Photoshop CS6 is ready for download, in beta

JoeDavola said:

Here is my stuff, mostly underwater and landscapes, a mix of digital and scanned slides

Very very nice galleries.

Was that Mt. Rainier taken at night? 1s, f1.0 - looks like broad daylight. I had a shot like that from Yosemite many years ago, when I couldn't even remember taking it. I'd actually taken it at night, full-moon shining off of Yosemite Falls, and it looked like this. Green valley, blue sky... but at night. My only clue was that there actually were stars in that blue sky. Yours doesn't even have that clue but I'm still guessing it was a night shot. Very nice.

The Belize shots were terrific as well.

Good stuff.

(My nephew just shagged a new D4, because he just was not happy enough with his D700!!! His collection of lenses, flashes, tripods, cases, etc., could pay for a new car.)

dsperber said:

JoeDavola said:

Here is my stuff, mostly underwater and landscapes, a mix of digital and scanned slides

Very very nice galleries.

Was that Mt. Rainier taken at night? 1s, f1.0 - looks like broad daylight. I had a shot like that from Yosemite many years ago, when I couldn't even remember taking it. I'd actually taken it at night, full-moon shining off of Yosemite Falls, and it looked like this. Green valley, blue sky... but at night. My only clue was that there actually were stars in that blue sky. Yours doesn't even have that clue but I'm still guessing it was a night shot. Very nice.

The Belize shots were terrific as well.

Good stuff.

(My nephew just shagged a new D4, because he just was not happy enough with his D700!!! His collection of lenses, flashes, tripods, cases, etc., could pay for a new car.)

LOL, never noticed the 1s, f/1.0, that is a scanned slide so it made a strange exif.
That was late morning on the Comet Falls trail, 20mm lens and you can see the vignetting from a polarizer filter in the upper right.
I need to rescan that, it was scanned with the LS 2000 and the LS 5000 is 4000 ppi and makes much nicer scans.

I downloaded the trial version of Silverfast 8, wow is all I can say. It's not cheap software, but offers so much more than Nikon scan.

My brother and I have accumulated a rather large lens collection over the last 20 years, currently using a D200 body. I'd love to get my hands on the D800, but that would mean buying a new underwater housing, and they aren't cheap.

Scanning slides and negatives is not for the lazy (like me). I have an Epson V600 and still need to do post processing.

mjf said:

Scanning slides and negatives is not for the lazy (like me). I have an Epson V600 and still need to do post processing.

I look at is as a long term project

JoeDavola said:

I downloaded the trial version of Silverfast 8, wow is all I can say. It's not cheap software, but offers so much more than Nikon scan.

A remarkable feature is the auto-calibration from a color target. You buy a color target from them (they come in all sizes, but I bought a 5x7 one for no good reason other than it seems reasonable) for a few dollars, it's shipped from Florida, and it arrives. (My nephew has wallet-sized color targets, so that he can "get his white-balance set up correctly" when he starts a photographic adventure)

You then put it on the scanner plate, close the lid, and push the "auto-calibrate" button from Silverfast. It finds the target, figures out the orientation (even if you've placed it askew on the glass), scans the thing, identifies all of the colors (as scanned) on the target which it knows what colors they should be, figures out what the appropriate "offsets" should be, and saves an ICC profile for subsequent use.

Then, whenever you scan anything, you can set the "auto color correction" option ON, and the scanned results are amazing. Significantly improved from having the option set OFF. It's like doing an image adjustment in Photoshop, pushing the "auto tone" (or "auto levels" in older versions"), except that's how the scan appears from Silverfast. Looks amazing.

Also, it does a terrific and much faster job of de-screening (e.g. for when you scan printed magazine pictures or CD covers) than the prior software version did. I don't generally scan transparencies (although I do have the plastic holder/attachments that came with my 4800x9600DPI Epson 4990), but I did experiment once with some old slides from summer camp many eons ago.

Anyway, if you're a serious scanner, I think the price for Silverfast Ai v8 is worth it.

My brother and I have accumulated a rather large lens collection over the last 20 years, currently using a D200 body. I'd love to get my hands on the D800, but that would mean buying a new underwater housing, and they aren't cheap.

I had a D200 for years. Sold it and bought a D300 back in late 2007. Modest lens collection for my modest photographic needs. I'm not my nephew.

Photoshop CS6 software is good for editing. It is very ideal for editing who has a passion for photoraphy.