Georg N. Nyman PhD.

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Scanning at its Best? -- Software, which is fast, reliable, powerful, flexible and  - inexpensive!

Let me first make it clear - I am not paid for to write this statement - after having used this program for well over two years now, I was not asked to write this statement either - this conclusion is my personal one, based upon many hundreds of scans I made with it - print scans, documents, photos, slides, negatives - 24x36, 24x68, 4.5x6, 6x6, 6x7, 6x9, 6x12 and 4x5inch.

So, where does one get this „super" Software -- well, by downloading from the website of the program at http://www.hamrick.com.

You can download a trial version which is fully functional or buy either the "Standard version" or the "Professional version" (that is the one I am talking about) at a very reasonable price. 

The starting page of the website offers you to select the operating system--and yes, there is also an identically excellent version for Linux distros, which makes this SW even more attractive (at least for me and some others). 

One of the important differences between the standard version and the professional one is that with the latter one, you can make raw scan files, make ICC profiles and calibrate your scanner with IT-8 targets. I suggest to all users to get the professional version, it is really worth it as this is a very attractive feature, especially if you want to be among those users who do care about precise and correct color and contrast. 

The current version (as of November 2004) is version 8.1.5 which was released in October and contains several improvements and enhancements compared to the previous ones. My review is based upon this version, which is the current one. 

Downloading the SW is fast--the program is small, just over 2MB but as I said before, very powerful (it supports over 350 scanners!!) and flexible. You can find the detailed list of enhancements and improvements of version 8.1.5 on the web, so I want to start the review with the installed professional version, its features and benefits.

Page 1, " INPUT"

When the program opens the start page for the first time, a simple menu with preset values presents itself to the user (this level is called „Basic") --it is assumed that you want to scan a photo, in color, from a flatbed scanner, store it as a file, the media size will be auto-selected and the options bar is set to basic.

 That is fine for beginners and those who do not want to deal with selecting the various input, output, scanning, format etc options.

The next level offered is „Standard" (click on the options selector) and now you can select the bits per pixel level, the preview= and scan resolution, the orientation of the image and several other important parameters. Still easy to understand but already quite a lot of possibilities offered.

The most detailed level offered on the starting page with all available options to select is „Advanced" but on the starting page, the difference between Standard and Advanced is not that strikingly obvious compared to the other pages one should open during the setup and working process.
 

The various options allow several individual selections--one example: „Quality" has the options--email, web, print, edit, archive-- a very practical solution for preselecting standards for the quality of the scan. Both options for resolution--the scan resolution and the preview resolution can be either set to „auto" or to custom values--I usually let the program decide on the preview resolution and for the scan resolution, I choose the value myself, depending on the task and input source.

The source can be either the scanner - in my case, as you can see, the Epson 4870 Photo, or, and this is another attractive feature, also a digital camera. On the program's website, you find a list of the cameras, which are supported for raw file source input - it is a very long list!

The „autofocus" options are important in my opinion--sometimes, it is necessary to have an AF system which operates permanently and this is an option available--among other ones which are AF set by the preview, during scan, always and manual.
One feature, I like very much--it is important for those scans, which are done from negatives or positives which have a very large amount of contrast, highlights and deep shadows, this feature is the ability to scan the same area more than once and combine these scans into one output image. If a reflective target is scanned, one can select up to 16(!) passes and if a transparent target is scanned, an additional option comes up, which allows a long-exposure scan on top of the multi-scan option. These two options are significantly reducing the scan noise of the final output, thus improving the quality of the finalized scan significantly. I have applied this multi-scan feature at a rather difficult slide, which I recently took inside a Denver Shopping Mall and the results can be seen here:   MULTI_SCAN - Reduce noise and Improve Scans
A very nice feature is the option „lock image color" - it means that you define one color/exposure correction setting and can use the exactly same setting for the next scan. This is very useful if you have more than one slide/negative/print to scan which belongs to the same scene and was taken in the same light. It make sure that all the scans with this option enabled will have the same color rendition, independent on individually dominating color of the various targets.

If you have bought the professional version of VUESCAN, then you can find among the options for „Task" not only „scan to file" and „copy to printer", but also the various profiling and calibration tasks like „profile scanner", profile printer", „profile film" and „make IT-8 target".

Here is an important and unique advantage of VUESCAN over even top-end programs like SilverFast. SilverFast 6Ai, which is capable of these tasks as well, costs 4-6 times more than VUESCAN and SilverFast SE, which is usually included in better scanner packages, does not include these important tasks.
Epson's own scanner software, not only the one for the well accepted 3200 Photo, but also the one for the 4870 Photo does not offer these tasks either.

Page 2, "CROP"

On this page, you can again choose the three before mentioned levels of sophistication, from „basic" to „advanced".
Basic--everything is automatic, automatic determination of crop size as well as the position of the target.

By pressing „shift" and placing the mouse pointer inside the crop box, you can move it unchanged from one target to the next one.

But as soon as you select the level „Standard" or „Advanced", more settings appear--"restore color", „restore fading" and „grain reduction". All these options are pretty important and especially grain reduction can be of interest for high speed film targets.

Restore color/fading - doesn't this remind you the „ROC" option, which was developed by ASF (Now called Eastman Kodak Austin Development Center), a company which had been bought some time ago by Kodak ?  Yes, it means that you can restore faded colors quite nicely. VUESCAN has its own algorithms and the mouth to mouth verdict says, that their algorithms are at least as good as the ones from ASF...I leave it up to you, the user, to decide which is better if at all. This enhancement algorithm works for transparent targets as well as for opaque ones (photos, prints etc) and what it does is to correct the overall color balance back to an assumed normal one. I have tried it out and you can take a look and see how it works here: COLOR RESTORATION PAGE

Page 4, "COLOR"

This is one which needs a very close look at to understand how powerful this program is. In its „Basic" setting, you can adjust the overall color balance to certain preset values like „Neutral", „Landscape", „Portrait", „Night", „Fluorescent" or let it be set automatically in the position „Auto levels".

