I've been scanning a ton of old color negs and am trying to improve my workflow with my Nikon Super Coolscan 5000ED. The settings I'm currently using are:
ICE = Normal (my negs are not that dirty or badly scratched so I see no difference between Normal and Fine). This works excellent.
GEM = 3 Depending on the condition of the negative this still can leave a fair amount of graininess, but I apply a bit of Noiseware (if required) in CS3 to clean it up the rest of the way. This method works, but applying GEM adds to scan times.
ROC = 0 or 5 It seems to me that ROC either gets it right or makes things worse and adds a color cast.
DEE = 0 To me it just messes things up most of the time and I can just as easily correct for shadows and highlights in CS3.
4X Multisampling I haven't been able to see much difference above 4X, so to go higher just increases scan times IMO.
For snapshots I scan at 4000 dpi in 8 bit mode, mainly because the large images take way too long to open and edit in PS, not because of the much larger disk storage. If the image needs a lot of recovery, or if it's more than a snapshot I use 16 bit.
The biggest annoyance I'm having is that ROC often misses the boat. Because of this I have to do preview scans with it set, check each image, then turn it off for the images it messed up ... then scan. This takes forever. I'd also like to speed things up or I'm going to be in my grave long before I complete this project.
Some questions I have are:
1. Does anyone see a flaw in my settings or approach that I've described above?
2. Is there any advantage to using Digital GEM over doing all of the work with Noiseware? If Neat Image is just as good I can turn GEM off, saving scan time.
3. Does anyone have some guidelines for the settings to use with Digital ROC?
4. Does anyone have experience with the Digital ROC plugin for Photoshop? If it works just as well I could probably speed up the workflow by turning it off in my scanning software.
