On Sep 15, 10:27 am, "David J. Littleboy" wrote:


I disagree with this, though. Things like GEM and ROC make changes that one
may later want to reconsider. ICE is, of course, wonderful. But you are
better off just using ICE to make your archive file, and then working from
there.

so what? just re-scan without them! :-)
It's not like the "raw" file is gone, is it?
Still: I prefer NI to what GEM does. But in
the absence of NI, GEM will do a good job.
Just don't use it full strength: setting of 1
works fine for me.



But I'll agree here. I've been quite successful at persuading Neat Image to
clean up the grain on negative scans. I can't speak for Focus Magic, but as
long as you keep a clean archived original, whatever you do is fine. (I say
this because I found that over the years I was using less and less and less
sharpening. YMMV here, of course. But sharpening can be overdone, and your
opinion on where the necessary/overdone boundary falls will change over
time.)

David: get an eval copy of FM and give it a try.
It works very well as a plug-in to Irfanview, for example.
It beats any other sharpening method I've tried with
the possible exception of some based on
high-pass filters. It leaves USM for dead, period.
Kid you not. It works particularly well with
digital raw images.