The Vuescan discussion thread...

That cyan colour shows that the leaves are out of the output colour spaces gamut, but they are mostly not over-exposed (that shows as green). In the input tab you really need to change "bits per pixel" to 16/48 bit colour and set a colour space with a wider gamut, Adobe Wide Gamut is likely the best choice (the sRGB profile is really very limited for the purposes of scanning slides as they way exceed its coverage). You can always down-convert to 8/24 bit colour and sRGB etc later (you can set it in the output tab if you want) as remember that at the scanning stage you want everything from the frame as much as possible.

I am VERY confused about colour spaces, though I have read up about them countless times. Anyway, my confused thoughts at the moment go thus: if the colours of the slide are out of gamut for my Mac (Apple RGB) and/or sRGB, then as you suggest they will need to get changed anyway. Does it make much difference if they are changed by Vuescan on the one hand, or i on the other hand I adjust Vuescan to scan in a wider colour space, and then down-convert myself later (by some as yet unknown means)?
 
I am VERY confused about colour spaces, though I have read up about them countless times. Anyway, my confused thoughts at the moment go thus: if the colours of the slide are out of gamut for my Mac (Apple RGB) and/or sRGB, then as you suggest they will need to get changed anyway. Does it make much difference if they are changed by Vuescan on the one hand, or i on the other hand I adjust Vuescan to scan in a wider colour space, and then down-convert myself later (by some as yet unknown means)?

I just scan in sRGB. However scanning in a wider Gamut must have some advantages. Colour space can always be revised in photoshop but it can not add what was not there.
Colours that are out of gamut in sRGB, will remain so when viewed on any sRGB device, so I do not bother.
Interestingly when you shoot in raw with a FujiX camera and later view the shots in Photoshop using Fujis various colour styles you can see quite different clipping levels where colours become saturated at different points. If I am suffering from saturation clipping in a colour, I try the various other styles to see if I get a wider differentiation, and I often can.
In the early days of colour printing this was a common phenomena especially with flowers, and was known as "subject failure"
 
Resurrecting an old thread here, but it seems appropriate... I've just scanned a black and white film on my Plustek 7500i with Vuescan Pro. A month or so ago I upgraded to the 64-bit version when MacOS complained about the 32-bit version, but since then I've only scanned documents on our all-in-one, or some 120 on the Epson V500. This time I couldn't get Vuescan to recognise the Plustek. After replacing all the cables, re-starting etc, I tried the 32-bit version, and it worked. I thought I'd better report the apparent bug to Hamrick, and this morning I got a reply from Ed:

"Yes, the Plustek plugin library for this scanner is a 32-bit
library, which is why only the x32 version of VueScan works
with it."

I asked him if the plugin would get updated to 64-bit:

"I don't think Plustek will update this, unfortunately.
The V500 uses a 64-bit plugin."

I'm on the High Sierra version (10.13) of MacOS-X, yet to upgrade to Mojave. I think the latter is the last version that will accept 32-bit software. So it's looking rather as if my Plustek 7500i will join the growing list of scanners that won't work with modern software! I can delay upgrading for a while (and probably will, as I'm currently worried about Aperture stopping working), but sooner or later it's gonna happen! I really don't like scanning 135 with the Epson. :(

ETA: thought about tweeting to them, but the twitter accounts I can find were last used 2016 (US) and 2012 (UK)! :(
 
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I have found the technical support page on Plustek.com/uk, and sent them this message:

"Hi, the 7500i stopped working with Silverfast SE 6.x years ago, so I have had to use Vuescan Pro, which has been fine. However now MacOS objects to 32-bit software (and will soon stop accepting it at all) so I tried the 64-bit version. Vuescan 64 will not recognise the Plustek. Ed Hamrick says this is because your plugin is 32-bit. He doubts you will make a 64-bit version available. I really hope you will, as this is still an excellent scanner.

"Will there be a 64-bit version of the plugin? Surely this is a recompile and a bit of testing?"

Anyone else using Vuescan with an old Plustek scanner feel like doing this too? Thanks
 
It's odd that it doesn't work. I'm using the 64bit version of vuescan and it still works with my ancient Minolta scanner (Or did the last time I tried it ages ago. I may have to check!) . I don't think the Minolta own drivers have worked on a mac since Panther.
 
Well I've never owned a mac, but thinking is there any way you can partition your hard drive and put windows 32bit on it?
 
It's odd that it doesn't work. I'm using the 64bit version of vuescan and it still works with my ancient Minolta scanner (Or did the last time I tried it ages ago. I may have to check!) . I don't think the Minolta own drivers have worked on a mac since Panther.

