Often the conversion from color to grayscale results in poor contrast levels, although the original image has good contrast. The contrast in the color image could be due to the colors themselves, while in grayscale, we only have to deal with luminance.

SC2G is a grayscale conversion technology only found in SilverFast, and it allows users to adjust luminance before saving a converted grayscale image to Photoshop.

Luminance may be flat in the original color image, something which we must correct afterwards. That correction can be done efficiently while the image has not yet been scanned.

You'll have to pre-scan the image in color mode. Best is to scan in HDR mode, so you are sure to have all color details. Then, in SilverFast, select 16-bit or 8-bit grayscale. The image on the light table changes to grayscale.

Now open the Selective Color Tool. It will have changed into the Selective Gray Correction tool. Here you can adjust the luminance of the six basic colors. To get an idea of the relative amounts of red, green and blue in the image there is the Factors tab where you can see the ratio in a color bar.

Big Image, Short Time

We advised to use HDR as your scan setup. But HDR scanning results in big files, and big files load slow. And when you are scanning at high resolution, your file will grow big no matter which bit-depth you choose.

HiREPP is SilverFast's proprietary image format technology that allows for a dramatic increase in the time that it takes to open large image files. HiREPP is invaluable when working with for example the high-end Heidelberg scanners, as these are capable of 11,000 ppi. Such high resolutions inevitably result in huge files that are slow to load and work with.

Opening a 500 MB image in SilverFast with HiREPP takes roughly 97% less time than opening that same file in Photoshop. In the SilverFast interface you will look for "the HiREPP button" in vain. HiREPP is automatically available in SilverFast 5.52 and higher when saving an image bigger than 50 MB.

In SilverFast DC Studio Pro the HiREPP format is available as well.

(Source: IT-Enquirer)