I’m just trying the 2.2 Trial on some old Vuescan dng files. I’d not been quite ready on previous versions to get NLP just yet, so wanted to see if things had improved.
I’m still having trouble getting a decent looking image from them, so could do with some help troubleshooting. Don’t know whether it’s something in my scanning workflow in Vuescan pre-LR which is affecting this. I tried a couple of Digital Camera scans from the Trial folder and they worked absolutely fine (which I would expect, given they come with the Trial, but still).
One issue for me is I’m losing trial conversions rapidly trying to get one file looking good, as it’s habit of mine to hit Enter after dragging a setting. It seems in NLP this automatically goes ahead with the whole conversion, rather than just affecting the individual setting I’m adjusting. It’s such intuitive behaviour based on other GUIs (inc. Lightroom) which until today I didn’t even know I had, I can’t stop myself doing it when I’m focused on the editing. Is there any way to change this setting as I won’t have any free trial left for other images (and also so that if I go ahead with the full version, I’m not constantly having to go back into NLP having applied conversions before I’m finished)?
Do you see any kind of errors on the images, like “Profile Missing?” when you try to convert? Also, can you be more specific about what is wrong with your converted images? If you can link to a few samples (or email me at nate@natephotographic.com) that would be really helpful!
Unfortunately, the “Enter” key convention is a part of the Lightroom plugin infrastructure. I don’t believe I can change that behavior, sorry!
Thanks for the reply. That’s a shame about the interface - to be clear, it’s when entering numbers directly into the boxes (as opposed to using sliders) that it’s habitual for me to hit enter afterwards. I know what you mean about this being LR behaviour, but the result is very different in NLP as opposed to LR. In LR, hitting enter after entering a value simply stores that one value. Hitting enter in NLP goes ahead and carries out the whole conversion, which is non-reversible (at least in the sense of the trial version). In LR, the equivalent would be something like entering 10 in Exposure and hitting enter and LR storing all settings and performing a jpeg export? In any case, if you can’t change it, you can’t change it - sure I’d learn to live with it over time.
In terms of the conversion I was having difficulty with, I think I might have worked out why - it was a file I’d scanned years ago, and I’m not sure the settings were optimal for NLP conversion, having looked at your scanning guide for VueScan. Also, I hadn’t realised there was a procedure for updating the Vuescan DNG profiles, which I’ve now done. The conversion seems much better now, it’s not spot-on, yet - still looks like there are some hue-twists which are difficult to zero out. I’ll try re-scanning with the suggested settings in the first instance and see if that improves things. If not, I’ll email you the file as you kindly suggest.
In other respects, NLP is great, I like the options for different profiles, hard/soft LAB and LUTs, etc., very nice!
By the way, is there a need for NLP to have a profile for a particular scanner? No idea if this info is taken from Vuescan’s metadata, or if I need to input this somewhere? Mine’s a Minolta Dimage Scan Elite 5400.
Yeah, totally understand. The shortcut keys in plugins aren’t assignable by Lightroom, so it just requires a bit of behavior adjustment.
TAB move to next input
SHIFT-TAB move to previous input
UP/DOWN ARROW increment or decrement the value in a box
ESC Cancel the changes
ENTER Apply changes and close plugin
There should an existing profile already included for the Minolta Dimage Scan Elite 5400. Lightroom uses the metadata of the file to determine which raw profiles are applicable. If there doesn’t already exist a raw profile for a specific scanner, thats where the “File > Plugin Extras > Update Vuescan/Silverfast DNG” command is so useful… it updates the metadata of the underlying raw file to allow it to work.
OK, so I should only apply the “Update Vuescan/Silverfast DNG” command if LR hasn’t already picked up the Minolta metadata already?
When I carried out the above command on a bunch of scans, I got a LR message relating to reading metadata and overwriting LR metadata. What is the correct response to this, please?