Railfan Technology > How Good Is Vuescan ??

I'm working on some of Rick Burn's slides.  Some have water damage.  This gave me an opportunity to push Vuescan to its limits.

Both of these are scans right from Vuescan with no photo-editing. The scanner is a Nikon Super Coolscan5000 ED.  The scans were done at 4000 dpi and reduced 2000 pixels wide.  Then TO software reduced them to 1000 pixels wide.

For the first scan I had none of Vuescan's filters turned on.  The water damage is quite visible in the sky.

For the second scan I turned the filters Infrared Clean to "Heavy", Grain Reduction to "Heavy", and turned Sharpen "on".

What do you think?  Note the face of the first unit was cleaned up.

Marty Bernard



 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/17/17 23:53 by MartyBernard.

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Other than reducing the contrast somewhat, it is a remarkable improvement as far as the water damage is concerned. I cannot see any real loss of detail either.

VueScan is the best scanner software and it's inexpensive.   It's a win-win situation.

KG

I have been especially pleased with VueScan's ability to filter out the fungus spotting that seems increasingly prevalent on slides.

Gordon

I've been using Vuescan with my Nikon Coolscan 5000 scanner, and I've been very happy with it.  I've been scanning Kodachromes, which come out great except with a slight bluish tone that I have to correct using Photoshop.  Otherwise, no complaints.  Dust speck removal is very good.
- Eric Blasko

With this latest batch of color slides taken by Dave England, I have tried my Plustek 8200i, using both its OEM Quickscan software, and Vuescan. The results have been diappointing. Maybe the lamp in the Plustek is getting old.

So I tried the 35mm slide holder for my Epson V700 flatbed, and its OEM software. The scans actually look better than those from the Plustek dedicated film scanner.

I noticed this message from Marty, so I tried Vuescan and the Epson. After fiddling with the settings, including 'Light' Infrared Clean on the Filter tab, along with figuring out the batch settings (the Epson holder holds 12 slides), I have to say that the scans are amazing. All 12 slides take a while, a bit over 3 minutes each, including a second scan for each one to apply the infrared correction. I guess I'll be setting my Plustek aside, since the results lately have been underwhelming. I was always concerned about the focus for scannning slides on the Epson, but it looks like Vuescan uses its own driver, and a different focus setting.

The pro version I bought of Vuescan back in 2007, with lifetime updates, is turning out to be the best $79 I've spent in a long time.

Don Strack



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/18/17 15:50 by donstrack.

Don,

I have had two Plusteks.  I think both are in my closet.  I was not happy with the quality of the scans.  I ran them with Vuescan. 

Most of us have spent thousands of dollars on slide film, film processing, gasoline, cameras, etc.  To scan our slides on a poor scanner with the manufacturer's software is not too bright.  

The best feature of Vuescan is the technical support.  Email them and usually that evening Ed Hamrick, the developer of the software, will respond.

Note, the Nikon Coolscan5000 ED does the infrared scan and the visual scan at the same time.  No need for a second pass.

Several folks have told me they don't do noise reduction because it reduced the detail in the scan.  I think my test shows that with a little sharpening any lost dstail is satisfactorly returned.

Also my test showed is that there is no excuse for posting dirty scans.

Thanks for your comments.

Marty

As Don said, the results have a lot to do with the scanner.

Vuescan is very powerful and can breathe new life into old scanners, but the hardware has a lot to do with the end result. I personally did not like the results from Vuescan driving my Epson V700, with either reflectives, negs, or transparencies. The EpsonScan software works far better for me although I'm underwhelmed by the quality of transparency scans regardless of the driver with the V700. However Vuescan has made my Minolta DiMage 5400 II a powerful tool that produces incredible scans that are only rivalled by drum scans. The Minolta software, before it became completely obsolete, never produced scans as good as Vuescan does using the same hardware.

I've been using my Epson V700 since 2014 and like it but there are some issues. When editing in Professional mode and
​using Dust removal or Digital ICE, the scan time is quite lengthy and I found the overall image quality suffers. The dust and
scratches do diminish but focus is also adversely affected so I've been using the band-aid or clone stamp quite a lot. Maybe I'm missing some step.
From what I'm reading here maybe Vuescan would help. If I install Vuescan am I married to it or can it be turned off at will?
What is the cost of the program? TIA

​Charlie
 

What you will have on your computer are two drivers for your scanner.  You can choose either one before you start to scan.  VueScan has a trial period.

I have used VueScan on an Epson Flatbed.  Since VueScan was already on my compter when I connected it to the Epson it went to the VueScan web site, downloaded the proper driver, and I was ready to go in a couple of minutes.

Marty



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/18/17 23:53 by MartyBernard.

cewherry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I've been using my Epson V700 since 2014 and like
> it but there are some issues. When editing in
> Professional mode and
> ​using Dust removal or Digital ICE, the scan
> time is quite lengthy and I found the overall
> image quality suffers. The dust and
> scratches do diminish but focus is also adversely
> affected so I've been using the band-aid or clone
> stamp quite a lot. Maybe I'm missing some step.
> From what I'm reading here maybe Vuescan would
> help. If I install Vuescan am I married to it or
> can it be turned off at will?
> What is the cost of the program? TIA
>
> ​Charlie
>  

I use the 700 with the standard software also finding the dust removal problematic.  I only scan a  few as needed so time is not a big issue.
I try to clean the best I can before  using several techniques and then clean up in P/S.  Some times I will double scan turning the dust removal on for the sky  and combining the images.  I have a plustec also and did not find an advantage so it sits in the bag.  I guess I shoud try Vue scan but the std Epson seems to work and I am not too big on fixing something that is not broken.  I learned using P/S and bridge so have never used Lightroom. 

Bob

 

If your scanner has no infrared scanning capability, VueScan or anyother software can't do dust removal. In my Test above I did no pre-cleaning of the slide.

Marty

The infrared sucks!  Colors are washed out or are compromised..  why waste your time..  It is meant for someone who is too lazy to clean their slides or do the real work in Photoshop..
 

Then why didn't it wash out the colors in my test photos posted above?

Marty