Since updating my Mac to the Big Sur OS, I haven’t been able to use Topaz Adjust AI. This week I discovered there is a new release of Topaz Adjust that works on the Mac Big Sur OS. Although it’s not an application I use a lot, it’s very useful for making quick improvements to images. It also includes the old (now retired) Topaz Detail adjustments to enhance image details.
The reason that I discovered the new release is that I was processing a film scan of the image below.
I shot the image many years ago on a Pentax 67 MkII medium format camera with a 55mm lens. I was using Fuji Velvia 50 slide film. I don’t know the original camera settings but I do know it was before sunrise so it must have been a long exposure. That may account for the purple/blue shift in the image colour as the old Velvia 50 has a habit of doing this with long exposures. The image you see is a reasonably accurate match for the physical slide.
The image scan was only made recently using my old Epson Perfection V700 scanner. The scanner has made quite a good job of extracting the detail in the dark areas of the slide but suffers from being soft. This is a common problem when scanning with a flatbed scanner and the image quality doesn’t appear to match a digital camera.
But I’ve found an easy solution to this problem that doesn’t involve buying a new scanner or even paying someone else to scan my film. If I apply Topaz Sharpen AI to the image the fine detail pops out to produce an excellent quality image. If you want to see the processing I use watch this week’s YouTube video (https://youtu.be/FQwzSW6ckYU).
And in case you don’t like the purple tones in the film scan here is a colour corrected version.
I hope you like the images and video and have a great weekend. I’m off to rebuild a dry stone wall at one of the local farms.
The Lightweight Photographer 
Is the applied sharpness consistent with what you see on the film version? Or is it necessary to apply because digital esthetics now require it?
It’s consistent with the film version; slide film is extremely sharp. If you’ve even projected a medium format slide you will know what I’m talking about. The scanner is most definitely the problem and it softens the image quite a lot.