ScanScience's fluid scanning / wet
    mounting technologies and products
    are used by professional Photo
    Artists, Institutions and universities
    the world over, many of whom rely
    exclusively on ScanScience.
  • We do  not advertise, our business
    has expanded thanks to word of
    mouth from satisfied customers. We
    are into our sixth year of operations.
  • Fluid scanning unique richness of
    color, dynamic range and
    sharpness previously the
    entitlement of drum scanners,
    ScanScience now makes it  
    available to all scanners. Two
    minutes spent preparing the fluid
    mount takes you from the mediocre
    to the superb!
  • Our LUMINA Optical Super Fluid
    replaces old hazardous and toxic
    scanning fluids, with a safe and
    pleasant material for operator film
    and equipment.
  • Fluid scanning ensures the flawless
    digital translation  of your film.
Welcome to ScanScience
ScanScience
Fluid Scanning Technology
"I have converted entirely to the ScanScience way and abandoned my
makeshift oil methods.
I never make dry film scans anymore, it throws away too much quality....
Everyone out there who is serious about getting the best possible scans
needs to be doing wet scanning and ScanScience makes it affordable
on almost any scanner. "  
    

CTEIN, PHOTO TECHNIQUES,     NOV /   DEC 2009

  • See also PHOTO TECHNIQUES Nov/Dec 2007
  • PROFESSIONAL PHOTO MAGAZINE     
  • http://www.ppmag.com/reviews/200701_epson[erfv750m.pdf0
    Key to the Magic:   In Optical Microscopy, thanks to Fluid Immersion, resolution and
    magnification are both increased to the limit.  Fluid Immersion does the same in scanning
    for the same reason and has always been the procedure used with drum scanners
    costing up to $100K.

    Fluid Scanning benefits to photography go beyond resolution: The extended dynamic
    range, increased contrast and color saturation makes images come alive.
    The thousands spent on your finest lenses are only as good as the scan. The finest quality
    scans are fluid scans.
    ScanScience brings these same cutting edge techniques to all scanners.  
                     NEW
  • This highly acclaimed eBook Total Scanning is a
    comprehensive treatise on scanning aimed at the
    photography artist and teacher. It covers the cutting-
    edge techniques of fluid scanning and provides
    guidelines on optimizing scans for printing.
  • The "Smart Scan" tables computes scan resolution
    needed at a viewing distance according to print size.
    You no longer have to scan at 300 ppi for all print
    sizes then scale the image down in Photoshop: Scan
    for the print and get full fluid-scan-quality un-degraded
    by image resizing.   How large a quality print can I
    make from my scan? What file size do I need for a
    scan? Should I scan in 16 or 8 bit?  Total Scanning
    provides the answers.
  • Selection of compression formats including  JEPG2000
    is examined for smart compression of web images.
  • This new electronic book is richly illustrated and amply
    hot-linked internally and externally to help you explore
    and research many topics further, making it a valuable
    teaching aid.
  • This book is included  with Pro Kits for Film Scanners
    and can be purchased for $14.00 with any kit, or
    purchased without kits for $25.00.


  • ABOUT THIS WEBSITE
  • In the Scanner Kits page you find the kits available for
    your scanner.
  • Visit our new Color Management page to learn about
    scanning, color, and printing.
  • Read about the main issues in scanning in the
    Technical section.  
  • If you want to see the difference between dry and fluid
    scanning, visit the Scan Samples pages.
  • Write to us if you have questions about our products,
    your needs or wnat to place an order. In the Contact-
    US page there is an email form.
  • The Buy Now Page has links to PayPal and an
    interactive Catalog & Price List. We recommend you
    download the  CATALOG  to see the full range of
    our products.
  • Buying has never been easier: Tell us your
    requirements and we will send an itemized  PayPal
    invoice which you can pay with your credit card Your
    questions are welcome.
Run the mouse over the image to see the saturated colors of fluid-scanning

This Just In From Australia:

    " I have been happily scanning and
    am very impressed with the Scan
    Science product. I posted about it
    on my blog here:"


Extracts from Michael's Hood  Blog:

    " The cost of all the materials is
    pretty reasonable and very much
    worth the investment. Why pay for
    expensive camera lenses when a
    lot of detail is lost in the scanning
    stage? The Scan Science Lumina
    fluid is great and I appreciate the
    work that has gone in to making it
    perform well and (very importantly)
    be safe to use. I imagine it would
    not be very much fun to work with
    something that is more toxic and
    less tolerant. I urge anyone
    thinking about this using this
    method to not hold back and stop
    wasting time with lesser scans, fluid
    mounting is well worth it."
Copyright ScanScience 2010
USER'S REVIEW
Raw Scans, untagged with any color space can go directly to Photoshop to be tagged with a
non-clipping, non distorting color space like the relatively new Adobe Wide Gamut RGB. With
digital cameras choosing RAW should allow you to select a color space, but not always: you may
find that a clipping color space like Adobe RGB or worse,  sRGB were tagged to the image file,
shortchanging the palette of modern printers like Canon's IPG 5000, and 6300, and Epson 4800.
Long ago when when sRGB and Adobe RGB were introduced there were no printers and no inks
that could print the reds, greens and blues that are printable today. These vintage color spaces
suited vintage printers, not todays modern printers and inks: After all your printer is limited to the
colors in the selected color space. Color is a very critical issue for gallery prints and Art
Photographers: You have opted for Fluid Scanning because you want the best gallery prints,  
therefore the
Film Vs digital color section below is a must read.