It just may be that the Minolta plugin (not driver) was 64-bit?

Well I've never owned a mac, but thinking is there any way you can partition your hard drive and put windows 32bit on it?

This is something I definitely don't want to do! We do have a Win 10 machine but sadly I installed it as 64-bit, so I don't suppose that will help. I might pursue the idea of putting a current MacOS version on a hard drive, though...

I have found the technical support page on Plustek.com/uk, and sent them this message:

...

Anyone else using Vuescan with an old Plustek scanner feel like doing this too? Thanks

The reply was:

"In order to continue using your scanner with Mac OS 10.7 up to 10.14 an upgrade to latest SilverFast 8 is required. Register your copy of SilverFast 6 at www.silverfast.com in order to receive discount on upgrade to SilverFast 8.

Driver to Mac OS X is automatically being installed by SilverFast and is not available for separate download. SilverFast is only available at www.silverfast.com."

I have downloaded (but not yet installed) a demo of the current version. I could upgrade to SilverFast SE for €24 or SE Plus for €59 (IIRC). Not what I want to do!
 
We do have a Win 10 machine but sadly I installed it as 64-bit

Well you could partition that and install Win 10 32bit....Don't have Win 10 setup disks? if you have a legal win 7,8 or 8.1 serial number Microsoft will accept it (well unless MS has tighten up) there are other legal ways to get it free as well...after all MS wants a monopoly on the world's operating systems so can be a bit lax to achieve this.
 
We do have a Win 10 machine but sadly I installed it as 64-bit, so I don't suppose that will help.

I use a 64-bit version of Win 10 with Vuescan with no problems at all. Plus I use it with an Epson V850 for 120 and 127 negatives, again with no pproblems. Have you tried on your Win 10 machine?
 
It just may be that the Minolta plugin (not driver) was 64-bit?



This is something I definitely don't want to do! We do have a Win 10 machine but sadly I installed it as 64-bit, so I don't suppose that will help. I might pursue the idea of putting a current MacOS version on a hard drive, though...



The reply was:

"In order to continue using your scanner with Mac OS 10.7 up to 10.14 an upgrade to latest SilverFast 8 is required. Register your copy of SilverFast 6 at www.silverfast.com in order to receive discount on upgrade to SilverFast 8.

Driver to Mac OS X is automatically being installed by SilverFast and is not available for separate download. SilverFast is only available at www.silverfast.com."

I have downloaded (but not yet installed) a demo of the current version. I could upgrade to SilverFast SE for €24 or SE Plus for €59 (IIRC). Not what I want to do!


I use vuescan on a win 7 PC 64bit with a minolta dualscan ll with no problems, (but the minolta original drivers no longer work so are no longer on my computer.) the minolta does not require plugins to work.

It seems plustec has it own Necessary and dedicated plugins that are 32bit only.
If I were in that position, I would dedicate one of my old PC's for running outdated peripheral equipment.
 
I use a 64-bit version of Win 10 with Vuescan with no problems at all. Plus I use it with an Epson V850 for 120 and 127 negatives, again with no pproblems. Have you tried on your Win 10 machine?

As Terry has suggested, it seems to be an issue specifically with the older Plusteks. Vuescan itself works fine on the Mac in 64-bit, and scans with the Epson as well as it could (AFAICS).
 
So, Twitter user Tim Dobbs has installed MacOS 10.15 Catalina and reports:

"Update .. Epson scan not working .. Plustek opticfilm/silverfast not working either with macos 10.15 .. not surprised"

If you're a film user with a Mac, think carefully before upgrading to 10.15!
 
The Vuescan scanner pages for the Plustek 7500i and 8200i have not been upgraded since Catalina was released (not surprising), but both still suggest using the 32-bit version of Vuescan, which won't run on Catalina.

I'm trying to work out how we put pressure on Plustek to upgrade their drivers, given their strange attitude above...

There's nothing said about 32-bit on the Vuescan page about the Epson V500, so it's possible the issue referred to above was actually Epson Scan being 32-bit, rather than the driver? Has anyone who uses Epson Scan had warnings when using it on 10.14 Mojave?
 
It would help if there was some kind of utility that could be run that would check what would be broken by Catalina without actually trying to install it and clear up the mess afterwards.
 
It would help if there was some kind of utility that could be run that would check what would be broken by Catalina without actually trying to install it and clear up the mess afterwards.

Yes, I get the impression that going back from Catalina could be quite difficult, there seems to be some stuff about changing disk formats. I believe it's hard going back from Mojave as well.

However, although it's clearly not the only issue (*), the 32-bit warnings we've been getting with Mojave are a pretty big clue!

