Which scanner software (mac)?????

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Lord Fluff

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Hi all

I just managed to pick up a Minolta 5400 (mk1) for a good price but I am having real software issues with it and my Mac Pro. My findings so far -

Dimage Scan - seems to produce reasonable results for a while, then crashes and needs to be re-installed....annoying

SilverFast - worked once, now will not find scanner despite uninstall/re-install. Generally will not go past splash-screen

VueScan - works perfectly, but seems least useful software of the three. Initial Velvia scans have hideous colour and it is not obvious how to fix this without a trip in Photoshop.

I would think the scanner was the issue were it not for the fact that VueScan works every time, even straight after one of the other two crashes and leaves the scanner light blinking.

I am loathe to spend $40 on VueScan though, as the results just seem unimpressive compared to Dimage Scan. I am running the latest versions of them all (I think) and OS X 10.4.11

Thanks all
 
That’s more or less my experience, in the end I settled on VueScan, and I just scan to tiff with everything switched off and sort it out in CS afterwards. I do my editing before that stage so I’m only doing a few from each film.

P.S. I also preferred the Minolta software, but I just couldn’t get it to run reliably on Leopard
 
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I/m using both Nikon Scan and Vuescan on Mac depending on purposes.
All the "betterisers" are switched off in Vuescan exept DigiIce
In NS I have sometimes Super Scan Mode to avoid banding.
DigiIce - normal
In BW mode - everything is switched off.

Slides and BW - 4x-8x depending on dencity of positive/negative.
 
The Minolta software is probably a little old, since those. scanners are discontinued for some time already.
In that case, i wonder if the Mac Dimage software is for PowerPC and not Universal, therefore the "usual" problem with crash on Intel-based Macs.
I have several older Mac programs that are not Apple made, and that only half-way work on my MacBook, or start and crash immediately. Example, POV-Ray is a raytracing software that does not work on Intel Macs (crashes at start) while something called MegaPOV, an unofficial pov-ray extension, does work flawlessly (using the installed pov-ray package). Weird.
I would try to find an update for both the dimage and the silverfast softwares.
Anyway, i hate silverfast (the version that comes bundled with scanners). It lacks the most useful features e.g. batch scan, and has a half-baked (or, actually, pretty rare!)manual so you are on your own when learning to use it.

I agree with you on VueScan. Many ppl seem to love it - i just could not find my way around it (yet?).
 
I knew there was a reason I didn't go farther than a dual-1.25GHz G4 I recently inherited and rebuilt...too much "legacy" harware 😉

The last build for (Konica) Minolta's stand-alone SW and drivers was during the Tiger period, and well before Intel processors came into the picture. Theoretically, the stuff should run under Rosetta, at least with Tiger; with Leopard, it's anyone's guess. (And this G4 of mine is still running Panther...I might finally move it up to Tiger in a few weeks.)

Up until the last several months I've been working almost exclusively with VueScan, mostly because I love it, but partly because the older version I was using didn't play nice with Minolta's software; somewhere in the last half-dozen updates, VueScan now works just fine with Minolta's stuff, and I can switch-off between the two with ease.


- Barrett
 
I just got a Mac Mini with OS X Leopard, on an Intel processor. Now, when I try to run my Minolta Dimage Scan Elite II scanner using the Dimage scanner software, I frequently get a message saying the program is already in use, so it doesn't open. I can sometimes get around this by scrapping the preferences file, but often I have to download the software all over again. I'm tempted just to use VueScan, which I also have and which works perfectly. Except that I love one feature of the Dimage software -- the ability to save an entire scan of a negative strip as one file -- which allows me to make a digital contact sheet of a roll of film using PSE's Contact Sheet II. You can't do that in VueScan (I checked with Hamrick).
 
I guess I will not upgrade my iMac Tiger OS. Mark 1 seems to run fine.

Leopard on my MacBook went in ok and I did a few scans just for fun. It seemed ok, but I quit as I dislike photowork on a notebook.
 
I have 5400 II, Dual Intel iMac, latest iteration of 10.5 Leopard.

Dimage software works perfectly. No problems.

Remove all Dimage software and preference files (if you don't know how to find them, learn), repair all permissions (you MUST learn how to do this if you own a Mac), reinstall software.

There should be no problems. The "program already in use" message comes with a driver corruption or if another program is trying to access the scanner. Make sure you don't have any OCR or other programs trying to import from a scanner.


.
 
Ronald M said:
I guess I will not upgrade my iMac Tiger OS. Mark 1 seems to run fine.

Leopard on my MacBook went in ok and I did a few scans just for fun. It seemed ok, but I quit as I dislike photowork on a notebook.
Click to expand...
If you have a home network or a portable USB/Firewire HDD you could very easily scan on the MacBook and then just copy the files over to your iMac for processing.
 
M. Valdemar said:
I have 5400 II, Dual Intel iMac, latest iteration of 10.5 Leopard.

Dimage software works perfectly. No problems.

Remove all Dimage software and preference files (if you don't know how to find them, learn), repair all permissions (you MUST learn how to do this if you own a Mac), reinstall software.

There should be no problems. The "program already in use" message comes with a driver corruption or if another program is trying to access the scanner. Make sure you don't have any OCR or other programs trying to import from a scanner.


.
Click to expand...


I think using BOTH the Dimage software and VueScan to run my scanner may, as you suggest, be the problem causing the "program already in use" message. It's not that the Dimage program is already in use, since I've only just tried to open it. It's the scanner that's already "in use," even after I exit VueScan, since VueScan has been used to calibrate the scanner. Dimage sees that and says bye-bye, sending this mystifying error message.
 
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