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If you own SilverFast software, do you need this book? In a word, yes. But the larger question inevitably raised by this book is, do you need SilverFast software?

SilverFast AI is software that allows photos digitized with a variety of different scanners, including flat bed scanners and negative scanners, to be manipulated as to their color content in the scanning process. The software may either come installed with your machine or provided by the manufacturer or may be purchased separately as an after-market item. The software allows for color correction while scanning a picture in a manner similar to that provided by the standard program for manipulation of digital images, PhotoShop, for images that have already been digitized. SilverFast allows for setting levels, adjusting tone curves and changing hue and saturation in a manner that parallels PhotoShop. It is designed to pass the corrected image on to PhotoShop in a machine-readable form.

Unfortunately the documentation that comes with SilverFast is presented as a computer file that could most charitably be called difficult to follow. Tally provides a clear, narrative description of the process for using SilverFast AI, as well as several related products, that embodies the current digital photography buzzword, workflow. Follow his clearly written instructions and you will proceed in an orderly manner to color correct your photographs, either for individual pictures or for batch processing. This is not to say that Tally's instructions are comprehensive. For example, although the SilverFast software that I use with my scanner provides for three different methods for focusing, Tally gives no guidance regarding focusing.

The publication itself doesn't consider reader convenience. All of the color plates are located together on some central pages while black and white illustrations are located with the text about the operation being described. This leads to a lot of page flipping that seems particularly inappropriate for a text, one of whose main purposes is to describe color correction. But if you want to use SilverFast, this is as good as it gets.

Do you need SilverFast? Tally says yes, because doing color correction in the scanning process results in the least loss of information in the image. Another expert suggests that significant manipulation in scanning is impossible because of the low grade of the pre-scan. My own belief is that with certain difficult scans (say, a white swan against a dark background) pre-scanning manipulation will capture some data that otherwise might be lost. However, in this day, when the current version of PhotoShop provides far more data depth than most printers can use, this is probably less important.

So, do you need SilverFast? Well, if your scanner came with it, or some other software that allows pre-scanning manipulation, of course you should use it. I'm not certain most photographers will benefit from paying extra hundreds of dollars to purchase it.

On the other hand, if you have SilverFast, you must have this book. Period.

Silverfast is a wonderful program which offers users advanced control over the scanning process. Unfortunately, until Mr Tally's book, the only source of information concerning the program was a poorly written manual provided by the Silverfast Company. Mr Tally has come up with a clear, concise description of the controls, the presets, and the theory which supports the program, so that a user can both grasp the program and harnass its considerable power. For anyone interested in mastering the important process of scanning, both the software and Mr Tally's book are mandatory.