Why do my DNGs look so washed out compared to TIFFs?

Flatbed and Film Scanners Vuescan
1

Hi, I’m fairly new to scanning my own negatives. I have a plustek 8300i and was playing around with SilverFast. I recently acquired VueScan. I prefer the interface in VueScan and the ability to remove dust before the DNG export.

I have seen written in many places that DNGs are the recommended format to feed into NLP. I have no problem exporting these from VueScan, however when running the images through NLP the colors seem very washed out/cool compared to the TIFF format I was getting from SilverFast. I’d argue that the TIFF looks better.

Please see images below, the image on the left is the SilverFast TIFF and the image on the right is the VueScan DNG.

I am following this guide Creating RAW DNG files with Vuescan for the DNGs. I don’t bother with the exposure lock, also I’m not sure if the “Update Vuescan/Silverfast DNGs” is needed / makes any difference.

For those who are more familiar with scanning, do these results look normal? Why is DNG recommended over TIFF? Am I missing something here?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

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2

It’s possible that Silverfast is adding some saturation to the scan when done as a tiff, and making other color changes. You may find that you prefer end result of the tiff more, and there is nothing wrong with that, but generally the Vuescan DNG should be more neutral and accurate.