Vuescan and Epson
Vuescan and Epson
The Epson flatbeds don't give anywhere near their rated resolution. Regardless of what the specs say the are in the range of 2400dpi. You can see samples in the tips section of my web site.
As for Vuescan, the best way to use it is to scan your original with as little manipulaton as possible. What this means is setting the black and white points to maximize the brightness range and leaving all other adjustments to your editing software. Scanning at 16bit depth (if your scanner supports it) is also a good idea. You then do large scale adjustments to color, contrast and brightness in this mode. Then convert to 8 bit for further editing, and output.
Profiles don't work with color negative. For a scanner you can profile it yourself with a commercial profiling package, but then you must keep all scanner and software settings exactly the same as when the profile was made.
I don't think mulit-sampling will gain you much. At most it will even out speckles in the lowest order bit. For slides this will be dead black and for negatives it will be pure white. Setting the clipping properly will eliminate the noise. If your image is so dense that you think you need to multi-sample then you have mis-exposed your film.
As many others have said,download a copy and try it for yourself. There are several tutorials on the web which may make setting up a bit clearer than the included instructions.
