Nikon Super Coolscan 4000 ED

Nikon Scan 3 Software

Note: The software has been updated, download Nikon Scan 3.1 Update from NikonTech-usa.com to be sure you have the latest version. This one is much faster on Macs too!

This is the main interface of the Nikon Scan 3.0 scanning module. Here you can see a preview scan with or without Digital ICE3 enhancements applied to it. For the most part all you need to do is crop the image, select your output image size or file size, enable Digital ICE and/or ROC and GEM and then hit the Scan button. The scanner focuses and sets the exposure value automatically by default or you can do it manually.

When using the SA-21 film strip holder the Nikon Scan 3 software displays this pop-out index window. Here you can select any frame on your film strip by number or you can preview scan the entire strip and select the desired image from thumbnails (see next frame).

The main scanning modes are shown above. Depending on which film holder is inserted the scanner will pick the most appropriate defaults. You can of course override them by dropping the selection menus down and picking what you want.

The real "power" options are found in the Tool Palette. Starting with the Layout Tools that let you manipulate the preview image's orientation and image cropping.

The Crop options show the cropped image size and allow you to specify an output size or target file fize. The Scaling option lets you quickly "dial in" a desired output image size once you've made your crop on the preview image. You can also set the scanning resolution lower if desired.

The Digital ICE cubed window is where you turn on the power of the scanner's firmware and software "magic." Digital ICE can be On in Normal or Fine mode. And to fix surface defects, faded colors and film grain you enable the post processing which turns on Digital ROC and GEM. The amount of each can be easily varied using the slider controls, I've found that the default values work very well.

Under the Scanner Extras menu you'll find the manual focus control and here is where you set the MultiSample (number of scanning passes) rate from 1x to 16x. And you can also change the color depth between 8 bits or 14 bits.

I'm skipping over a lot of user options that are "normal" on most scanners such as setting the Brightness, Contrast, RGB color channels, Curves, Luminosity, Chroma and Hue which are done via histogram type displays. There's also an Analog Gain panel that lets you control the intensity of the individual Red, Green and Blue channels or the Master channel.

The Color Management System, which works in tandem with ColorSync on the Mac OS platform and ICM 2.0 on the Windows platform, allows users to scan and deliver the image directly into Photoshop in any of ten popular color working spaces.

One of the most powerful features of the Super Coolscan 4000 is its ability to run in batch mode. Using the optional SA-30 uncut roll holder or the SF-200S auto-slide feeder, you can walk away and let the scanner operate on its own.