A question about scanning

[chaoliang]

The situation:

The picture as dia has an enorm range from highlight (blond hairs in the sunlight) to dark shadows (of trees). Under the table, on which the blond girl lied, was another girl hiding, whose face was in shadow but still clearly to see.

After the picture was scanned into Photoshop, one can only see the details of the second girl by raising the levels, which destroys the highlight areas.

My question is: Why can't I see all the areas at once, if the details were in the dia and the scanned picture?

[az]

Because your scanner, monitor, and printer have very limited color spaces - probably sRGB, which is short for small RGB. This color space has the advantage that virtually any device can display it in its entirety (great for web designers, for instance - their page colors will look mostly the same on all systems), but this also means that this color space has a very limited range.

AZ

[chaoliang]

Yes, I set the colour space of all the devices to sRGB. But still, I should be able to see all the details on the display which were already caught by the scanner or not? If the scanner caught the details in shadow areas, why couldn't I see them without moving the level bar in direction shadow in Photoshop?
I used to scan the images with AdobeRGB. I didn't notice any difference on the monitor. And I once told that good analog monitors can virtually show any colours.

Scanner: Nikon SuperCoolscan LS4000; Monitor: Eizo FlexScan T766.
I thought it might have something to do with density.

[chaoliang]

I would try to make it more clear:
The image has very high contrast. There are details from the brightest part to the darkest shadow. On the scanned image shown on the screen, the high light parts and the general contrast is very nice. The colours are vivid. But the details in the dark shadows are just vanished. If I adjust the level using the level tool in PS in favour of the shadows area, I can see the details in the shadows but the high light parts are totally overexposed.
That means, I suppose, that the scanner got much of the details of the positive. But the details of shadow areas can't be shown in an optimal way.

[az]

You could try adjusting gamma, or.. I think it is called levels?

In Photo-Paint, you can "draw" your own gamma curve. You could try that, raising it on the left (dark) without raising the right (light) side.

AZ

[UtwigMU]

CTRL+M is your friend (Curves).


Also try scanning with auto adjustment on and off, depends on scanner, what results it will yield.