Scanner software advice

[herbkell@shaw.c]

I am new to rangefinder photography and have purchased a Nikon 5000 ED scanner assist with my return to the film world.

Does anyone have any advice on scanning software ? The Nikon software is fairly easy to use but seems to freeze quite regularly particularly if a use it as a Photoshop plugin

I have had a quick look at Viewscan and also downloaded a copy of the Silverfast software. The Viewscan software seems simple so I wonder if it produces good images while the Silverfast looks complicated with a steep learning curve.

Any advice for a newbie?

thanks

 

[John]

Silverfast was bundled with my scanner so I am making use of it. Their internet support answered my questions promptly. The learning curve was not that bad. I downloaded the Viewscan demo and it also worked well.
You have quite a good scanner which I think comes with Ice. If you are scanning any colour film I would use the package that will work well with Ice. You might try to troubleshoot your Nikon software. Are you running Windows XP? Are there any patches or updates for it? Is there a Nikon forum of users that can answer questions? Can Nikon support offer any solutions? I have done most of the above with Silverfast. I also downloaded Noise Ninja. It eliminates noise better than the Silverfast, Viewscan, or Photoshop utility.
The more you scan the better you will get. I've only had mine a couple of weeks. 🙂

 

[zanydave]

I don't think you can beat Vuescan to be honest.

 

[RObert Budding]

Shutterflower bought Vuescan but doesn't care much for it. He offered, at one time, to sell his Vuescan "Pro" license for 1/2 price. I bought Vuescan, too, but don't use it - too many patches that break other functions. But, hey, it's a one man show.

Silverfast, on the other hand, is backed by a real company. And the software works really well. It's not cheap, but it is very good.

 

[srtiwari]

I use the KM 5400 II, and have found it to be a terrific performer. The built-in software is simple, but does a great job. I did buy the Vuescan, but like many others here, don't use it- its too "fiddly", and can readily produce bad scans. Perhaps someone who finds it better can tell us what he/she does differently.

 

[sf]

I'll second the vote not to use Vuescan. Horrible software in my opinion. Works for some, but not if you use any of the films that it doesn't have inherently profiled. For B&W, it's awful. For color, you can shoot IT8 targets and get things working, but that is alot of trouble for what little you get in exchange.

 

[willie_901]

Unfortunately...

Unfortunately...

In my experience (Mac OS X, Canon 9950F) both Viewscan and Silvefast have hideous user interfaces, are needlessly complex and unpleasant to use. Each has their own shortcomings and frustrations.

When I tried Vuescan I found it to be unuseable. I'm sure with a different computer OS it works well. Silverfast was tolerable from an operational/GUI point-of-view. Careful tests convinced me Silverfast made a significant improvement in scan quality when compared to Canon's driver. Because the image quality is worth the frustration and silliness, I gave my money to Silverfast.

Both Vuescan and Silverfast have proponents. Just download the trial versions and pick the one that gives the best results for your work.

willie

 

[kaiyen]

Wow. I went into this thread telling myself:

"allan, while you personally love Vuescan, stay balanced and give reasons why you like it. don't just say you like it. there is a trend back against Vuescan, it seems, so tread lightly."

But wow this is one serious trend! 🙂 (very big smiley)

Anyway. I do use Vuescan. I will make a couple of quick responses to folks in particular.

Robert - yes, Vuescan is done by one guy. But so is Qimage. And while Ed Hamrick is not as friendly as Mike Chaney, Qimage is a pretty powerful program as well. Also with a quirky interface 🙂. But I personaly don't see the fact that it's a small company backing the product necessarily being a bad thing. It's not like Microsoft doesn't make bad products that they occaisionally even make worse with updates, and they're a rather large company.

Shutterflower - Vuescan has an undeniably weird interface. This causes two problems. First, the obvious threshold to use is high - it's just hard to use, and it can make you not want to use it. Second, some of the quasi-user-friendly stuff, like the existence of those film profiles, is actualy counter-productive in a lot of ways. You sometimes actually don't want to use the profiles with certain films, or you should ignore the profile for a particular film if it is there to get the best results. The profiles are great tools for changing the curve of a scan, but it's confusing because they are there for some films and not for others.

Also, I find Vuescan FAR better on B&W than NikonScan. I am able to get far more information and a much smoother curve out of film with Vuescan than I can with NikonScan. Also, I have to deal with salt-n-pepper grain with NikonScan that is eliminated without additional tactics in Vuescan.

