Scanning Software

Knikki

Knikki

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I have had a quick look but not seen much so a question if I may (yes i know I have not been around for a dogs age but life and lack of mojo got me there)

Vue Scan Software.

I need something that will run a couple of old scanners one a Nikon Coolscan the other a Microtek TF120 machine and I think that VueScan will.

Question is.

Whats it like?

I am fairly used to Silverfast (older version) and the Nikon Software (which is not great) but how does VueScan compare and is it worth going for the more expensive version.

Cheers.
 
I swapped to Vuescan when I couldn't use the original Nikon software, tried Silverfish which is pants IMHO. Vuescan although not perfect works well with all my scanners. Worth the expensive version with it's constant updates.
 
I thought it was worth getting the more expensive version as it's a one-off cost and I couldn't get used to the interface on the free version of Silverfast that came with my scanner. Since then I've got another scanner and VueScan has picked that up with no problems at all. It has some foibles, like most single-author software, but Ed Hamrick is really good at getting back to you quickly if you email him.

Have a look at the VueScan Discussion Thread, hopefully that'll help a bit too :)
 
i bought it as an update to my crusty old Silverfast. I found it fine until i wanted to set up a batch scan then then its the most un-intelligent ball ache you could imagine. It seems to have been written by a programmer rather than an interface designer. I dont know why he couldnt of just implemented the "draw frames round what you want to scan" like other scanners. But he didnt and it makes it almost unusable for me.
 
For the price, I'd give it a go. Like all software, it has a learning curve - and it hasn't got the most intuitive interface, but if you can get past the obscurities it can do a fair good job.

I'd rather have Nikonscan, but although I can get my SCSI Coolscan to work physically on recent Windows versions, Nikonscan (and as far as I can make out Silverfast) require an aspi layer (?) to interface with the operating system, or something like that. And Vuescan bypasses the log-jam.

There's another workaround that may or may not serve your Microtek too, which is to run an older OS (XP or whatever in Windows) as a dual-boot or on a separate (older) machine ...
 
I gave up with Silverfast, I got a copy with my Epson but binned it after a couple of hours of utter frustration.
 
I used SilverFast 6 for quite a long time, but swapped to Vuescan a year or so ago. Since then SF6 has stopped working on my Mac due to an OS upgrade, so I'd have had to pay more than the Vuescan Pro cost to get SF8 for just the one scanner. My Vuescan Pro licence covers me for all future upgrades, for my Plustek and Epson and any other scanners including my printer-scanner all-in-ones!

As suggested above it mostly just works; the interface is very different than SF6, not surprising as the latter was weird beyond belief. Vuescan is getting better at having sensible things in one place, but can be a bit fiddly at times. It always "remembers" your last settings, which is usually what you want but occasionally, is a complete PITA. I failed at multi-scan too, but @Strappy told me how to do it (linked post and a few subsequent) on the Vuescan Discussion thread, so next time I'll give that a go.

I think it's a much better buy than SF8...
 
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AshleyC said:
I dont know why he couldnt of just implemented the "draw frames round what you want to scan" like other scanners. But he didnt and it makes it almost unusable for me.
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Wait, what? I'm confused. In Vuescan, I use the frame lines to select precisely what I want to scan. :thinking:
 
...and another thumbs down for silverfast....after using Epson software it was too steep a learning curve for what might be any extra benefit in results, but then I'm using a common scanner.
 
I started scanning with an Epson scanner that came with Epsonscan and Silverfast; I switched to VueScan (which I did actually find simpler to use) because it let me keep the raw data from the scan so I could reprocess with different settings to get the best possible scan without taking the time to physically scan again. When learning, this was a great boon. But two points to keep in mind - my usage is more than likely vastly different to yours. At the time I started scanning, I was scanning 5x4 film one a low spec computer that took four hours per scan (I typed that out to make sure you realise it wasn't a mistyped figure!). The fact that I use 5x4 also means that I don't need to batch scan.

When I added a film scanner recently, VueScan just picked it up as though it had always been there.

Personally, I don't have any reason to swap - its always done all I've needed.
 
Is not raw a misnomer in terms of Vuescan? With a Nikon scanner & Vuefast, there's no way that you can extract a NEF file ... the best I could get out of it was a tif, which ain't the same thing by my measure ...
 
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droj said:
Is not raw a misnomer in terms of Vuescan? With a Nikon scanner & Vuefast, there's no way that you can extract a NEF file ... the best I could get out of it was a tif, which ain't the same thing by my measure ...
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The Pro version allows you to save to RAW DNG. Opens up on Lightroom exactly as my camera RAW files do.
 
