Scanning woes.

[PerthZ28]

I am not having much success having 35mm film scanned so that I can work on the images in PS. I have had a couple of batches scanned in 2 different labs with pretty poor results. The images are very noisey and unsharp. I have had transparencies and colour neg film scanned with about the same poor quality, the neg scans being slightly worse. Frankly, I get better images from the 640x480 VGA images my digital camcorder produces. The transparencies are mainly pro 35mm film and I have printed them conventionally with beautifully sharp, clear results. They will project onto a 1.5 metre screen and look awesome. When scanned however, they look terrible. Additionally, the negs I had scanned came back with the images in both high resolution TIFF format [what I requested] and lower res JPEG files. Although the TIFFs are 18meg and the JPEGs are 3meg each, at 1600x magnification in PS the images are identical pixel for pixel. What am I doing wrong? What I am seeing on the screen is being faithfully reproduced on my printer, so I need the fix this at the source of the problem before I can get anywhere. Is this as good as it gets or do I need to use another format or technique? Perhaps it's just rubbish work from the lab??

[Sheri]

I really can't tell you what's what with your pictures, if they're noisy it could be from dusty, dirty materials or equipment used in the scanning process. But if they just look dull or unsharp, the problem is probably a need for good post processing. Try "One Step Photo Fix" in Paint Shop Pro 8. There could also be a problem with the resolution being used for printing, if the purpose is for printing. I haven't done any printing of my scanned slides. I've heard that a program called "Genuine Fractals" is useful for resizing and adjusting dpi for printing at desired sizes. Color management from scanner to screen to printer is another issue that would affect the output, but I can't advise you there.

Regards,
Sheri