Alternative scanning software for Epson V550

I just find the workflow too intensive if that makes sense

Perfect sense and its the reason I just use the provided Epson software, seems perfectly ok to me although i do admit i mainly use it to scan medium and large format negatives. If ive any 35mm that needs to be given special attention then it goes off to filmdev.
At some point I will give the better scanning holders a try as the neg carriers are fairly pants.

Andy
 
Perfect sense and its the reason I just use the provided Epson software, seems perfectly ok to me although i do admit i mainly use it to scan medium and large format negatives. If ive any 35mm that needs to be given special attention then it goes off to filmdev.
At some point I will give the better scanning holders a try as the neg carriers are fairly pants.

Andy

I gave it a good half an hour to try and get a half decent scan and got no where near. If it’s that difficult to work out and mess on with every time I scan a strip, I’d rather just use Epson Scan.
 
I gave it a good half an hour to try and get a half decent scan and got no where near. If it’s that difficult to work out and mess on with every time I scan a strip, I’d rather just use Epson Scan.

How long did it take you to learn to ride a bike? or drive a car?
How difficult is it now.?
Some people find it easier to just walk or take the bus.
 
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I found Silverfast to be awful, however, after an hour or so it's a doddle.

Click Transparency (change to the relevant option), Click Positive (change to the relevant option), change option for Colour or B&W, selected scanner DPI and turn off USM which takes 10/15 seconds or so.

Select Prescan, then Frame and use an automated option to detect the frames (you can quickly draw a box around any missed frames and copy the options to them, it only takes a few seconds).

Select a frame, click the zoom button, adjust the frame lines to the area you want to scan and hit the zoom button to zoom out and move on to the next frame.

It's pretty quick unless you start delving into lots of the other options which a lot of people probably don't need IMO.
 
How long did it take you to learn to ride a bike? or drive a car?
How difficult is it now.?
Some people find it easier to just walk or take the bus.
Would that car be a user-friendly semi-automatic one, or would it be a fully manual one with wind up windows, no power steering, hand-operated fiddle brakes, no message display read-outs just old fashioned dials and warning lights, and a paper OS map instead of a sat-nav?

One might be more fun to drive once you finally get the hang of how to do that well, and it might be more effective in certain circumstances, but I'm afraid I'd much prefer something that's easy and comfortable to drive, handle and park for everyday motoring! :whistle:
 
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Would that car be a user-friendly semi-automatic one, or would it be a fully manual one with wind up windows, no power steering, hand-operated fiddle brakes, no message display read-outs just old fashioned dials and warning lights, and a paper OS map instead of a sat-nav?

One might be more fun to drive once you finally get the hang of how to do that well, and it might be more effective in certain circumstances, but I'm afraid I'd much prefer something that's easy and comfortable to drive, handle and park for everyday motoring! :whistle:

I like mod cons but manual gears on a car.
 
So a bit like going into 'Professional' mode in Epson scanner software then? ;)

I have never used epson software for scanning, I have always used vuescan pro with all my scanners.
That way I only have to learn new features as they are introduced.
When vuescan came out they only had the full version, they dumbed it down and cut features and abilities to offer the standard version.
I tried the silverfast , minolta, and cannon versions supplied with scanners, they were simple enough but pretty dire.
 
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I must admit, although I am new to home development and scanning, I have not found any major issues with Epson Scan software so far. The first time I scanned colour I couldn't quite understand why they didn't look right, but since learning how to adjust the individual RGB curves before scanning to account for colour casts I have been happy with both colour & B&W. I always use LR afterwards though to get the best from the scan.

One thing that does bug me about Epson Scan software, why does the output range default to 10 to 225 (or whatever it is)? There must be good reason for this, but if you are post processing afterwards, surely you want to get as much information out of the scan as possible?

I had my first 'dense' scan today and that did cause me some issues, but I think I just seriously messed the exposure up :(

EDIT: Also, while we are on the subject - is there any benefit in scanning flat (input and output set to 0 - 255) then adjusting levels in LR or PS, over getting the input histogram close to what we want in the scan software, then tweaking in LR or PS?
 
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EDIT: Also, while we are on the subject - is there any benefit in scanning flat (input and output set to 0 - 255) then adjusting levels in LR or PS, over getting the input histogram close to what we want in the scan software, then tweaking in LR or PS?