* It appears the Adobe LR and PS issues reported elsewhere aren't all 32-bit issues directly, but appear to arise from failure to actually test out the software adequately during the alpha and beta stages. Good value for your £10 a month, then ;) .
 
The pop-out "Caution" link on this page from Silverfast suggests that the Epson Perfection scanners up to the V600 (plus 3 Canon scanners) have 32-bit drivers: https://www.silverfast.com/show/macos-mojave/en.html.

The pop-out says:

"Apple has ceased to support 32-bit systems. Scanners lacking 64-bit drivers are not compatible with macOS 10.14 / 10.15.

"For the last several years, Apple has been preparing to transition to a purely 64-bit system. In macOS 10.14 / 10.15, this step has been taken: 32-bit apps and drivers are no longer supported. In this new version, affected scanners will no longer function with SilverFast until their drivers are updated to support 64-bit.

"At this point in time, some scanner manufacturers only provide 32-bit drivers, which are currently not supported by macOS 10.14 / 10.15. We thus urgently recommend that you contact your scanner manufacturer prior to updating to macOS 10.14 / 10.15 in order to determine the compatibility of your device {my emphasis}."

Note, it's not a good sign that this note is inaccurate; 32-bit drivers ARE supported in 10.14.
 
... and Epson UK responded to Tim Dobbs on twitter:

"We appreciate your feedback. Unfortunately Epson Scan is not supported under 10.15 for the V500, although Image Capture works pretty well and offers most of Epson Scan features. Kind regards, Epson UK"

That sounds like bad news for some!
 
Thats such a stupid move, we all know its the same kit under the plastic casing.
 
The pop-out "Caution" link on this page from Silverfast suggests that the Epson Perfection scanners up to the V600 (plus 3 Canon scanners) have 32-bit drivers: https://www.silverfast.com/show/macos-mojave/en.html.

The pop-out says:

"Apple has ceased to support 32-bit systems. Scanners lacking 64-bit drivers are not compatible with macOS 10.14 / 10.15.

"For the last several years, Apple has been preparing to transition to a purely 64-bit system. In macOS 10.14 / 10.15, this step has been taken: 32-bit apps and drivers are no longer supported. In this new version, affected scanners will no longer function with SilverFast until their drivers are updated to support 64-bit.

"At this point in time, some scanner manufacturers only provide 32-bit drivers, which are currently not supported by macOS 10.14 / 10.15. We thus urgently recommend that you contact your scanner manufacturer prior to updating to macOS 10.14 / 10.15 in order to determine the compatibility of your device {my emphasis}."

Note, it's not a good sign that this note is inaccurate; 32-bit drivers ARE supported in 10.14.
A number of Epson scanners inc the V600 seem to run 64-bit drivers in Windows 10, so will work with Silverfast 8.5.0r1 onwards: https://www.silverfast.com/show/windows10/en.html

So just ditch your Mac and get a good, used Windows 10 laptop with Intel i5 or above processor instead, it's probably cheaper than buying a new scanner! ;)
 
... and Epson UK responded to Tim Dobbs on twitter:

"We appreciate your feedback. Unfortunately Epson Scan is not supported under 10.15 for the V500, although Image Capture works pretty well and offers most of Epson Scan features. Kind regards, Epson UK"

They further replied to Tim:

"We cannot confirm it a 100% but it is unlikely {that Epson Scan will be supported on 10.15} (the V550 however is, via Epson Scan 2). If new software comes up, it will be available in your scanner's support page: epson.co.uk/support?produc… Kind regards, Epson UK."

Meanwhile, Plustek replied to me:

"Driver to Mac OS X is automatically being installed by SilverFast 8. Latest driver to Mac OS 10.15 has not been fully tested by the software developer yet and is still waiting for implementation. At the moment we don\'t have any further information on next version release of SilverFast."

So, I guess we cross our fingers and twiddle our thumbs!
 
FWIW I run Vuescan on an Epson V500, and it works perfectly on Catalina. In fact, I’ve not had any problems at all with Catalina.
 
Totally OT to the thread title, but might be of assistance to Epson flatbed users? I've linked a couple of videos below regarding scanning on this type of scanner, but the (alert!) American presenter uses Silverfast 8 rather than Vuescan. In the first video he compares 5 different techniques for placing/holding your negs for scanning, so that's of interest to Vuescan users as well.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfGKd_AEZtY


In the second video, he explains a bit about the focus height adjustment feet on Epson film holders, but also deals with the Silverfast colour correction tool. The surprising thing was that including any of the frame/rebate stops the colour correction working properly, yet this is something I do as a basic selection when scanning. I'll need to try this with Vuescan at some point, but I'm now wondering if that may be the cause of some difficulty when scanning colour with Vuescan?
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtpmlEeJodw


Your thoughts or experiences welcome!
 