Finally, the main thing with Vuescan is control and information. Yeah, it's an ugly interface, but if you dig down and really look at what each thing is doing you find out that you can tweak almost everything. Number of passes, long exposure pass, and even change the shape of the curve. Also, you get more information. NikonScan always seemed to clip a little bit out of the ends of the histogram, even if it looked like it didn't. When I opened the file up in PS the historgram was clipped. However, even if it does look like I clipped the ends in Vuescan's histogram preview, there is space left at both eneds when I open up in PS. This means I've gotten every last bit out of the frame.

Finally, once you get all of that down, I can get reproducible quality out of my scans. This means that I can calibrate my entire exposure and development process to my scanner, scene by scene, frame by frame (well, of course I don't develop film frame by frame, but you get the idea). That's some serious power.

Vuescan is not easy to use at first. It's not really that easy to use later, either 🙂. And so I do not fault anyone for saying that it produces bad scans when, in fact, I feel that it's merely an issue of someone not spending enough time with it. Because, again in fact, the reason why people don't spend enough time with it is because it's so hard to use (whoa...that's kinda circular...sorry). But the fact is that it's also quite powerful. And I am personally willing to deal with Vuescan's quirks to get the power and control I need. But others may and do not.

allan

 

[srtiwari]

Helpful note, Allan. I, for one, would like to see if I can extract more info from my frames than the KM software does, but cannot get to that point. I don't even mind the extra effort required, if the difference in the Scans is going to be significant. Perhaps a more user friendly Manual, or tutorial, or tech support, would help. 😕

 

[kaiyen]

A while ago I posted a HUGE post about my scanning workflow. I have gone through all of my posts around February and I can't find it. Argh.

You're absolutely right that the support materials out there suck, and there isn't a good forum. These are the things that separate Qimage, for instance.

Maybe a good chance for an FAQ? Or a wiki? Anyone willing to contribute? Maybe we can have a general scanning wiki, with different sections on the KM, Nikon, Epson, Silverfast and Vuescan software packages (to be fair)?

I'm more than willing to write stuff out.
allan

 

[srtiwari]

You've got my vote for the job, Allan.

 

[BrianShaw]

Maybe a good chance for an FAQ? Or a wiki? Anyone willing to contribute? Maybe we can have a general scanning wiki, with different sections on the KM, Nikon, Epson, Silverfast and Vuescan software packages (to be fair)?

I have little to contribute to this conversation right now, but I'd like to support the idea. I'm as confused as heck about how to get a decent film scan with my flatbed scanner. In fact, I can't seem to get a really good scan of anything. Part of the problem is that I haven't invested the time in experimenting with it. But every negative scan I make appears out of focus, and every print I scan comes out okay-but-not-great.

I'm using Microtek i800 and the software they provided. Vuescan doesn't support this scanner so I haven't tried that; perhaps I should load the Silverfast software?

If this FAQ/wiki idea actually pans out, I'll be interested in participating... both to learn how to use teh equipment I have, and to share whatever I learn through trying.

 

[Simon Larbalestier]

I've found that Vuescan works really well on my Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED the scanned negs have a much wider tonal range than when scanned using the Nikon Scan software included with the scanner. I purchased the full version which allows unlimited upgrades
(there is a new upgrade out now). It takes some getting used too but once you find the settings you like that work with particular films - you can save them as .ini files and call them up very easily. As I only work with B/W film i can't comment on how it works with colour films. It will not allow you to batch process films on this particular scanner like the Nikon Scan software.

 

[erudolph]

Also, I find Vuescan FAR better on B&W than NikonScan.

allan

Why do you suppose that is? And do you think it's scanner model dependent? Could it be different for different generations of Nikon scanners?

Ed

 

[kaiyen]

Ed,
I'm not sure exactly why I have so much trouble with NikonScan. However, I do know that NikonScan seems to make a lot of assumptions over which I have no control. You can't ever get fully manual with it, it seems. It does a little bit of auto levels which can be a bit too aggressive, it has less tolerance for contrasty negatives (the use of film profiles as a tool to combat this is especially useful in Vuescan), etc.

Vuescan also has some fuzzy-logic-y method for producing B&W 48bit color files that are either just a single channel or a mixture of the channels that is supposedly "optimized." I actually have never tested this theory out extensively other than to scan some with a b&w film profile (which produces a color file where all three channels are the same) vs some with the generic color profile and then desaturate and notice no difference.

