Silverfast VS VueScan on Mac OSX 10.4

dcsang

dcsang

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Out of curiosity, (and seeing as how I've recently switched from PC to Mac) has anyone actually done a good comparison of these two pieces of software on the Mac OSX platform?

I've read a lot of issues with recent releases of VueScan and I never did get a good workflow going on my PC. I mean, I liked it, don't get me wrong, but I just never found I could get a "bam.. right out of the box" nice looking scan from the program without major tweaking.

Now that I have switched, I'm open to suggestion.... heh.. after all.. that's what got me to go to Apple in the first place.. @#*!! YOU STEVE JOBS AND YOUR REALITY DISTORTION FIELD !!! :bang: :bang: ... 😉

So.. have any of you got a preference.. one way or the other.. I know most will likely love VueScan but after trying Silverfast SE last evening .. and even with the watermarked file scanned.. I thought "Whoa.. this is what I've been hoping for" in terms of results.

Any and all input welcome and appreciated.

Cheers,
Dave
 
Jamie,

The "SE" version (which I was happy using last evening) is only $10 USD more than the low end of VueScan.

The "SE Plus" version is $5 USD cheaper than the "pro" version of VueScan.

Dave
 
I've actually used both and Silverfast is better in terms of controlling the parameters of the scanner and image control of the scans but it is very unstable software (lots of crashes) and the GUI is a mess. I'm running the latest versions of Silverfast and OSX.
 
I am going to vote for Vuescan here, Silverfast seems completely unable to extract any decent information out of my chromes, while Vuescan does a pretty good job at it!
And if it is able to handle chromes it can definitely handle anything you throw at it.
 
I never got VueScan to perform well with B&W scanning - even using Colour settings instead of B&W. The Scans were always extremely low contrast and VueScan wanted, always, to make the shadows "readable". Sometimes shadows need to be dark.. not necessarily blocked up and black but they don't need to be "seen" all the time.

Got to love my "non scientific" terms huh..

Dave
 
Eighteen months ago I evaluated both programs on Mac OS X.

Both are hideous, user-hostile products.

However SF was the least hideous.

On my scanner (Canon 9950F) SF gave the best results on negatives and transparencies. SFs HDR .tiff format gets the most out of my scanner. It gives great results for any decently exposed color or B&W negative/transparency. A SF HDR scan is like a RAW digital camera file. All you select pre-scan are the PPI and bit depth. This makes life simple. Like a RAW file, the HDR scan must be adjusted post-processing (I use Lightroom). For improperly exposed negatives, I use SFs internal level/curves/colorcast features. Again, these are viciously complicated to understand and master, but they do get the best out of my bad exposure mistakes.

SF is complicated to set up correctly. There are dozens options and settings to choose. They do have decent video training materials. The worst part about SF is it does not automatically select frames. The newest version claims to support auto-frame selection, but reading their user forums does not inspire confidence. In fact, reading their user forums give me the impression their customer service is poor.

There are many happy Vuescan users. If VS is stable using your computer and scanner, I'd scan challenging negatives and transparencies with both products and pixel-peep to see which gives the best results.

Good luck,
willie
 
Dave,
I mean no offense in this question but - are you seriously faulting VS for helping you get more shadow detail out of your negatives...?

allan
 
I've had mixed results depending on scanner too..

SF worked very well with my Epson 3200, but not very well with my 1200LX, for which I found Vuescan to be a better fit.

Ultimately it will come down to learning how to tweak each program to get the most out of it - expecting either one to do too much on its own will be a fools errand.

--

Also, I've found in general I like to scan a pretty wide range neg/chrome in such a way that the shadows are a bit over bright. That way I know the scanner pulled out *all* the data it could. Then I can go back in Photoshop and control the final contrast and tonal range there.
 
Last edited:
kaiyen said:
Dave,
I mean no offense in this question but - are you seriously faulting VS for helping you get more shadow detail out of your negatives...?

allan
Click to expand...

Nah.. not really..

I'm more perturbed because I tire of having to then play around so much in PS to get the right "look" out of the scan.

Looking at the negs, they seem exposed just fine - based on how I would print (or how the lab would print) versus how VueScan seems to interpolate them.. they always come out looking underexposed. Blacks appear to be grey - could be the black point setting for all I know.

I just was able to get the look i was going for "bang on" the first time using SilverFast yesterday evening - there was no real "fiddling" that I had to do.

Just a note to folks.. I'm using this on my Minolta Scan Elite II - not an Epson flatbed.

Cheers
Dave
 
dcsang said:
I'm using this on my Minolta Scan Elite II - not an Epson flatbed.
Click to expand...

Yup - my point was that you may find that with that particular model, one or the other will likely perform better on your machine, and with your understanding of the UI. And that our recommendation of one or the other will be essentially meaningless - you'll have to experiment to see which one works better for you.
 
dcsang said:
Jamie,

The "SE" version (which I was happy using last evening) is only $10 USD more than the low end of VueScan.

The "SE Plus" version is $5 USD cheaper than the "pro" version of VueScan.

