As a photographer and editor for Shutterbug Magazine David Brooks works with SilverFast for many years. He appreciates SilverFast software for scanning, but also for image postprocessing of scanned images and especially of his digital camera shots. In this article he illustrates the differences between SilverFast HDR and conventional image editing software.
While a traditional image editing program applies every single processing step like tone, contrast and color balance adjustment immediately to the whole image, with SilverFast HDR any optimization just effects a virtual preview image. With this time-saving method all the processing is done at the end of the image optimization. The user benefits from this procedure especially when editing very large image files, like raw data scans.
David Brooks: “The unusual beauty of this Archive Suite is its very efficient “batch” scan capability that includes the infrared iSRD data in a 64bit raw scanner file.
Then when processed to a color corrected, adjusted final image with HDR the iSRD cleaning can be applied as part of the process to a finished image file.
This Archive Suite method is thus complete including cleaning and is very time efficient, particularly compared to doing raw file color correction and adjustment processing with a traditional image editor.”
On the following 10 pages David Brooks describes his own HDR workflow step by step. The article, written as a guide gives a good impression of the performance of SilverFast HDR and could be a useful help for beginners.
You can download the entire article as a PDF file here.
Just the ticket to encourage me to explore this capability more! And thanks for including the link to the pdf- very thoughtful. Saves a lot of cutting and pasting to save it for reference.
Although I’ve been a Silverfast user since 2000, and have used both HDR and AI, I recently acquired a new scanner and upgraded to the Archive suite. This article and the PDF has helped clarify some things. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Thanks,
your article on silverfast hdr is so helpful to a novice like me. purchasing a plustek 7600i scanner i have begun the scanning process with silverfast se . doesn’t appear to ship with the hrd. do i need to upgrade to ai version to get hrd ?
thanks for answer and any suggestions you can offer using scanner and software.
bill murphy
Hi Bill Murphy,
the HDR mentioned in this article is not a feature of SilverFast scanner software, but a separate imaging software called “SilverFast HDR”.
For the best usage with your scanner I propose an update to the SilverFast Archive Suite. It contains the top version of SilverFast Ai scanner software and the SilverFast HDR software. There’s also a light version the SilverFast Archive Suite SE that may also suits your needs.
Regards
Christian