It's possible that it's scanner hardware dependent, yes. I own only the IV. I am using the latest NikonScan rev.

allan

 

[erudolph]

NikonScan vs Vuescan

NikonScan vs Vuescan

Hi Allan... I've heard tales of clipped histograms using NikonScan and Nikon scanners but that's never been a problem for me. What is a problem, though, is excessive graininess when scanning true B&W film. I've read that this graininess may be due to the light source type, and also due to grain aliasing, which I guess is what happens when the size of the grain becomes approximately equal to the dpi resolution of the scanner. I sure didn't have any salt and pepper grain when I used to scan on an Epson 2450... 🙂

Ed

 

[kaiyen]

Ed,
By all means, if it works for you, then great. I have been perhaps overly evangelical about Vuescan here on RFF, but the bottom line is that it's merely one tool for getting the results one wants.

All scanners have very collimated light compared to, say, a diffusion enlarger. This is akin to a condenser enlarger and will increase grain (and sharpness). Just as folks who use condenser enlargers adjust film and developer choices, one must also do so for scanning. Aliasing has not been a problem for me, at least not in my opinion. I guess it's really an issue of expectations. When I shoot such that I wll get grain (pushing, for instance), then grain is okay. If I am after low grain, I usually go straight to an e-grain or something like Efke 25.

allan

 

[sf]

Wow. I went into this thread telling myself:

Shutterflower - Vuescan has an undeniably weird interface. This causes two problems. First, the obvious threshold to use is high - it's just hard to use, and it can make you not want to use it. Second, some of the quasi-user-friendly stuff, like the existence of those film profiles, is actualy counter-productive in a lot of ways. You sometimes actually don't want to use the profiles with certain films, or you should ignore the profile for a particular film if it is there to get the best results. The profiles are great tools for changing the curve of a scan, but it's confusing because they are there for some films and not for others.

Also, I find Vuescan FAR better on B&W than NikonScan. I am able to get far more information and a much smoother curve out of film with Vuescan than I can with NikonScan. Also, I have to deal with salt-n-pepper grain with NikonScan that is eliminated without additional tactics in Vuescan.

Finally, the main thing with Vuescan is control and information. Yeah, it's an ugly interface, but if you dig down and really look at what each thing is doing you find out that you can tweak almost everything. Number of passes, long exposure pass, and even change the shape of the curve. Also, you get more information. NikonScan always seemed to clip a little bit out of the ends of the histogram, even if it looked like it didn't. When I opened the file up in PS the historgram was clipped. However, even if it does look like I clipped the ends in Vuescan's histogram preview, there is space left at both eneds when I open up in PS. This means I've gotten every last bit out of the frame.

Finally, once you get all of that down, I can get reproducible quality out of my scans. This means that I can calibrate my entire exposure and development process to my scanner, scene by scene, frame by frame (well, of course I don't develop film frame by frame, but you get the idea). That's some serious power.

Vuescan is not easy to use at first. It's not really that easy to use later, either 🙂. And so I do not fault anyone for saying that it produces bad scans when, in fact, I feel that it's merely an issue of someone not spending enough time with it. Because, again in fact, the reason why people don't spend enough time with it is because it's so hard to use (whoa...that's kinda circular...sorry). But the fact is that it's also quite powerful. And I am personally willing to deal with Vuescan's quirks to get the power and control I need. But others may and do not.

allan

I have considered those benefits : curve control on scan, etc., and it seems to me that using the Minolta software (cruddy), and scanning as a "B&W positive", I am able to get every last bit of information from my negs. I then curve in PS to get the perfect levels.

Vuescan is powerful, in that it allows you to modify nearly every aspect of the scanning performance, but I found the controls to be less than adequate to really make use of that power. Those little sliders, and the very harsh curving interface made it less than reasonable for me to really make use of all that power. Of course, I only used it for one day. . . . 😱

The Minolta software allows you to modify a number of factors. Exposure, curving, number of passes, clipping (scan as positive and it does not clip), and a number of other tools. . . . Vuescan just seemed the more effective tool in all the reviews I read. Only upon using it, did I discover that it is not my cup 'o' tea.

The most important thing, to me, in a scanner software is that it allows you to make raw scans. Scans that have not been artificially curved or sharpened or clipped in highlights and shadows.

 

[kaiyen]

I really can't decide if I should use just a blog for this, a wiki, or maybe even just an FAQ. Hm.

Maybe I'll just make a blog. I can put separate pages up for specific things, then I can blog with new information over time. The only downside is that it's not as organized. I can always build a blog feed into a wiki layout, which might be better.

hm.
allan

 

[RObert Budding]

Vuescan is always being patched. And often the patches create new problems. Not much development discipline and QC in evidence. And why do I need OCR software bundled in? Get the current features working first!

Yes, the Silverfast interface is a bit awkward at first. But the software works very well and there is technical support available.