The overall brightness can be adjusted from the preset value of 1 to make the scan brighter or darker, according to your liking. There are four more settings, which you can adjust--the color spaces selectors. As you might know, no color is the same for different devices and so it is important to select the proper color space, as example AdobeRGB for printer, output and monitor color space and for the scanner the built-in one. But if you got ICC profiles for your scanner and for your monitor, you can select these settings to get a better overall color reproduction. (How to get easily and without a lot of knowledge about equipment to ICC profiles for all your devices, I will explain and demonstrate in a tutorial).
When you switch from the „Basic" setting to „Standard" or even to „Advanced", then the full menu opens up and you can work with ICC profiles for all your equipment from input to output.

As mentioned in the screenshot box, I have added on a separate page an example how this restoration of color, adjustment of the various color parameters and the fading compensation works - please go to this page here: COLOR RESTORATION PAGE

The possibilities of improvement of scanned targets are manifold and as an example, I have enhanced a very old B&W photograph - it happens to be a picture of my late grandmother driving her first car, a Panhard ( I hope I remember correctly ). The photograph is probably about 90 years old, I do not know it exactly. How this photograph was improved you can see on that webpage here: B&W ENHANCEMENT PAGE

Now you can also determine the best black point and white point setting for a target, based upon the preview scan as well as the individual brightness values for the three main colors, red, green and blue. To see if there is any color out of the gamut range, you can switch on the „pixel color" option and for the very precise among you, you can set the %amount of permitted clipping on both ends of the histogram--to see what areas are too dark and which ones are too bright, exceeding the dynamic range of the scanner.

The above screenshot was taken for the setting "Reflective target" and if you switch to a transparent target ( choice of slide, color negative or BW negative, on the "Color" page, more options appear - allowing you to select the brand of the film, its name and speed - a very attractive feature for almost all routine scans, which do not require a 100,00% color rendition according to ICC profiles.  Here you see the settings for a color slide film, with the vendor name not yet selected:

And here the same page for a color negative film with the Fuji NPS 160ASA selected:

You can also see that I have already selected ICC profiles for the scanner, the printer and the monitor. How I have done this, I shall explain later in the review. My first choice for calibration and profiling is the Gretag Macbeth Eye-One system, which is easy to use, fast and reliable in the results. I will present a detailed review of this system on my website within short - including a comparison with the X-rite Pulse, provided the company sticks to their promise to lend me one of their new systems for this comparison and review.

Page 5, "OUTPUT"

The fifth and second to last page of the program deals with how you want to store your scans, which file format and which file size. In its „Basic" setting, files are stored as JPEG images unless you choose differently and the document folder is usually the folder which contains the pictures folder.

But as always, you can change all these settings of course to match your personal preferences. Another nice feature of VUESCAN is its ability to simultaneously store a scan not only as JPEG but also as TIFF. I am not aware of any other program which can do this without rescanning the target. This is one of my personal preferences as for a quick orientation, I usually use the smaller JPEG file and once I have decided what I want to do and how I want to enhance the scanned image, I open the TIFF file and apply all the enhancements on that file.

The files names are given automatically with an increasing file number so that you need not to worry about overwriting previous scans ( as long as you do not close the program and reopen it..) but as usual, you can assign any name to a file and decide if you want a JPEG file only or both or the TIFF file only. When you upgrade your option level to „Standard", additional menus open up--you now can add a description to the scan and your copyright and decide what % of compression you want to allow for the JPEG files and if you want to store it as color or B&W scan plus you can add an index file and a log file.

The highest level, „Advanced" adds the profiles, size reduction and the TIFF multi page option.

Page 6, "PREFERENCES"

This final page enables you to set all parameters of the entire program and all processes according to your requirements and as before, you can start with the „Basic" level, which contains only the button for an external viewer, everything else is preset to very reasonable values and assumptions.

In the Output-Standard mode, the menu opens up more information to choose from:

One example for values which are preset - the overwrite file option is set to warning before overwriting. The full menu is activated in the „Advanced" setting and it is very complete--from a beep once the scan is finished over memory management to the various other settings of the used memory, applied dimensions etc

The watermark feature, which is mentioned in the screenshot above, is a nice protection against unauthorized use of a scan or to label unfinished work. How it looks, you can see here: WATERMARK

Scrolling down on the menu options, you get to the bottom part of them which are the following ones:

After all these explanations, you might ask--is it not possible to just get through all these settings without having to read a usual manual? Yes of course, the current program version has a feature incorporated which is called "Guide me" - at the bottom of the page.

As soon as you press this button, you are confronted with very simple and clear questions regarding the task of your work, how and what you want to do etc. VUESCAN then automatically determines what is best for this task and sets the parameters accordingly. A very nice feature to start scanning and learn the various options.

In addition, you can evoke the built-in help function by pressing F1 or go online and read the tutorials and useful hints.

KODAK Q-60 COLOR TARGET

To show the flow of the scan work on an example, I have added a separate page which documents all steps from preview to the end of the workflow. I used the Kodak Q-60 Color Target a transparency target in 4x5inch format to demonstrate the whole process. You can load this page here: Scanning of a Kodak Q-60 Color Target

FEATURE COMPARISON

A comprehensive comparison by the author of the SW, Ed Hamrick, is found on this page here: FEATURE COMPARISON

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Last modified: 19-May-2007