I think I've seen arguments for both approaches on here. Modern post processing software is considerably more powerful than most of these scanning software packages, so scanning flat let's you post process once with all the information available. But this argument falls apart a bit if you save to JPEG (or even 8-bit TIFFs), as you lose data anyway. Getting the look right in the scanning software, OTOH, definitely uses all the information that came off the scanner, even if the tools are crude. You can then save the scan to JPEG with less further editing to do.

If you can save to 16-bit TIFFs then I'd tend to suggest PP in LR from a flat scan...

HOWEVER, in my own, personal workflow and tests, I have found no problems with either approach using JPEGs (actually maybe not quite true; I do remember some serious posterisation issues with Silverfast 6 SE when I first started scaning, for some source material... I suspect high contrast slides from Australia...)

BTW, I Am Not An Expert, and someone may come along in a minute and explain how I'm wrong! :)
 
I've been using Epson Scan for a while now with Tri-X and I've been happy with the results. But not very happy with my one and only roll of colour film (Portra 400), so I thought I'd try Vuescan and Silverlight. All three applications are pretty unfriendly.

Epson Scan (with further processing in Lightroom):

img001.jpg

Vuescan (with further processing in Lightroom):

vuescan0001.jpg

Silverlight (with further processing in Lightroom):

silverfast.jpg
 
I have been using vuescan for years, and I find it easy to use. All software has a learning curve, and once you get past that stage most are as easy as each other.
I like vuescan as it is always kept bang up to date. And what ever hardware or film you need to use will work at least as well as any other.
 
Oh and here's a lab scan:

View attachment 123352

Well, of the 4 the lab scan seems the worst; the girl's shoulders are blown out. Skin colours of the SilverFast scan are a bit dodgy, but I can't pick significant differences between the Vuescan and Epson Scan results.

Which lab was it?
 
Well, of the 4 the lab scan seems the worst; the girl's shoulders are blown out. Skin colours of the SilverFast scan are a bit dodgy, but I can't pick significant differences between the Vuescan and Epson Scan results.

Which lab was it?

agree
 
It's an entry level scan from Bayeux.

This lot? They look horrendously expensive! Perhaps they are local to you, which is good, but you'd save using Filmdev even if you sent each film separately first class (at small parcel rates). Might even get your scans back quicker, too (sent my film off last Monday, got the email with scan downloads on Tuesday).
 
Well, of the 4 the lab scan seems the worst; the girl's shoulders are blown out. Skin colours of the SilverFast scan are a bit dodgy, but I can't pick significant differences between the Vuescan and Epson Scan results.

:agree:

On first look I preferred the slight warmer tones of the Epson software but that could be fixed in Vuescan, I'm sure
 
This lot? They look horrendously expensive! Perhaps they are local to you, which is good, but you'd save using Filmdev even if you sent each film separately first class (at small parcel rates). Might even get your scans back quicker, too (sent my film off last Monday, got the email with scan downloads on Tuesday).

Yes, that lot! They are local to me. I normally just get them to process only since I'm fine with scanning b&w. Since this was my first go at colour film, I thought I'd get them to scan as well. But since my experiments with home scanning colour worked out ok, I'll be scanning myself from now on with both b&w and colour.
 
Yes, that lot! They are local to me. I normally just get them to process only since I'm fine with scanning b&w. Since this was my first go at colour film, I thought I'd get them to scan as well. But since my experiments with home scanning colour worked out ok, I'll be scanning myself from now on with both b&w and colour.
AG Photolab are consistently the cheapest dev only, £2.99 and £3.99 for C41 and B&W respectively (plus £2.88 return postage; postage to them is Freepost).
 
I prefer the Vuescan scan above.

After some more practice I can make the Epson Scan produce scans as good as the Vuescan ones or even better. But I need to adjust each individual frame. Whereas Vuescan seems to produce pretty nice scans with minimal input from me. For this reason, I decided to buy Vuescan.

Time now to buy some colour film!
 
C41? What film did you select? You could try experimenting with different film presets...

I do find occasional films with annoying colour casts, and I'm not skilled enough to get rid of them!
 
C41? What film did you select? You could try experimenting with different film presets...

I do find occasional films with annoying colour casts, and I'm not skilled enough to get rid of them!

I just keep it at generic, it doesn’t seem to have profiles for Kodak Colorplus or Fuji X-TRA. All the colour rolls I’ve put through are really cool, I’d rather not have to mess on too much with them after the preview before the main scan. When using the likes of auto levels, or the white balance option for example I feel it degrades the quality of the image somehow.
 
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