VueScan Newsletter - December 2020

It doesn’t seem a year since we were writing the last newsletter of 2019, but here we are with the last newsletter of the year again. I won’t talk about 2020 (Where would we even start?) but we do want to thank all our customers for their loyalty, support, suggestions and their recommendations of VueScan. As I have said before, as a small company it helps us immensely to be personally recommended. If you’re a new customer then a warm welcome from us to our scanning community and we look forward to hearing from you.

So, thank you very much to everyone who has emailed us with questions and suggestions, it really does help us with product development. If you do use Facebook please continue to add reviews for us.

Please remember you can contact us for technical support (we need a Problem Report) and any general enquiries, suggestions or feedback here Ed, Dave and I wish all of you happiness and peace this festive season and look forward to hearing from you next year.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Please remember: If you have changed your email address PLEASE do not email us!

Remember! You do not have to tell us about an email address change for your use of VueScan, it is only relevant for the newsletter.

You can subscribe to the newsletter with your new email address here

You can unsubscribe the old email address here

You can contact us with questions or for technical support here

Thank you and happy reading!

VueScan Updates

Since the last newsletter, we’ve released VueScan 9.7.37 and 9.7.36.

What’s new in version 9.7.37

Automatically finds film strip length on some Nikon scanners

CoolScan III / LS-30
CoolScan IV ED / LS-40
CoolScan V ED / LS-50
CoolScan 2000 / LS-2000
CoolScan 4000 ED / LS-4000
CoolScan 5000 ED / LS-5000
Faster scanning on some Canon scanners
CanoScan 5600F
CanoScan 8400F
LiDE 90
Doesn’t delete ocr_xx.bin files when upgrading
Improved detection of HP ScanJet 4850 and HP ScanJet 4890

What’s new in version 9.7.36

Improved reliability and scan speed for some Nikon film scanners
CoolScan V ED
CoolScan 5000 ED
LS-50
LS-5000
Improved scans with Canon CanoScan 5600F
Improved scans with Canon CanoScan 8400F
Fixed a variety of small problems with various scanners

Have yourself a Merry Christmas!

A great present for your loved ones is e-mailed scans of old photos and slides. It’s a real holiday treat to receive photos of happy times gone by – of Auld Lang Syne (old long since) – and a joy to relive these memories when scanning.

In these difficult times, it’s not easy to come up with the money for a new film scanner or photo scanner. Don’t forget though, scanners just don’t wear out easily and many people tell us about how they’ve scanned collections of 20,000 slides with a film scanner or scanned thousands of photos from shoe boxes full of photos. Check out ebay.com for a used film scanner or flatbed scanner. One of the best bargains in film scanners is a used Plustek OpticFilm 7xxx or 8xxx scanner, a used PIE PrimeFilm or Reflecta scanner, or a used Epson Perfection flatbed scanner. You can’t go wrong with one of these and you’ll be amazed at the low price.

Use JPEG for this if you’re e-mailing, and 2000 dpi (or 1000 dpi) is almost always good enough for family photos.

What film scanner should I buy?

If you’re considering which film scanner to purchase, then here is some useful information from Levi Wedel. This was sent in by Christoph Coulter (a VueScan user who uses scanners extensively) Aztek Premier > Cezanne/Creo/etc flatbed >= Imacon / Hasselblad > Nikon Coolscan > Minolta Dimage > Pacific Image PF120 Pro / Reflecta MF5000 / Braun FS120 > … Epson Digital camera scans depend on the camera and are generally somewhere in the middle for resolution and dynamic range, lower for color (unless pixel shifting), and all assuming done well with a proper light source and camera. Keep in mind that all digital cameras using bayer layouts get counted as having 4x the color resolution they actually have, so a 60 mp digital camera is really only recording 15 mp of color data (with 5 mp more luminosity data) and then interpolating that data to fill 60 mp of space. The CCD sensor in a scanner is recording full color at every point. Drum scanners use photo multiplier tubes, which have better dynamic range and color depth than CMOS and CCD sensors, and are also recording full color at every point. Does any of that actually matter? It’s up to you. The skill of a scanner’s operator always plays a major role in the scan quality, in particular with drum scans. The quality of drum scanners in the above hierarchy depends on the drum scanner. A lot of drum scanners were made for prepress and even a Coolscan seems to do better (and with much less work). If you’re going to go to that kind of trouble, you might as well get the best drum scanner or use a scan service that uses the Aztek Premier and skilled staff, like (https://eigerstudios.com) If you’re looking for something consumer level, this site has good reviews for comparisons and real life results, covering most of the options

For more information from Levi please visit his website here

Frequently Asked Questions:

Q) I can’t get VueScan to see my WiFi scanner. How can I fix this?

