Isn´t HDR an image blending technique and what does this have to do with scanning?Ī good question and I personally think the name is for many reasons totally misleading. There is no need to scan the frame over and over again, as all relevant data has been stored already. Sometimes this is very helpful for a good scan. Try several color balancing settings or different contrast levels. You can of course always go back, undo changes and rethink your decisions on post-processing.
You can access the linear scans at a later stage and do the final processing steps. The biggest benefit of this workflow ism that you can scan an entire roll or a large number of rolls without worrying about how they look and you don´t have to do all the artistic decision in an early stage of the workflow. SilverFast does the work for us and a simple workflow ensures no data gets lost during scanning. If all this sounds complicated and scaring, don´t worry. With linear files we want to make sure that there is no color profile embedded and the whole color information from the scanner is maintained until we process the files.
No color profileĬolor management is of course very important when we are looking for a consistent workflow. Depending on the workflow and color profile this gamma value lies somewhere around 2.0 with 2.2 as the most common value. For image files we normally work with gamma encoded files. A linear file is more or less a 1:1 rendering of the luminance values of the film on the scanner.