I've been doing a lot of palladium printing, and I've noticed that I'm not getting scans that do my prints justice, at least not consistently. I want to submit some prints to that Alt Process competition that Kerik is judging, and I don't want to have the quality(or lack thereof) of my scans be the reason I don't get accepted. I'm working with an Epson 2450 - and no, I can't change my scanner, not at this time anyway. Any advice on proper technique would be greatly appreciated.

Scan at a significantly higher resolution than you need, then downsize in Photoshop. I find this helps minimize the influence of the texture of the paper. Then, just tweak the tones until they emulate the print. Also, we know the pitfalls of scanning alt process prints, so that will be taken into account. Good luck!

thanks for asking this question, i was wondering the same thing!

I do as Kerik says, making sure i have it converted to sRGB (a lot of scanners will scan in AdobeRGB). if you leave it in Adobe, the image will look very flat on the web.
i also try to get the dmax pretty close. I'm lucky in that most of my platinum prints are almost completely neutral, so keeping them that way is easier

sample scan (http://web1.omniblog.com/_smartsite/modules/image/image_page.php?a=cz1jJmlkPTUwMjImbT0yMDAw) is a pretty close copy of what the print looks like. (there is a blue tinge on one edge.. that's from the scanner.. issue with the glass i think). the yellow color in it is due to it being a platinum over pigment print


(it also helps if your system is color managed)

jim