[Geoff F]

I have the Epson Perfection 3590 Scanner which also has an optional slide scanning function. It works reasonably well but scanned slides usually need some Unsharp Mask afterwards.

My advice is turn off all Auto settings and adjustments, then scan using sRGB colour or Adobe colour. Check with a Preview scan then manually do a Curves or Levels adjustment before scanning. Once you work out what the best correction is, it should be the same, approximately, for all scans using the same type of film. Different film makes will require different settings. ie Kodak is different from Fuji.

Scan at original size but with sufficient pixels to allow you to resize later. This will depend on your required finished size. Also, make sure that the film strip is the correct way up.

Exactly how are you sharpening your images after scanning. Correct use of Unsharp Mask is essential and it does take a bit of learning.

I found that a lot of my previously rejected film prints weren't actually that bad; it was just poor printing that spoilt them.