What is your favorite scanning software?

What is your favorite scanning software?

  • Vuescan

    Votes: 168 50.8%

  • Silverfast

    Votes: 67 20.2%

  • Epson Scan

    Votes: 65 19.6%

  • Other (please state)

    Votes: 31 9.4%
  • Total voters
    331
EDIT 1-11-2014.... Epson Scan

EDIT 1-11-2014.... Epson Scan

Use Silverfast 8/64bit with my Plustek 7300.... But, I may upgrade to the Plustek 8300 Scanner... It has built-in 64bit drivers for the hardware

It a good program... BUT, they changed how the "Preview" works for the Sharping tool...
  • Old) Scans a very small area to see the effects, takes about 15s tops.
  • New) Has to scan the whole Negative/Slide before you can judge the effect... over 3min in most cases
I prefer the old software (V-6) sharpening preview over the new preview as far as the time required to see the effects.
But I prefer the Newer GUI of V-8 over V-6.

EDIT: 01-11-2014

I now use Epson Scan with my Epson V700...
Simple to use
Plenty of pre-scan adjustments
Excellent with B&W negatives in 16bit gray scale
Love the "Load it and leave it" auto framing carriers..

Scan time is fast enough at 3200dpi.. but, I can load 24 negatives (4 rows of 6), make a few adjustments for each frame, Scan, and walk away, to do something else if I need to.
 
In most cases, the software supplied with higher end scanners does a pretty good job without much effort.

I do appreciate that Vuescan and Silverfast support scanners on OSes never supported by the original makers and improve on the mediocre film scan results the original software for consumer flatbeds tend to deliver. But both need far more attention (and have a higher potential for disasters) than the original software for my scanners, whether Nikon or Linotype...
 
Having used NikonScan, EpsonScan, various evaluation versions of SilverFast, my favorite scanning software is Vuescan Professional.

The problem with scanning, is that novice users expect perfection straight out of the scanner, this is rarely achieved.

There are simply too many variables (dye fading, white balance, over/under exposure, poor development, etc, etc) that cannot be compensated for using canned profiles. (This is especially true for color negatives.)

As such, post-processing scanned images (using a competent photo editor) is non-optional.

The beauty of Vuescan is that it is extremely easy to generate an image that is amenable to the post-processing step.
 
Benjamin Marks said:
Chris: I have just started using Vuescan with Nikon scanners. Care to share your preferred method for scanning BW negs (e.g. Tri-x)? Any benefit to scanning as a 16-bit color negative and then gradually subtracting information until you have what you like?

Ben Marks
Click to expand...

Ben, here's a tutorial on my website that explains step by step how I scan with Vuescan and my Nikon 8000ED.

There is no benefit to scanning a black and white film in color, all it does is make the file three times larger. Scan in 16 bit grayscale. The scan will look pretty flat and lifeless, because the scanner's dynamic range is optimized for scanning slides, but this is good....it makes it easier to extract detail from very contrasty images. You'll have to do some curves adjustments in Photoshop to bring out the tonality. The tutorial on my site shows examples.
 
Benjamin Marks said:
............... Any benefit to scanning as a 16-bit color negative and then gradually subtracting information until you have what you like?
Click to expand...

Ben: remember that your scanner hardware will always scan a red channel, a blue channel and a green channel no matter what settings your scanner driver (i.e. Vuescan) is at. With a b&w neg, these channels are similar because there is no color data. This unmanipulated data is transferred back to the scanner driver in the CPU.

Your scanner driver can either output each of these similar channels as an RGB file or merge them into a grayscale file for output. Vuescan weights the merge in favor of the green channel which typically is cleaner. The primary difference is the RGB file is 3X the size but contains no more useful data. Sometimes this is referred to as a 48 bit file vs. a 16 bit file.

The old urban legend that "scanning as a color file gives more data" just does not hold up. It only gives you a bigger file.

BTW same applies to scanning as a positive vs. negative as all the scanner really does is shine light through the film and measure shadows on the other side. It does not know nor care if it shining a light through a positiver or negative. Some of the old scanner drivers did a better job converting and outputting a file as a negative or positive but Vuescan does both with the same level of precision.

Lastly, Chris' point about the best scans looking crappy right out of the scanner is critical. Too many people still err is evaluating the quality of the scan file with how good it looks right out of the scanner and not the final output.
 
Nice post Bob. I doubt the myths/gospel of "scan as a positive and invert" or "scan as a color negative and modify to black and white" will ever go away, but your post may decrease the time and harddrive space wasted by some.

I wasted time trying both, but from comparisons, it was clear the data wasn't that different, the files just looked different. Files from the mythical approaches, once adjusted, yielded similar images, but required more steps and manipulation. The extra steps may have yielded better files, but that could be due to the inherent need for extra processing, which almost all files benefit from, whatever way you scan.
 
As to the original question, Nikonscan on a Coolscan 9000 has been rock-solid on my Macs for the all the years I've had it.

I did have problems with a Coolscan 5000, that I initially thought was a Nikonscan problem, but after trying on different computers, it was clear that it was a USB-related problem. Once I had it hooked up to a Mac with a stable USB setup, it was rock-solid too.
 
