Of scanning and Photoshop

[PerPlunk]

Hi, I am having problems in scanning 6x4,5cm film. The following is taken on Fuji Velvia 50 and was scanned on a Nikon Coolscan 8000ED. Unfourtuntaly the film looks quite a bit better then the scan, and I have been unble to make it look as good using Photoshop's manual level adjustment, brightness/contrast, and some of the other basic tools. (For reference I mainly used the manual level adjustment using the Threshold function to find the white and dark points).

The film version just looks a lot more alive. The colors are not as dull. The red rocks are brighter, the sky is brighter, the greens are bright green, and the highlights on the tree are brighter...

What I'm not sure is where the problem lies. Is it my scanning technique, or is it just some adjustments that need to be made with photoshop? These are the scanning settings that I am using:

- Digital Ice is on, Roc and Gem are off.
- 8 Bit color depth.
- 2x pass.
- Superfine (One pass per color) is off.

I've tried playing with the scanning settings, so I am thinking that it is just something I need to be doing in photoshop. Thanks for any feedback.