SilverFast Blog

There is a very interesting quite technical article from Paul Butzi on whether the software matters when trying to get the maximum quality out of a scanner.

Rather to my amazement, it turns out what scanner software you use makes a difference, and the manufacturer’s software in this case is the clear loser.

He performed a series of tests in regards to resolution and density performance as well as color fringing and tonal clipping.

It turns out that I’ve been doing most of my scans with the Microtek software, thinking that surely the manufacturer’s software would be tweaked out and get best performance from the scanner hardware. Beyond that, when I first started scanning my 4×5 film, I wasn’t very experienced, and honestly, I just didn’t see the difference between the results from the two different pieces of software.

But these simple tests, taking far less than a day, I think I’ve pretty conclusively demonstrated that there’s a difference – a BIG difference. Silverfast extracts more resolution from the negative, primarily because when you tell it not to sharpen the scan, it doesn’t. In contrast, the Microtek software sharpens the scan heavily, even when told not to, and in the process it throws away resolution that I care about. The resolution winner is clearly Silverfast.

Paul seems to know what he´s doing since he also shows some fantastic photography in his galleries.