Dave
Click to expand...

Dave,

I have the SE version which came with my scanner. I thought about upgrading to Ai but decided against it because with Silverfast you have to buy a new version of the program for every scanner model you use so if I ever decide to ditch my Epson 4990 and buy a dedicated filmscanner I would have to buy a new version of SF.

What I do is I scan 48bit HDR .tiffs (32bit for monochrome) and then edit them in Silverfast HDR (another Silverfast program). So far I've been very happy with this.
 
Wow...some varied views... 😉

I have both but far prefer Silverfast - upgraded to the Ai version from SE a few months ago and consider it worth the money...
Silverfast has many quirks and it pays to trawl the manual (PDF) every now and then but I've never had any stability issues with either silverfast or vuescan under Mac OSX 10.whatever...

Mine runs with the KM5400 (original version)...don't know if it makes a difference what scanner you are using as regards stability.

Silverfast has proved itself over and over and gets my vote as the best scanner software I've ever used - though requires an investment in time...but then so does CS2 come to that.

have fun...
 
Thanks for all the help guys..
I agree.. it seems to be completely dependent on how you feel about the software that you're using.

For me.. I've used Silverfast in the past and the UI isn't a big deal.. but I would miss the batch scanning option that was offered by VueScan.. that said....I noted that I can "upgrade" cross platform/device so I'll look into that and maybe get Silverfast at a good deal.

Cheers
Dave
 
Dave,
Just fyi - if the shadows are coming out grey-er than you want, then you've overexposed.

In other words, and inline with my EI tests, scanning, perhaps specifically with VS, gives you more film speed.

allan
 
kaiyen said:
Dave,
Just fyi - if the shadows are coming out grey-er than you want, then you've overexposed.

In other words, and inline with my EI tests, scanning, perhaps specifically with VS, gives you more film speed.

allan
Click to expand...

I'd imagine that being correct if I had actually overexposed or the meter was off or such. But in comparing the M7's internal meter with 400 C41 B&W film.. it's bang on... so there's been no overexposure with respect to the camera.

VueScan, much like a lot of digital capture devices, just wants to get as much info out of the neg as possible; I can't fault it for that but it doesn't seem to produce, "out of the box" per se; the result I want unlike SilverFast.

Dave
 
Silverfasr SE (came with my scanner) has a completely messed up help/guide so it is very difficult to figure out what to do and jow. In addition, it is scraped of the most useful function that even my small epson scan software has: batch scanning. This makes me use it ONLY when i REALLY can't handle the colours with epsonscan. This happens sometimes with overexposed (?) colour negatives.
I tried the vuescan trial version, mostly for the multiple scan option on the same frame and to see how it handles colour management.
Alas, none of these two were available on the trial version, fact that i only figured out after installation, this pissed me off so i gave up on it. For now, at least.
 
dcsang said:
I'd imagine that being correct if I had actually overexposed or the meter was off or such. But in comparing the M7's internal meter with 400 C41 B&W film.. it's bang on... so there's been no overexposure with respect to the camera.
Click to expand...

Dave - sorry. I am not being clear, I guess. I'm not saying the camera is overexposing or metering incorrectly, I'm saying that you've given the film more light than it needs. The film is overexposed, the camera is not overexposing. If Vuescan can give you an EI of, say, 400 out of TXT because it does such a good job at pulling details out of the shadows, then isn't that better than getting only 250 out of it with another software? It's about EI, not the camera.

VueScan, much like a lot of digital capture devices, just wants to get as much info out of the neg as possible; I can't fault it for that but it doesn't seem to produce, "out of the box" per se; the result I want unlike SilverFast.
Click to expand...

Well, my perspective on that is the same as the zone system. What you're trying to do is basically find an enlarger that, when set to f8 and 10s, you get a work print that looks right in terms of shadows and highlights. What you really should be doing is calibrating your exposure (EI) and development to get the results such that they work on the enlarger that you do have.

With me, I prefer to take the extra speed that VS does seem to give me and calibrate my process to it, rather than changing to different software. I get the results "out of the box" that I want with VS. After I've calibrated 🙂

Not that your approach and certainly not that your logic is wrong or anything. Just my perspective.

allan
 
Once I figured out in Vuescan how to save all the settings and recall them for various film types (all the settings and tweaks can be saved as an 'ini' file via the 'save options' in the file menu) things got way easier. If scanned in 'raw' mode, the tiff file can be re 'scanned' in vuescan, using different .ini files for different uses of the scan, printing, web viewing, etc..

I went though the same thing, Silverfast vs Vuescan, and chose Vuescan because one registration fee covered both my scanners and computers.. I think silverfast requires separate registration for each scanner, but I may be wrong about that.
So i'm cheap.
 
hmm...
I'm now on the fence... as I've been playing with VueScan a bit more - I noted that in SilverFast the UI to get batch scanning isn't exactly intuitive although the "out of the box" first frame scan was good.

I decided, after doing some more tweaking with VueScan to stick with it..

Thanks guys,
Dave
 
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