SilverFast has robust support for Colour Management. Colour management gets set in the Options window. There are no less than three sections in this dialogue window. To set up SilverFast’s colour management correctly, you must work you way down this dialogue window from top to bottom.

By default, SilverFast does not use any colour management. This is the setting represented by ‘NONE’ in the Input -> Internal command inside the “Color Management” panel. To change this to managed colours, you must first make sure that you are in Reflective or Transparent mode with the Positive parameter selected. Negatives cannot be colour managed.

The Input -> Internal command line controls what happens with the image data as soon as it leaves the scanner and gets stored as a file. If you have calibrated your scanner, the Calibration option is automatically selected.

You should calibrate your scanner using the SilverFast calibration option. This option includes an IT8.7 target which has been branded with a barcode. When you click the Calibration button (only available when you have purchased the option) after pre-scanning the target, SilverFast will show a grid that you must position over the target’s patches.

The rest of the process is fully automatic. As soon as you click the Start button in the Calibration window, SilverFast will connect to the LaserSoft Imaging server, download the correct reference file for the target — that’s what the barcode is for — and create the profile for the scanner.

The Color Management Panel

You are of course free to calibrate your scanner using third-party tools, but the SilverFast option is by far the best, especially as LaserSoft Imaging sells targets for most uses (Fuji, Kodak, etc), all with the barcode embedded. No errors can be made because of a wrong reference file.

To start with a managed colour workflow, the step after calibration is to set Input -> Internal to ColorSync (or on Windows to ICM). The Internal -> Monitor setting should now be set to either ColorSync or Automatic.

You choose Automatic if you want to leave the colour matching process to Photoshop — softproofing uses an output profile to let you see what the image will look like when printed on specific profiled media.

If you want to ‘hardwire’ the profile used for displaying your images, then you’ll choose ColorSync. In this case, SilverFast will use your monitor profile to determine the colours of your image.

Internal -> Output will determine how the image’s colour data will be output. RGB means you’re going to generate a RGB file. If you want to specify a profile for output in the ColorSync panel, then the setting here should read ColorSync. Other options are CIELab and P&P CMYK. CIELab allows you to save the image as a CIELAb file, which can be converted in Photoshop to another colour space later on in the process.

P&P CMYK is only useful if you are going to convert the image to CMYK output immediately, e.g. for use on a commercial printing press.