VueScan Newsletter - December 2024

Our newsletter is only available in English. Please use Google Translate if you require a different language.

Hello and Festive Greetings!

We wanted to send out the last newsletter of the year – not only to provide you with the latest updates but to thank you for being a customer of ours and, truly, for all your feedback and your reviews. Our customer feedback and suggestions drives most of our improvements.

We’ve said it many times before (!) – but as a small company, we do rely on personal recommendations and everyone sharing their experiences – whether it is on social media or informing the support departments in the hardware manufacturers. So, an enormous thank you to all of you who have done this – and please continue to do so.

Please continue to send us details of all your projects, and any comments or suggestions you have for product improvement is gratefully accepted. As you have noticed, we have made many changes over the last 12 months and it’s always good to receive feedback – both good and bad.

As I’ve mentioned these changes, carry on reading for a great summary of how VueScan has been developed over the past 12 months from David Hamrick.

So, a final reminder - If you’ve had a positive experience with VueScan, we would be very grateful if you could take a moment to share your thoughts by leaving a review on Trustpilot, Facebook or another review site.

Your feedback not only helps others discover VueScan, but also allows us to continuously improve our product. Thank you for your time in doing this – we know everyone is busy.

Remember you can contact us for technical support (we need a Problem Report) and any general enquiries, suggestions, or feedback should only be submitted [here] (https://www.hamrick.com/problem-report.html)

Wishing you and your family and friends every good wish for the Festive Season – and we look forward to working with you all in 2025.

Beverley.

From David Hamrick

As 2024 comes to a close, we want to take a moment to reflect on what we’ve accomplished this year. Your support has enabled us to continue enhancing and developing VueScan.

Here’s a look at some of the things that have changed in the past year:

AI-Powered Features: Automatic Orientation Detection and Colorizing black and white images are just two of the latest AI-Powered features.
Improved OCR: We’ve integrated a new OCR engine to improve text recognition performance
New Photo Album Cropping: Easily digitize and crop entire photo album pages.
Enhanced Auto Crop: Better results for all media types.
Expanded Scanner Support: Hundreds of new scanners now work with VueScan.
OS Compatibility: Full support for the latest macOS and Windows 11 releases.
20 Updates This Year: Countless improvements, bug fixes and performance upgrades.

We’re committed to continuing this momentum in the year ahead, with even more new features and support for the latest scanners and operating systems.

By supporting VueScan, you’re not just helping us improve the software – you’re taking a stand against waste and planned obsolescence. Scanner manufacturers want you to throw away perfectly good hardware just because they’ve stopped updating their drivers. VueScan is here to make sure your scanner keeps working, no matter how old it is.

Supporting VueScan means supporting the idea that quality hardware deserves a longer life, and that you don’t need to buy something new just because the manufacturer wants you to. Together, we’re proving that good tools can stand the test of time.

Thank you for being part of this journey. Here’s to an even better 2025!

David

From Ed Hamrick

In ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’, Douglas Adams wrote “The Answer to the Great Question… Of Life, the Universe and Everything… Is… Forty-two”. About the future of VueScan – the next version is 9.8.42. David has been on a roll adding new features to VueScan. He’s really improved VueScan in 2024 and 2025 holds even more surprises!

Merry Christmas!

VueScan Updates

Since the last newsletter, we’ve released VueScan 9.8.41, 9.8.40, 9.8.39 and 9.8.38.

What’s new in version 9.8.41

Improved detection of networked scanners on macOS
Changed default file name to YYYY-MM-DD-0001+.xxx
Faster changing from one scanner to another with Input | Source
Improved update of skew grid when adjusting skew
Improved Input | Auto repeat
Fixed problem with crashes when installing Photoshop plugin on macOS
Fixed problem with display not updating when making small changes to cropping or skew
Restored Help | Uninstall to Windows version
Changed location of temp files on Linux from /tmp to $HOME/.cache (more free space)

What’s new in version 9.8.40

Added neural network (AI) to determine image rotation (Auto setting of Input | Rotate)
Added automatic entry of registration info when viewing purchase receipt
Added tip on macOS Sequoia to enable ‘Local Network” for networked scanners
Added Prefs | Enable spin buttons back to Windows and Linux versions
Added support for Latin OCR
Removed Help | Uninstall from Windows version (use Apps control panel)
Fixed problem with OCR on macOS and Linux
Fixed problem with exiting VueScan and leaving document feeder hung
Fixed problem with spurious error when installing VueScan on Windows
Fixed problem with reading JPEG files with CMYK color space
Fixed problem with text alignment in user interface

What’s new in version 9.8.39

Integrated wxWidgets 3.2.6 - improved user interface
Removed Prefs | Enable spin buttons (problems with ARM64 builds and gtk3 builds)
Fixed problem with Output | PDF OCR test with Input | Media set to Color or Color text
Fixed problem with saving files and not auto-incrementing file name
Fixed problem with Color | Pixel colors

What’s new in version 9.8.38

Enabled increasing Input | Options to allow testing options not yet purchased
No longer maintaining x32 and a32 versions but 9.8.37 available on web site
Fixed problem with Filter | Colorize
Fixed problem with some AirPrint/eSCL scanners
Fixed problem with document feeder with some Canon printer/scanner/copiers
Fixed problem with duplex feeder with Samsung SCX-483x
Fixed problem with Epson Perfection 4180
Fixed problem with Brother MFC-7460DN when Input | Fine mode enabled
Fixed problem with Brother ADS-1800W when using 8.5 x 11 paper size
Fixed problem with setting Input | Mode to File and re-scanning multi-page PDF files
Fixed problem with unnecessary error messages on Linux
Fixed problem with flickering crop box
Fixed problem with Crop | Buffer (%)
Fixed problem with Crop | Border (%)
Fixed problem with saving multiple file types and numbering not synchronized
Removed Filter | Restore colors option
Added support for new model of Plustek OpticBook 4800

Q & A

Ed Hamrick and David Hamrick (VueScan developers) receive all technical enquiries and answer your questions directly.

