Originally posted by Buffy I think I like the original better--the yellow adds a certain warmth to it that's very inviting.
I agree with Buffy that a warmer rendition (and a bit more saturation) would make the image more inviting.
However, my point was that the saturation of the image could easily be adjusted to "natural" looking levels.
In other words, the high saturation is not necessarily a fixed characteristic of that particular film- and even if the film does tend to be saturated, it can readily be adjusted in Photoshop. Therefore people shouldn't be turned off using that film by one set of results.
When films, particularly negative films, are scanned, the "output" is not a fixed quanitity. Scanning at this level is not a science. It's a soup of variables involving hardware, software, the perceptions of the scanner operator, and the perceptions of the photographer.
Unless you are operating in very controlled conditions that eliminate all variables in scanners and scanner drivers, it is not practical to evaluate a colour negative film's saturation, and colour rendition in general, with any degree of accuracy. Comparisions of a given film between different scanners running different software operated by different people are essentially meaningless.
It doesn't really matter. A scan should be viewed as a starting point from which you make proper corrections using your image editing software. Scan at 48 bit colour depth, avoid clipping shadows and highlights, try to get half-decent colour balance, and do the serious corrections in Photoshop. The idea is not to produce a finished image when you're scanning, but to avoid producing a screwed-up file that cannot be corrected properly in your image editor.
This advice is valid for the typical desktop scanners that most of us use. There are pre-press scanning systems that operate on a different level, but we won't go there.
I'm speaking as someone who ran a film lab using densitometry for process control for 10 years, followed by a transition to scanning in the mid 1990s. I've reproduced many thousands of archival images, which can be very tricky, for publications and exhibits. I think I know a few things about both the potential and limitations of film scanning.
The reason I'm making these comments is that on this and other forums I've seen a lot of inexperienced people making blanket statements about film and scanning. This causes much confusion about what is in fact possible. In my view this tends to discourage newcomers from pursuing the medium by creating the impression that a lot of negative things (like apparent excessive saturation, or excessive contrast, or unsharpness) are set in stone, when in fact all that is required is a simple, systematic approach to scanning and image editing.
Cheers