Minolta Dimage Scandual III quirk?

[jackc]

[Got kicked out of APUG, so here it is on the right forum]

For the users of this scanner I have a question. I don't know if you noticed that the pre-scan image displayed in the software that comes with the scanner always look better than the final scanned image you can produce from it. It is very notably sharper and has better separation of tones.

I've been trying just about everything in the settings trying to produce a final scan that matches the displayed image from the pre-scan. But I cannot come even close at 16-bits full resolution, using any of the photo displaying software I have (windows image display, GIMP and Corel PaintShop Pro.)

Any one knows why that pre-scan image is so much better or how to produce the same quality scanned image?

[got one reply below]
B&Wpositive

I use the same scanner, but I have never observed the final scan to lower in quality than the preview.

It could be that the display parameters on your monitor are such that, when scaled down to fit the screen, the final scanned image becomes pixelated when viewed at a low magnification. If you zoom in to 50%, it should not llok jagged or tonally compressed. Is your monitor calibrated properly? How do your final prints look...do they exhibit this same issue?

 

[jackc]

BTW, this is for film scanning. I scan B&W negatives in color mode.

I tried zooming in and out and scaling up and down on the final scan image. None so sharp and tonally pleasing as the display in the pre-scan window of the minolta driver software. Either that software is the best image displayer in the world or else I'm not scanning right.

 

[keithwms]

I am trying to remember, it has been a while, but I think I had that exact scanner before. I think I concluded very quickly that the Minolta software sucks and has various illogical issues. So then I tried, as I recall, vuescan. Or maybe it was silverfast. Anyway then the results were actually quite good, even for 35mm velvia.