Q) I’m currently using Mac OS10.13.6 and am planning to upgrade to Big Sur OS 11.7.10. And when I do, does the VueScan software work on that OS? I assume I may have to re-install (not sure), but just checking before I do anything.

A) VueScan works fine on all versions from Mac OS X 10.12 to 15.2 (Sequoia). If you upgrade macOS, you don’t need to re-install VueScan – it should continue working.

Q) VueScan can’t find my networked scanner – how can I solve this?

A) This is almost always caused by a firewall in the computer or your router blocking UDP port 5353. Even if printing works (it uses a different UDP and TCP port) scanning might still be interfered with by a firewall.

Q) VueScan can’t find my USB scanner – how can I solve this?

A) If there are problems, you might try a different USB cable and/or a different USB port. It’s surprisingly common that a marginal USB cable is the problem.

Q) VueScan crashed – how can I resolve this?

A) Send enough information so we can duplicate the problem, along with a vuescan.log file after you duplicate the problem. Try to make it as simple as possible to duplicate the problem, including using File | Default options. If we can’t duplicate a problem, it’s almost impossible to solve it, but if it’s easily duplicated, it’s almost always solvable in a day or two.

Q) Why do Ed and David answer all technical questions?

A) We’ve done this for more than 25 years, and this is where most of the good ideas for improving VueScan have come from. Also, it motivates us to fix bugs, since then we reduce our email load! But do us a favor and keep emails short and to the point, since it makes it easier for me to spend time on what’s important to customers.

Customer Profile

David Kirk - local historian

David Kirk from England has kindly sent us the details of his local heritage project, along with some wonderful images. We’re also very pleased to hear how they are making the most of our newest feature – the ability to colorize black and white images.

“I am a member of the Wreningham Heritage Group set up in 2018 in our small village of Wreningham, Norfolk, United Kingdom. In traditional farming communities, like ours, old documents can be handed down through the generations. We are lucky that long-standing villagers have made many old documents available to us to copy – some going back hundreds of years (the documents, not the villagers!) and we have progressively built up a large electronic catalogue.

Right at the start, we acquired a second-hand Epson A3 scanner (it’s now about 20 years old) because some of the scanning would need to take into account large format documents. To this, we added VueScan software and immediately benefitted from their combined capabilities. To date, we have scanned well over 10,000 pages and photos.

Nearly every image on our website https://wreninghamheritage.uk/ has passed through our Epson & VueScan combination. Some historic legal documents are much larger than A3, so we take the lid off the scanner and scan those in sections – then, electronically stitch the multiple images together using other software.

There are many old photos remaining in the village, too – the earliest is a sepia print of a family group taken in about 1860. Many of our old village images are in the form of old photographically produced postcards from the early 1900s.

The recently added VueScan capability of colorizing (“colourising” in British English!) has given us the opportunity to experiment with existing scans from our old B&W photo collection. As you might expect, high-quality original images (probably all made on glass plate negatives) give the best results – see the examples.

The VueScan AI colorizing algorithms appear to cover an extraordinary range of subjects and situations. The software recognises animals, vegetation, water, buildings, people’s faces / limbs etc and colorizes them very convincingly. The algorithms also “know” that most vegetation is green, straw is yellow and darkly shaded horses must be brown!

To date, we have not added any of the colorized images to our heritage website because everyone knows a 100-year-old picture is monochrome. We must also take care not to “Photoshop” history! Nevertheless, we will be showing a large collection of our newly colorized images at a forthcoming meeting. We have no doubt our audience will be amazed.

"The Poplars c1900"

"Wreningham Blacksmiths"

Customer Comments

We read and receive many complementary – and useful - comments from our customers, and we appreciate it very much. We reply to all your emails so please continue to send them in.

Thank you to Joseph from the USA who sent us this email from ‘A grateful customer’

Hello VueScan Team…

I guess the only place to start is at the beginning… I’ve been using VueScan since November 12th of 2012 (still have the original html receipt saved).
I am an analog based photographer and artist in San Francisco and have been using VueScan to scan and archive everything I create on various scanners for some 12 years now. I made the decision to de-apple my workflow due to the cost of hardware and software, moving to Linux and all open-source software to archive and catalogue my work. VueScan is quite literally the cornerstone of the capture process for me. Without a consistent and highly functional interface for the several (often quite arcane) scanners that I use, I’d have no choice but to outsource the process at great expense…

Either way, I’m thrilled and grateful that you all continue to not only maintain but improve this simple yet incredibly valuable piece of software. I hope you know how many of us not only appreciate, but literally depend on the work that you do. Those of us that toil away with film and negatives and prints and the like will be forever in your debt… Thank you, and all the best…

A bit more about Joseph:

I am an analog based street photographer, working primarily in black and white, who dabbles in portraiture and figure work from time to time. I was born in Wyandotte, a small suburb of Detroit, and spent my entire childhood in Southeastern Michigan. I attended the Academy of Art University in San Francisco during the industry-wide shift to digital capture. I tried my hand at digital photography for some years but realised that I had no desire to ever think about custom white balance or camera firmware. I returned to film and the darkroom as my medium of choice. I continue to live in San Francisco today, working almost exclusively on personal projects and the (very) occasional freelance assignment. I’m currently sifting through 20 years’ worth of photographs made in San Francisco, all shot on 35mm film, all archived digitally using VueScan. I’m hoping to put a book together this year. My work can be seen at http://josephszymanski.com and on Instagram

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