My neg scanner is screwy that way too, but I only get problems with color neg scans. My usual quick stop-gap lazy method of correcting this problem is fiddling with brightness and then levels. Luckily I don't have to do that often... (too lazy... hehehe) Don't take my word for it... there should be a better way to do that... :-/ (*

Azy I am not sure of your scanner software, but mine has three settings for quality your sample scan is very much like the results I get on the fast scan setting, which is the lowest setting, it might be worth a look. As for correction in Photoshop try using levels move the slider from both ends to where the graph starts and then tweak the centre slider, this works well for correcting my scans.

azy, you might look at a program called dcenhancer from www.mediachance.com it's a free download program and I find it very useful in correcting problems like you have. It has a mid-level tona adjustment that brings pics up to snuf. I use it a lot! There are a couple of other freebies there that I use also. Check the site out, lottsa neat for purchase stuff also! Jack

#7 is much improved over #6, and very likely better than what you could get by tweaking #6 in photoshop. You didn't mention what scanner you are using? [I'm sort of maybe shopping for a new one.] I've been using ViewScan software from www.hamrick.com, which works pretty well on my old Nikon LS-1000.

one bad thing about photoshop, its greyscale mode is 8bit, and as such only works up to 256 shades of grey. Very odd actually, especially when compared to a program such as zbrush, which isn't photo oriented at all, but its greyscale mode works at 24bit i believe, something like 65000 shades of grey. of course, maybe all this changed in photoshop 7, i dunno.

24 bit would be 16,7 millions shades, so I doubt it somehow. maybe its 10 or 12 bit? 16 bit would be 65K shades - something you get when you save your files in 48 bit color tiff (possible in PS and PSPS) after scanning.. which would be extrapolaion anyway, since I don't think the scanner is 48 bit. Maybe 36 bit (would give you 12 bit greyscale which is plenty I think).