This material will be available in the forthcoming, new edition of the  Bible of High-End
Scanning,
Total Scanning.  "Total Scanning 2", will include a full section dedicated
to color.

    FOR ALL KINDS OF PHOTOGRAPHY WHERE RICHNESS OF COLOR AND COLOR
    FIDELITY IS IMPORTANT, FILM AND FLUID-SCANNING ARE THE  PURIST'S
    PREFERRED MEDIUM.
COLOR:  FILM VS THE DIGITAL CAMERA  - Excerpts from the forthcoming eBook Total Scanning 2
All graphs Images & Graphs in this page produced by
ScanScience with  Chromix Software. Copyright
The color space is the image's color working
range: Only colors within by the color space are
available to the printer. Today's modern printers
and inks reach further afield into reds, greens
blues which were unprintable years thus require
color spaces that will make those colors available.
Because vintage color spaces like sRGB and later
Adobe RGB, (which many photographers still use)
were developed for vintage printers and monitors,
those color spaces of yesterday are inadequate
today.  If you value color, it is time for a change in
color space or printer or both.

The representation of color is a 3 dimensional
affair which plots the chromaticity coordinates in
the horizontal axis' and luminance in the vertical
axis. (2D graphs are a simplification). This is
shown in 3D Figures 1 and 1a, 2 and 2b, (on the
right), where the base is the gamut of visible
colors, the CIE, shown here for comparison. The
wire frame in the 3D graphs represents color
working spaces, i.e. Adobe RGB and Adobe Wide
Gamut RGB (AWG). The solid color figure within
the wire frame is the 3D profile of Canon's Image
Prograph 5000 set out against the color space in
the wire frame, and the CIE gamut in 2D as the
base. Evidently both color spaces are smaller in
places than the printer profiles. The wire frames
are smaller than the printer profiles which bulge
-out. Where that happens, those colors outside
the color space will be unprintable, and not fed to
the printer, even though the printer is capable of
printing them. The printers call for a larger color
space.
Fig 1
Fig 1a
Fig 2
Fig 3b
Fig 4
Film, like the eye sees
logarithmically. Digital camera
sensors, unlike the eye, see
arithmetically and when the
light-input exceeds their capacity, it
taints neighboring sensors.
Film-generated images have as
result a naturalness that is driving
photographic artists back to film.  
Additionally, large-format film can
produce ultra-fine detail, beyond a
digital camera's capacity. Know of a
220 MP digital back for 4 x 5? That
is how many MP would be required
to match digitally the content of 4 x 5
film.
Color also may be another reason
for using
film. With film scans you
are free to choose the color space
which is probably the most important
decision you will make.
This is also shown In 2D figures 3a, which shows
the ICC range of colors visible to the eye, against
the Adobe RGB color space, (triangle) and the
gamut of colors printable by two printers. In this
figure we see that the Adobe RGB color space is
smaller than the colors printable by the Epson
4800 and Canon IPG 6300.
In figure 3b, where the color space is AWG,
clipping is avoided. At the present time, no printer
is yet capable of printing the full range of visible
colors, even those of AWG, (which is smaller than
the ICC range of visible colors). Advances in inks
and printers have expanded the range of
printable colors. Reaching further to print all
visible colors is no doubt the holy grail of printer
manufacturers.
Larger color spaces than Adobe RGB and sRGB, were already available before the introduction of AWG. The
problem? They came along with bulging false colors that caused severe distortions.  
Kodak, tired of the paucity of the color spaces available at the time, then introduced ProPhoto RGB, which was
much larger than then available color spaces.  From the extreme of a too small color space, things progressed to
the other extreme:  It was large, so large that included false colors that bulged out of the blues. This is shown in
Fig 4. The imaginary colors in a color space have the effect that while attempting to interpret the file, the image's
pixels are distributed within the color space, even the false or imaginary colors. Thus, in ProPhoto they spread
out into this imaginary 'neverland' destroying the natural color balance, which requires requiring major
compensation and color correction in editing. Adobe Wide Gamut RGB solved this problem, it adds no false
colors and it only contains real, visible colors.
Printers do not yet have profiles to match AWG, and when the software interprets the image it spreads the pixels
into unprintable areas, requiring color adjustments, -though fewer.   For now, Don RGB, another color space,
comes closer to match available printers. As this is written Adobe Wide Gamut RGB has replaced ProPhoto RGB,
and digital camera manufacturers such as Canon  now use AWG instead of ProPhoto RGB in their latest version
of their application, Digital  Photo Professional (DPP).  With Wide Gamut RGB, Adobe has successfully created a
modern color space tailored to modern times.  

Film users are free to choose a color space for their scans but digital users can't always do that and many find
that their RAW files are tied to clipping spaces like adobe RGB. (sRGB, short for skinny RGB or other
unprintable words that begin in s), does not deserve mention in the realm of art printing.
Fig 2b
Fig 3a
For a full descriptions of the
kits and accessories available
for your scanner