Art Scan Affair

In the lab two scanners sit.  The deep dark and hauntingly powerful Nikon LS-4000 slide scanner.  Oh yes her moniker may not woo you but her powers draw you in like an enchanted mirror.  Chat rooms speak knowingly of her sensuous D-Max but warn of the need for gentle mouse work, eep.  Her nemesis and kin in our lab, the Epson Flatbed, V700.  A dual lensed spitfire waiting to take her best shot at anything we throw her way.  "Send me your large format sheets of acetate,  your great aunt's immigration photos waiting to be set free,  I'll take your chromes and deliver them tonal values made outta the right stuff".  I love them both and yes I do feel a little bit dirty.

Mary Ottaway, a member of The Center for Photography from which I write, needed guidance as she wished to enter the dance of replication with my two scanners.   Mary brought forth delicate water colors that sit in your hand as moments of perfection occasionally experienced here in the Catskill Mountains.  Mary had postcards made for her before but now she wanted to gain more control over how the colors of her creations would be captured.  The Epson purred with content knowing that she was chosen ahead of the Nikon.  I preen my Epson with home made profiles created just for her with my Xrite i1 profiling system.  I polish her glass with cleaning cloths made from albino yak fur collected by hand on the southwest slopes of the Himalaya.  "My Venus, you are beautiful, no lint and no streaks shall defile your glass", I whisper to my V700.  I sense Mary is slightly uncomfortable with my ritual, we shall scan.

Mary's watercolors are painted on what seems to be a very toothy paper.   They range in size from 5"X7" to 9"x12".  She doesn't want resize them up or down so we leave the physical size settings alone and set resolution at 300ppi.  When scanning art I don't find I get anymore detail/digital information, using a higher resolution.  If I am scanning slides or negatives I will use settings like 4000ppi.  I know there are those of you out there who like scanning at higher resolutions, like so many Americans we are drawn to bigger is better. Do it, I say, if your hard drive has the space, we all have skeletons in our closets.

While I have profiled my d-max divas, whenever I capture art I like to use a gray card or a color chart.  I scan or shoot the card next to the image I am capturing. Whether with a camera or a scanner, a color chart gives me neutral tonal values.

Uncorrected

Corrected

Later on in Photoshop I will take white and black point readings from the card in a curves adjustment layer. Since the colors on the card are neutral,(without color casts), I can have Photoshop correct the color shift by sampling on the swatches.  By making the swatches shift back to neutral from whatever shift has occurred in the scanning PS makes everything in the picture realign to neutral.  We do not like to mention the apparent shift in front of the scanners as they become quite surly when you question their color veracity.  Love is color blind.
Looking at her lilliputian landscapes it was apparent that the eager Epson was feeling a bit blue.  Much of the subtle colors in the sky seemed lost in a wash of blue. To look at the painting by itself it seems lovely.  You can feel the icy blue sky.  When comparing it to the original the blue shift was quite apparent.  The correction was easily handled by Photoshop's own algorithms. Of course I could jump in antime and tweak the auto correction as I want. I would be gentle and not hurt my Venus' pride.

Obviously one's relationship with a scanner is a deeply personal connection.  You must learn to understand it's intoxicating gyrations.  Oh you might say I am a man bewitched, brought to heel at the whim of a fickle mistress, a fawning follower of sirens.  If indeed you say this than you have thought it and if you have thought it, then you and  I are not so different after all.  For me, I dance the dance of replication.

If you're in town, come on down.