For Coolscan 5000: Silverfast. The IR channel when using VueScan is effectively useless.

I still manage to use the Nikon Scan software with Windoze 7 64-bit.
 
patrickjames said:
There are a few misleading statements in this thread. If you want the best final image quality it pays to take the time and get the scan as close to what you want without dumping any tonality at the ends. Making flat scans is okay (or even desired) for proof scans, but leaves a little to be desired for final scans, especially if there is going to be manipulation of the image.

Scanning a black and white neg as a color neg or transparency doesn't get you "more information", BUT it does let you choose the color channel your image comes from. All color channels are not equal. If the software you are using "averages" the channels to make a greyscale you are not getting optimal quality. Scanning in RGB lets you choose the sharpest channel. Vuescan has this facility built in so you can go straight to greyscale choosing whatever channel you prefer.
Click to expand...


Completely agree. But nuances and details don't make it on Google searches; it's "best software ever" where it's at, and you won't convince those who get Good-Enough results otherwise.
 
I use the Nikon Scan with my Coolscan 9000. I bought Vuescan with the lifetime upgrades, but I find the interface confusing, so I haven't used it. I'll have to, though, once my XP machine dies and I have to scan with a later version of Windows.

I scan my black and white in color because doing it in gray scale yields terrible results.
 
Lawrence A. said:
I use the Nikon Scan with my Coolscan 9000. I bought Vuescan with the lifetime upgrades, but I find the interface confusing, so I haven't used it. I'll have to, though, once my XP machine dies and I have to scan with a later version of Windows.
Click to expand...

Well, you'll have some amount of time, then. Nikon Scan works nicely in Win7/8 with the generic SCSI driver supplied with Vuescan.
 
http://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/html/vuesc21.htm#topic18

Scanning Black/White Negative Film

If you're scanning black/white negative film, first check to see if the film looks gray or orange to the naked eye. If it looks gray, set Input | Media to "B/W negative" and if it looks orange, set it to "Color negative". Then go to the Color tab and choose a Black/White film type. If you can't find a film type that exactly matches the film you're using, experiment with the Kodak T-Max settings.
On most scanners, setting Input | Media to "Color negative" will increase the green exposure time by 2.5x and the blue exposure time by 3.5x. This results in adjusting for the green and blue absorption by the orange mask of the film. If the film doesn't have an orange mask, then using "Color negative" will result in a raw scan file that looks very cyan.
Click to expand...

There's a little truth in both ways. I've always had better luck with just scanning black and white as black and white though. I usually shoot T-Max, so maybe that's just the best setting for the film I shoot.
 
I'm not going to vote here. I use silverfast, but would never endorse it. The results are probably about as good as you can get, but the user interface is just awful. I was hoping version 8 would be better, but no it was just different. Another steep learning curve.
 
Gabriel M.A. said:
For Coolscan 5000: Silverfast. The IR channel when using VueScan is effectively useless.

I still manage to use the Nikon Scan software with Windoze 7 64-bit.
Click to expand...

Actually, the Vuescan IR channel works very well (though like most things in life, it is best used in moderation).

It is true that the IR cleaning in earlier versions of Vuescan was not as effect as that in NikonScan, but this was resolved long ago.

Vuescan is actively supported by it's developer so what was true yesterday may not necessarily be true tomorrow. NikonScan on the other hand..., well, lets not even go there!
 
I use epson scan for 'digital contacts' and web use with my V700 as it's pretty easy to use for batch scanning. For rescans of colour negatives I want to print I use Silverfast SE because of the film profiles which can really help getting the best out of the negs. My Silverfast version is not very stable i.e. crashes sometimes, though.
 
patrickjames said:
There are a few misleading statements in this thread. If you want the best final image quality it pays to take the time and get the scan as close to what you want without dumping any tonality at the ends. Making flat scans is okay (or even desired) for proof scans, but leaves a little to be desired for final scans, especially if there is going to be manipulation of the image.
Click to expand...


Absolutely false. The scans come out flat, whether you like it or not. That's how the hardware works. No software can change that. Applying adjustments in the scan software does the exact same thing as applying them in photoshop, except Photoshop allows more precise and extensive controls.
 
Chris is 100% correct. The actual data that comes out of your scanner hardware is the same no matter what you do. You cannot change it. Everything else is software adjustments of the raw scan data. You are better doing those adjustments in your image editor where you can see what you are doing than even controllable scanner software such a Vuescan.

Quote:
Originally Posted by patrickjames
There are a few misleading statements in this thread. If you want the best final image quality it pays to take the time and get the scan as close to what you want without dumping any tonality at the ends. Making flat scans is okay (or even desired) for proof scans, but leaves a little to be desired for final scans, especially if there is going to be manipulation of the image.

__________________
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
Absolutely false. The scans come out flat, whether you like it or not. That's how the hardware works. No software can change that. Applying adjustments in the scan software does the exact same thing as applying them in photoshop, except Photoshop allows more precise and extensive controls.
Click to expand...
 
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