[Leica] OT: HELP Nikon scanner neophyte

[tgray at 125px.com (Tim Gray)]

On Apr 29, 2010 at 04:45 PM -0400, Tina Manley wrote:
> I want to get every bit of the information available in the negative when I
> scan it.  Silverfast gives you an HDR raw file so you only have to scan
> everything once.  The scan is my digital negative that I then work on in LR
> or PS.

If you can conspire with your software (Nikonscan or Vuescan) to get a flat 
scan, you can use that as your digital negative that you base everything off 
of in Photoshop.  That's what I do - saves me $400 for silverfast.

Scan a flat negative in Nikonscan with all adjustments off in 14 bit color. 
Use ICE if you want.  Spot the resulting tif in photoshop and save it. 
That's your master file.  Nikonscan, Vuescan, and Silverfast (from what I 
remember) don't really offer any amazing tools that Photoshop doesn't do 
better.  Though I will admit Nikonscan has an LCH editor which is kind of 
nifty.

I do the same for B&W in Vuescan.

For reference, Nikonscan does have a 'raw' format.  Save as a NEF and you 
can edit in Nikonscan again, but not in any other raw editor.