Loosing sharpness when scanning negs or adding sharpness when printing

[whistule]

Scanning negs on canon liDe500 flatbed scanner at 4800dpi. Even after adding sharpness to the image in photoshop it's not as sharp as the prints I get back form the lab. Anyone else had this problem? Does the printing/developing process add sharpness? Ta

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[Battou]

I used to have that problem all the time, along with color loss. The glass in the scanner is to blame.

It suprised me to hear about this from a LiDE tho

[Helen B]

Nowadays most labs are using digital printers for film - they are scanning the film then printing digitally after doing some automatic adjustments of levels and sharpness.

Your Canon scanner is likely to be producing soft scans. A true resolution of 4800 ppi requires a degree of mechanical precision and optical resolution that you are unlikely to find at that price. Even the Epson V-700, V-750 and Microtek M1 do not achieve a true resolution of 4800 ppi.

Best,
Helen

[whistule]

thanks. I could put the ppi up to 9600 but looking at it I dont think it would help. Getting better results from scanning the print which can't be right can it?