About Aztek Digital Photo Lab software
Version 6.53 pro included
The highly regarded Aztek Digital photo lab or DPL software contains many unique and patented technologies that give it a clear edge in quality, speed, and performance. All scans are done with full accuracy and with little to no reworking regardless of the film/ media type. Every scan is calibrated with a 48 bit engine to produce a level of fidelity and accuracy that will even trump professional lab densitometers. Azteks DPL software is flexible, adaptive, intuitive, intelligent, and easy to use.
The software is works very well for batch jobs. You can create customized settings that are applied to all desired images, they are many auto correcting options, there are tools for negatives, and you can do large batches of images at once. ICC profiled scanning is an option, there are normalized color spaces for different film types, or you can create your own custom “character media settings” (or CMS files).
Only the professional version of the software allows you to create you own CMS files. Being able to create your own custom CMS files increase the integrity / fidelity of the bit depth, and allows for more precise corrections. These advantages are especially important when major corrections are required such as when working with improperly exposed images, color negatives, or images with severe color correction issues.
For example most camera flashes have a peak of red green and blue wavelengths that combine during the exposure to make the image that you see. If the shutter speed is set too fast for the required flash duration or if the flash sync is off it is possible for the color balance to be seriously affected. I recently scanned a set of slides that contained my slides that had an extremely red colorcast as a result of this phenomenon. There was so little blue and green information that I had to us values from 7-10 (out of 255) for the D-max on the green and blue channels. Having the professional version of the DPL software allowed me to create a basic CMS file that expanded the green and blue channels to fit the entire histogram. I was then able to make small precise adjustments to the curves to get the image just how I wanted. The receiver of the files was thrilled to receive a viable image from the nearly unrecognizable 20 year old slide.
The scanner software is able to bypass the Logarithmic Amp files and instead loads the histograms/ curves directly into the scanners hardware. This way the each bit is evenly spaced, and the per channel endpoints match the settings so your not removing a small chunk of the data out of a wide “native” scan. If the adjustments were done after the fact using software algorithms to edit the native (Log) file, then the histogram would have been “combed” resulting in reduced bit depth fidelity.
Software Features:
· Optical only (optional mode) – Insures that the hardware resolution matches the output
· Auto adjust (optional mode) – Automatically adjusts image
· Color Purifier (another type of optional auto adjustment mode)
· Histogram control (image setting) – includes RGB and per channel histograms with end / mid point slider control, white point, black point, medium grey eyedropper tools, and another auto adjust function.
· Brightness/ contrast (image setting)
· Curves (image setting)
· Filters (image setting) -optional smoothing and sharpening
· Save / load (image settings)
· Optional rendering up to 64,000 DPI
· Raw scanner data returned in density corrected 48 bit color space
· Film normalized color management system
· IT8 Q-60 generic scan support
· Global Image Attribute Control
· Interactive real-time image color and “Filter Processing”
· Batch Queue system that can scan many types of different negative, slide and paper media at varying resolutions and settings
· Negative Analyzer – Artificial intelligence engine runs a prescan of the negative and then sets the exposure and then color balances the image. Final settings are loaded into the scanner before the final scan is done.
· Artificial intelligence “Film Library”
· Spot Negative Analyzer
· Users’ Custom Film and Media Characterization
· On board densitometer (gives density reading from density values of 0 to 4.0 and as RGB values 0-255)
· Simultaneous pre-scan correction and production high resolution scanning
· Output Print size “Auto Scale” Scanning
· Production Job File Naming and default folder
Software specifications/ requirements:
Supported OS Windows 98, ME, 2000, and XP
*Vista / Windows 7 compatibility unknown
Supported Devices Plateau Flatbed
File Formats TIFF 8, 16, 24, and 48-bit RGB; CMYK and Gray; PSD; Loss-Less; WMF; BMP
Original Media Types Transparencies (positive and negative), reflective, framed slides, printed material and half-tone screened films
Interface: SCSI, Firewire
Maximum File Size: 4 gigs (can be increased with newer software)