... including any of the frame/rebate stops the colour correction working properly, yet this is something I do as a basic selection when scanning. I'll need to try this with Vuescan at some point, but I'm now wondering if that may be the cause of some difficulty when scanning colour with Vuescan?
I've not tried Vuescan with a flatbed, but only with a dedicated film scanner where the crop was adjusted to eliminate the frame margins, and with colour neg (various emulsions including Portra) I had the devil of a job to get decent colour, whereas Silverfast and Nikon Scan just worked, pretty well.
 
I've not tried Vuescan with a flatbed, but only with a dedicated film scanner where the crop was adjusted to eliminate the frame margins, and with colour neg (various emulsions including Portra) I had the devil of a job to get decent colour, whereas Silverfast and Nikon Scan just worked, pretty well.
Thanks droj. Problem is that Silverfast seems to be scanner-specific and I'd be reluctant to spend that amount of money on a scanner that's getting quite old now.
 
Thanks droj. Problem is that Silverfast seems to be scanner-specific and I'd be reluctant to spend that amount of money on a scanner that's getting quite old now.
You’re right you have to have a copy of Silverfast for your scanner, if you have more scanners you have to have a copy for each. This and the appalling user interface made me chose Vuescan about 6 years ago and I haven’t looked back.
 
In the second video, he explains a bit about the focus height adjustment feet on Epson film holders, but also deals with the Silverfast colour correction tool. The surprising thing was that including any of the frame/rebate stops the colour correction working properly, yet this is something I do as a basic selection when scanning. I'll need to try this with Vuescan at some point, but I'm now wondering if that may be the cause of some difficulty when scanning colour with Vuescan?

When I first started scanning, I used Silverfast SE 6, the one with the dreadful interface that Nick mentioned. I think I used it for all of my initial huge retroconversion project. I do remember sometimes trying to scan the starter part frames, or sometimes a frame that had been torn but there was something interesting in what was left. I don't specifically remember the rebate (the Plustek and its holders tended to hide that), but I do remember that when scanning outside the negative frame, as it were, the colour balance could be miles off. Shrinking the frame to within the negative quickly corrected that.
 
I'm not sure if I have mentioned here, but I'm converting from Aperture to Capture One Pro. In the process I have discovered that Capture One Pro is not designed to edit files in a greyscale colour space. Unfortunately, at some point after I started scanning with Vuescan rather than Silverfast, I chose the greyscale colour space rather than RGB. It's not explicit within Vuescan that one is doing that, AFAICR, but that's what happened. In order to get files editable within Capture One Pro, I have had to change the colour space to RGB. There are various ways of doing that, mainly rather slow, but I found a tool called xnconvert that does it in batch mode, though it still took quite a bit of organising to get it done in such a way that Aperture still found the revised files.

Anyway, the message here is, if you think Capture One Pro might be in your future, stop scanning your images in greyscale!
 
This and the appalling user interface made me chose Vuescan about 6 years ago and I haven’t looked back.
Funny how we all differ! I found the user interface of Vuescan an obscure fiddle with small hope of recompense. I found the user interface of Silverfast a less obscure fiddle and with great hope for the persistent. And Nikon Scan was always a doddle. Maybe I'm too old, or maybe we all have different brain types?
 
When I first started scanning, I had both EpsonScan and Silverfast SE bundled with the scanner, and I tried both. I found the Silverfast interface overly complex, and (as far I can recall) EpsonScan simpler but limited. What made me go to VueScan was a killer feature that neither Silverfast nor EpsonScan had - the ability to save the scan data as a raw file, and reprocess it as many times as I liked with different settings.

To put this in context, it would be around 2004; my computer was running Windows 2000 and had 512MB of RAM. My 5x4 scans took around 4 hours to finish, which meant that unless I got the settings right first time, it was a 30 second adjustment to the settings and another 4 hour scan. Hence, cutting out the four hours in favour of the processing time of perhaps a minute meant that VueScan never had a competitor for me. I could adjust settings very minutely to get the best result, and have as many iterations as I liked at very little cost in time.

As far as brain types go, it might be worth mentioning for those who remember BASIC, the computer language so simple that it was designed to teach programming, that I could never fathom BASIC at all. I found the assembler language (just one step up from writing in machine code) much easier to understand. The more that's done for me, the more I get confused as to what is actually going on. Perhaps that why I get on better with cameras without a meter.
 