A) One thing to check is that your firewall or router isn’t blocking UDP port 5353 or UDP port 8612. You might also make sure you don’t have a VPN (Virtual Private Network) turned on. Also, if you’re a Windows user, don’t turn off Bonjour in your printer/scanner/copier – it’s needed for VueScan to find it on Windows, Mac and Linux (it uses the mDNS scanner discovery protocol).

Q) I have an Apple Mac with the new M1 chip, but it doesn’t work with my Epson V-series scanner. How can I fix this?

A) Some Epson scanners, especially the V-series, use a plugin library to talk to it. Epson hasn’t updated their plugin libraries to handle the Apple Silicon processor, so you need to run an Intel binary that’s interpreted by Rosetta to use this. Download the x64 (instead of a64) version of VueScan from https://www.hamrick.com/alternate-versions.html The Epson Perfection V700, V750, V800 and V850 don’t need a plugin library, and thus work fine with the a64 version of VueScan.

The plugin libraries that you download from www.epson.com are usually called “ICA drivers” (Image Capture drivers).

Q) I can’t get VueScan to work with my flatbed’s transparency adapter. What should I do?

A) Here are some things to check that often solve this:

1) Make sure the cable from the lamp in the scanner lid is plugged into the back of the scanner. 2) Make sure you’ve removed the cover from the lamp in the scanner lid. 3) Make sure the plastic film holder is oriented properly on the glass. 4) Make sure nothing is blocking the small rectangular calibration area in the plastic film holder. 5) Then run VueScan, set “Input | Mode” to “Transparency” and press the “Preview” button. 6) Also, make sure the lamp in the scanner lid turns on when you press the “Preview” button. 7) Once you get this working, experiment with the “Crop | Multi crop” option along with “Input | Batch scan”.

Customer Corner

Thank you to our customers who contact us with their scanning projects and comments.

Thanks to Mark in the UK who sent us this information for our customers who have a Firewire scanner:

VueScan wins again - with a little help from a new PCIe firewire card.

For ages I’ve been keeping an older PC which has firewire pots to run my Nikon Coolscan under windows 7. My newer PC no longer has ports which allow this legacy scanner to connect and all the additional spare slots are PCI2. I decided to do some research and found that it looked as though it might be possible to run VueScan with an old Nikon slide scanner though not everyone seemed to be able to make it work. I finally opted for a StatTech 2 Post PCI Express 1394a Firewire card (around £28) and spent an afternoon with a much-needed tidying and recabling - including installing the PCIe firewire card. I’ve literally just finished, connected the Coolscan (now well over 20 years old) and it’s working perfectly with VueScan (which found the scanner automatically immediately after switch on); I literally did nothing except turn on the PC and the Coolscan 35mm scanner (instead of the usual Canon flatbed). I suspect there are other folk out there with this particular scanner (which seems to go on for ever) so at some point you might like to include a note in the newsletter.

Keep safe

Kind regards

Mark

This is from Andy, Omaha, Nebraska, USA.

I found VueScan this past spring when I was searching for a MacOS solution for my ancient, but perfectly serviceable HP Scanner. I think that that scanner is over 15 years old. I had just recently moved from a Windows machine to a MacBook Pro and was disappointed that HP didn’t have software for macOS for that aged scanner.

I was delighted to find VueScan. It works with my ancient HP scanner wonderfully.

Just recently, I decided I could justify buying a new scanner and retire that well-worn beast.

Ordinarily, I prefer to use the software that comes with new hardware, on the assumption that the manufacturer knows how to deliver software that makes their hardware perform at its best.

I was disappointed that my new scanner’s manufacturer’s software was a “Lite” version. It works, but it’s tedious to use, and not as user friendly when one wants to fine-tune options.

The manufacturer doesn’t offer a non-Lite version, so I went on a hunt for general scanner software options for my Mac.

While I originally found and purchased VueScan specifically because it made my ancient HP scanner work, I’m discovering that it’s also the very best software I’ve found for working with my brand new scanner.

Even for my brand new scanner, I find that the user interface is far more intuitive than the manufacturer’s software, and access to options is easier and faster.