cast of Kodachrome can be tricky to eliminate without skewing the overall colour and it can be particularly tricky to balance the blues and greens. This is why folks who do scanning on a commercial basis will invest in original manufacturer IT8 calibration targets (or high quality IT8 targets such as those from SilverFast) to ensure accurate colour reproduction straight off the scanner.

For this reason I would hope they would strongly recommend that they continue to do the colour correction on any further slides you have, especially Kodachrome.

Cheers,
Adrian

Thank you very much for your reply. I shall follow your advice. The color correction done by the scanning lab certainly also was very good. I shall have the lab scan the rest of my slides but I am planning to do the scanning of color negatives, color and b&w prints (not many negatives left) myself on my Epson Perfection 750 M Pro myself. I have bougth a Kodachrome IT8 target from Silverfast (thougth i better do that before they were sold out) and also have the best version of the Silverfast Software. But it is a lot to learn for a 71 years old grandmother! Therefore all advice is very much appreciated.
Thanks, Git

[Git]

Thank you for taking time to help me. This solves the problem for me!
Git