Funny how we all differ! I found the user interface of Vuescan an obscure fiddle with small hope of recompense. I found the user interface of Silverfast a less obscure fiddle and with great hope for the persistent. And Nikon Scan was always a doddle. Maybe I'm too old, or maybe we all have different brain types?
It's worth remembering here that there's a HUGE difference between the user interface of Silverfast 6 and Silverfast 8. With version 6, it seemed to me as if the company had decided to throw all the common conventions of WIMP UIs out of the window, in order to get a product that worked the same on Mac and Windows. Version 8 is much more standardised in that respect, although I still found it hard to figure out when I got a trial version.
 
Well I have silverfast and viewscan but Epson software is so easy to use...as many agree that silverfast has a steeper learning curve, what is needed is proof that you get better results using silverfast compared to viewscan...... or even Epson software.
 
while I have some times used the supplied drivers with my canon and Epson scanners I have mostly used vuescan since it first came out, But prior to that I had used Vueprint as an image viewer. But in 98 I had trouble with drivers for my First Minolta Dual scan that was scussi based. The then new Vuescan came to the rescue, and I have used it ever since. It works equally well with just about every scanner that has ever been on the market.
In much the same way that I used the early versions of Aldus pagemaker and later Adobe and photoshop. and Quark express, I have never had much trouble with how any of these programs have worked.. I have aged alongside them and we sort of speak the same language.

Like all of them Vuescan has morphed over the years to become what it is today, but I do not remember any startling changes along the way, Ed Hamrich seems to have had the basics right from the start. However just like images straight out of a camera, those out of a scanner often need further adjustments, If only because of aged or non standard originals. As a universal scanning driver it simply works, and very well at that... and nor do you have to learn new ways of working when you change scanners.
 
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Well I have silverfast and viewscan but Epson software is so easy to use...as many agree that silverfast has a steeper learning curve, what is needed is proof that you get better results using silverfast compared to viewscan...... or even Epson software.

A lot is going to depend on how you (same ambiguity) contrue the highlighted word. One might get getter results from Silverfast than VueScan, if one knew exactly what settings were the best for the negative (or slide). Otherwise (unless it now lets you reprocess the raw scan data without rescanning) trial and error would take a lot of time, and "good enough" might be accepted. VueScan for me reduces the penalty of taking extra time rescanning. And of course I realise that most people won't be scanning 5x4 or larger negatives where the scan time penalty really kicks in.
 
A lot is going to depend on how you (same ambiguity) contrue the highlighted word. One might get getter results from Silverfast than VueScan, if one knew exactly what settings were the best for the negative (or slide). Otherwise (unless it now lets you reprocess the raw scan data without rescanning) trial and error would take a lot of time, and "good enough" might be accepted. VueScan for me reduces the penalty of taking extra time rescanning. And of course I realise that most people won't be scanning 5x4 or larger negatives where the scan time penalty really kicks in.

Well also an expert setting up the scanner and just using Epson software would probably get better results than I (or others) using silverfast or viewscan if they are better software. :D
 
Well also an expert setting up the scanner and just using Epson software would probably get better results than I (or others) using silverfast or viewscan if they are better software. :D

As I implied in my first two sentences. Whether (in your scenario) an expert would be using EpsonScan is perhaps a moot point.
 
VueScan for me reduces the penalty of taking extra time rescanning.
I've rarely felt the need to scan an original more than once. Using the full capability of good scanning software via its interface should mostly obviate this.

Nikon Scan can output NEF files if asked to.
 
I didn't realise modern versions of other scanning software let you adjust all the settings post scan. That wasn't the case (as far as I know) when I started.
 
As I implied in my first two sentences. Whether (in your scenario) an expert would be using EpsonScan is perhaps a moot point.

Ok then:- an expert setting up a home scanner and using all three software (mentioned above) then what would be the difference in the finished output. The moot point for most of us here would be that if we did have winning shots we would get a lab to do a Hi res scan on a Noristu or Fuji frontier.
 
No idea. I'd get better results with VueScan, which is all I need to know.

If you can find a tame expert, fully conversant with all three programs, fine; but I'd rather look for hen's teeth :)
 
No idea. I'd get better results with VueScan, which is all I need to know.

If you can find a tame expert, fully conversant with all three programs, fine; but I'd rather look for hen's teeth :)

Well if I could be bothered could answer some of the differences between software and could find out for myself esp after watching the video on setting up the scanner height.
V750, Epson software and a shot using Canon 50mm f1.4 and erm can I get a sharper crop on the V750? And interestingly what would the crop be like with a hi res scan on a Noristu or Fuji frontier.
AscRzMI.jpg

Canon50f1-4crop.jpg
 
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