Whatever you call it, and whatever the file extension, it's still the data that came from the scanner when it scanned, and that same data can be reprocessed by VueScan with different settings any time in the future - even if you no longer have a scanner. If Hamrick call it raw (because it's the unprocessed data) I don't have a problem with it. Every camera has it's own raw files, with as many different extensions as there are makers.

I save the raw files as tiff because they're smaller; but it makes no difference to what you can do with them in VueScan. As I don't use Lightroom, it's not something I've worried about.
 
My jury's out on this, but there may be a forum thread about it somewhere ....
 
skysh4rk said:
Wait, what? I'm confused. In Vuescan, I use the frame lines to select precisely what I want to scan. :thinking:
Click to expand...

last time i tried it you had to type values in various boxes to try and move those lines about and created multiple frames. He might have updated it to something usable now, i'll look later.
 
Thanks for the replies plus the link to the VueScan thread which I missed DOH!

I might still stick OSX 10.6 onto a spare hard drive I have as it has Rosetta which will run the software for the two scanners but from reading above I think I will give Vue Scan ago :D
 
Carl Hall said:
Just downloaded the pro version of VueScan. Sweet Jesus there's so many buttons and options!
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Takes a little to get used to, but once set up for a particular film type (say black and white negative) you can leave it and change very little next time.
 
ChrisR said:
Takes a little to get used to, but once set up for a particular film type (say black and white negative) you can leave it and change very little next time.
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I've been watching a video on youtube and the chap makes it look really easy. Just tried to scan a shot from a few months ago and the corrected colours are all way off haha. If I pick to scan as a RAW file does it not do any colour correction based on the film type then? I think I remember reading somewhere that there's a Lightroom or Photoshop plugin that you need to use to invert it and remove the orange base?
 
Vuescan can do the colour negative mask removal and inversion; it's usually good enough, but sometimes it can give less than perfect results. One solution is to scan as a positive TIFF, load the TIFF into Photoshop (or Elements), then call Color Perfect. I've bought this but only used it a couple of time because of the faff factor and disk space compared with JPEGs. My preferred 35mm C41 solution is Photo Express; if I was into C41 120 and not devving myself, I suspect I'd use UKFL.

Edited to add: for a thread on the topic of 35mm C41 colour that covers Color Perfect, see https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/help-with-old-pentax-scanning-etc-please.404577/
 
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Carl Hall said:
I've been watching a video on youtube and the chap makes it look really easy. Just tried to scan a shot from a few months ago and the corrected colours are all way off haha. If I pick to scan as a RAW file does it not do any colour correction based on the film type then? I think I remember reading somewhere that there's a Lightroom or Photoshop plugin that you need to use to invert it and remove the orange base?
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It shouldn't perform any corrections or adjustments if you do a raw scan. There is a PS plugin, colorperfect, that can invert the negative for you, but it's not required and its interface can be a bit unintuitive to say the least.

In the past, I've used colorperfect and negfix8 (https://sites.google.com/site/negfix/howto) to invert the negative, but there are numerous options in this regard. None produces the colour that I want in my C41 images, however, so I no longer scan colour at home, although my personal deficiencies in scanning technique likely contribute to my dissatisfaction.
 
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skysh4rk said:
It shouldn't perform any corrections or adjustments if you do a raw scan. There is a PS plugin, colorperfect, that can invert the negative for you, but it's not required and its interface can be a bit unintuitive to say the least.

In the past, I've used colorperfect and negfix8 (https://sites.google.com/site/negfix/howto) to invert the negative, but there are numerous options in this regard. None produces the colour that I want in my C41 images, however, so I no longer scan colour at home, although my personal deficiencies in scanning technique likely contribute to my dissatisfaction.
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I've just looked at ColorPerfect after reading the thread that @ChrisR posted about. Sounds pretty good but it's a whopping 46 pounds for a photoshop plugin! Might have a look around and see what cheaper options there are and look at getting CP in a month or two. Not in too much of a rush as I won't be developing my own C41 again until I've figured out and built my own temp controlled bath anyway.
 
Carl Hall said:
I've just looked at ColorPerfect after reading the thread that @ChrisR posted about. Sounds pretty good but it's a whopping 46 pounds for a photoshop plugin! Might have a look around and see what cheaper options there are and look at getting CP in a month or two. Not in too much of a rush as I won't be developing my own C41 again until I've figured out and built my own temp controlled bath anyway.
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I own it, but I would think twice before investing in it; it's certainly no guarantee of good scans. That said, I'm largely unconvinced regarding the worth of most home scanning options for colour film.
 
Scan as a tiff in vuescan tweak in Lightroom, don't make it more difficult than it needs to be.
 
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