Scanning - Vuescan or Silverfast

[Gid]

I'm currently experimenting with my Epson 4990. I've tried using the Epson interface and Silverfast SE and I've just started to look at Vuescan. Any experience based views on Silverfast versus Vuescan? Any other software I should look at?

So far, I've been reasonably impressed with the results from Silverfast - seems to handle colour better than the Epson software, but that may just be my inexperience, and scans seem to be less grainy (noisy). I'm considering Silverfast AI and would just like some feedback before I drop any money.

Thanks

 

[Todd.Hanz]

download the vuescan trial, it's free, all your scans will have watermarks on them until you buy the program but it will allow you to try it out. I use Vuescan and like it alot, not sure about Silverfast.

Todd

 

[Gid]

Thanks Todd. I downloaded the trial earlier tonight and have had a quick look - much more experimenting to do though.

 

[bmattock]

I run Linux. My choice is ... uh... vuescan. In any case, I like it!

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[aad]

Funny-I bought Vuescan, but I'm not liking it all that much. Maybe it's the Mac.

 

[Flinor]

I used Silverfast with a Microtek scanner that took me a while to figure out was defective so this is not the definitive answer but my impression of Silverfast was a steep learning curve. I've gotten a Nikon scanner since and it's fine with Vuescan. To me, Vuescan is easier to learn and more intuitive. Of course, the fact that no matter what I did with that Microtek gave me bad scans is coloring my opinion.

 

[kmack]

Funny-I bought Vuescan, but I'm not liking it all that much. Maybe it's the Mac.

Hummm... I use Vuescan with my Dual Scan III on Mac and I find the quality of scans to be quite good. I prefer it to the Konica software that came with the scanner.

I am an old Unix geek so the interface does not bother me as it may bother some.

 

[wintoid]

I've an Epson 4990 and Vuescan (plus the Epson software and Silverfast SE which came with the scanner).

Vuescan is great but it's fiddly with the 4990. You can't expect to leave it batch scanning 24 frames of 35mm because it's really hard to get them all lined up right. In general with Vuescan I use it for scanning individual frames, and I get better results from it than either of the other two packages.

The Epson software is great when you just want to slap down 24 frames and leave it chuntering away scanning them, and the results are pretty decent. I played with Silverfast and didn't really rate it.

The ONE thing I miss in Vuescan vs Silverfast is the film profiles. Vuescan has film profiles for lots of colour films, but the only BW Ilford film it has is XP2Super, and no profiles for Fuji BW films. It has SOME Kodak profiles, including about 8 for TMax100 in different developers at different contrasts, but those are not what I use.

 

[martin-f5]

that's true, useing viewscan you don't realy nead a profile for the different sw-films.
But important for getting the best quality you should use color negativ as source and than t-max at the color settings. Play with black point and white point.
Try out the gamma settings 0.40, 0.55 and so on.
Scanning bw-negativs with viewscann is similar to the darkroom experiance, you can get more the 5 different pics from one negativ.

regards

 

[Gid]

Thanks guys. I'll take a closer look at Vuescan over the next couple of days.

 

[Kev T]

Hi,

I use Silverfast AI Studio pro with both a Microtek 120 film scanner as well as the Epson 4990... With regards the steep learning curve, Silverfast provides a comprehensive 'Help' with interactive faetures, so that is ok, but they could have used a more attractive voice than the flat sounding German engineer's voice!

Be adviced that Silverfast Ai is CPU & Ram hungry, so a 4 pass 6 x 7cm scan does take some time especially if ICE is activated... If possible, go with AMD or Intel Dual cores with 2 -3 Gb Ram.

Kev

 

[sf]

Is Silverfast or Vuescan worth the cost to someone who works with CS2?

 

[martin-f5]

I think you need one of them to get perfect scans,
the scans are the base for editing in cs

 

[Simon Larbalestier]

Is Silverfast or Vuescan worth the cost to someone who works with CS2?

FWIW Vuescan works better for me with TX on my Coolscan 5000 than the NikonScan it comes with, and i find the negs only need a slight tweak in the curve in CS2.

 

[jamiewakeham]

As an aside, do people generally think Silverfast Ai is worth buying if your scanner came bundled with the SE version? So far as I can make out, the film profiles are the difference between the two. Probably I'll scan equal amounts of colour neg, slide and B&W... can I just effectively learn to tune for each film in PS?

Cheers
Jamie

 

[fgianni]

I like the Silverfast interface, but I get better results with vuescan, expecially with Chromes Silverfast fails miserably.
Also Vuescan is cheaper and if you buy the pro version ($99) upgrades are free for life (which probably means until Ed decides to retire)

 

[sfb_dot_com]

I use a KM SD IV and am still using the software that came with it if only because I now have a half decent workflow for it. I would say however that I will probably migrate to Vuescan when funds allow, and I have sufficient time and energy to invest in undertaking the steep learning curve that goes with it. I have also tried Silverfast, and was deeply disappointed with it, although the interface is prettier than the others, I don't feel it has the functionality to match. I would say that none of the programs covers all the bases, although I find the metaphor used by the KM software easiest to get to grips with. On the other hand it does let itself down quite badly in some areas. Vuescan is definitely the power users tool in this case, and Silverfast the tarts handbag. Mind you powerful is not from me the compliment it might appear as I am old enough to remember the days of command line computing. In those days the comment 'Powerful' actually meant difficult to use, buggy and unpredictable, sometimes all three at once.

Andy

 

[JOE1951]

I've used Vuescan and on a Heidleberg Saphir with MacOS-X at work and both Silverfast Ai and Vuescan on Epson 3200 at home on WinXP.

I would have to say Silverfast has the edge for me. I find it faster to use and the scan quality excellent and features (dust/scratch removal, batch scanning) versatile. I work with a variety of images, mostly 35mm colour/B&W neg but also 4x5 B/W neg to Super8 film both positive/neg, colour/b&w.

When I worked at a university, I used Vuescan to scan a wide variety of films used for scientific purposes (x-rays, electron microscope negs)! Usually very dense or extremely contrasty images that I would have to scan in RAW and work on them in photoshop. I like RAW and it is extremely usefull, but it requires too much post-processing for what I had to do. Three months ago, I had to scan 250 5x8 geological x-rays. Thank god for Photoshop batch processing!!!!

Silverfast seemed to have no problems with these images, but I wish it had a RAW scans as an option.

Vuescan is cheaper and certainly worth it if you have multiple scanners or upgrade to a newer scanner, as it will handle a lot of scanners.

With Silverfast, they want you to purchase an other copy of the software if you use a different scanner. I didn't use Silverfast for the Heidleberg at work as the price was hundreds of dollars more for the same software I use for the Epson!!!

my $0.02

 

[jano]

Funny-I bought Vuescan, but I'm not liking it all that much. Maybe it's the Mac.

It takes a while to get used to the interface. I don't like it for color yet, but for b&w, it is really good for getting each detail out and then working with the fil in your choice of editor.

Martin-f5 wrote that you should use color negative.. uh uh, don't do that. Because you may forget to turn off corrections (white balance stuff), and you'll likely end up with an image with clipped channels. Scan as color positive if you *really really* want to get every single detail. At least, that's what happened to me this weekend doing tests. I resulted in just sticking with scanning as b&w.

 

[martin-f5]

scanning in bw mode you only get a monochrom file,
so ps or cs will not let chose wich channel you want to edit.
If you want the scharpest bw image you have to use only the green channel because it has most details.
That's the reason why you should scan in color mode.

Jano your right, the user has to check white balance and other stuff,
but I think that's no prob.