Minolta Dimage Scandual III quirk?

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 Core Photoshop.)

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

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?

This would probably be more appropriate for the hybridphoto.com forums, apug is for strictly analog photography.

Peter