Epson4870 MacOsX Transparency Scanning Tips please

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

In article <1108674464.38a3f02a83a041ea8e6ac2ad8cf545a9@teranews>,
JeremyUK <JeremyUK.1km8zz@news.photobanter.com> wrote:
>
>Hoping someone can help me out.
>
>When I scan my transparencies the colours are way out. My greys are
>very purple and although I can rectify things by desaturating the image
>in photoshop I am having to compensate massively. I'm using photoshop
>elements but photoshop itself gives me similar results. Do I need to
>calibrate anything? Is there an alternative program I should be using?
>Many thanks ..

What are you using to do the scan? There is an eyedropper white-balance tool
in Epson Scan which, if clicked over a grey area in your preview, should set
the white balance appropriately.

You can also do this after the fact in Photoshop, using the curves editor,
as it also has a white-balance dropper.

Also, check that you are setting the exposure properly for each slide in
Epson Scan. A good place to start is to hit the autoexposure button, and
then manually drag the highlights out a little, as Epson Scan always clips
them slightly, and rather poorly, resulting in highlights that look really
nasty. It's much better to go a little higher than you want to and then
bring the highlights back to white in Photoshop with the levels editor - it
does a much better job of it.

Good luck with your scanning.