VueScan Newsletter - January 2020
Welcome to the first newsletter of 2020!
It’s always exciting at the start of a new year as many people make their resolutions and plans – and we’re no different!
This year we plan to continue our focus on adding new scanners and, as always, adding new features.
Don’t forget! If you have any product suggestions or requests, we would love to hear them.
And remember you can contact us for technical support (we need a Problem Report) and any general enquiries or feedback here
We look forward to hearing from you!
Beverley
Your newsletter sign up!
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: https://www.hamrick.com/newsletter.html
You can unsubscribe the old email address here: https://www.hamrick.com/unsubscribe.html
You can contact us with questions or for technical support here: https://www.hamrick.com/problem-report.html
Thank you and happy reading!
VueScan Updates
Since the last newsletter, we’ve released VueScan 9.7.20, 9.7.19, 9.7.18, 9.7.17, 9.7.16, 9.7.15, 9.7.14 and 9.7.13.
What’s new in version 9.7.20
- Added support for 11 new Brother MFPs
- Fixed problem with some PIE/Reflecta scanners
What’s new in version 9.7.19
- Added support for 112 new Canon MFPs
What’s new in version 9.7.18
- If ‘Output Auto file name’ is off, always ask for file name
- Improved .rpm file for Red Hat Linux
What’s new in version 9.7.17
- Added support for new Canon scanners
What’s new in version 9.7.16
- Fixed problems with some Genesys Logic scanners
- Added support for Canon DR-850M
- Added support for in-scanner auto skew with some Epson scanners
- Fixed problem with some Brother document scanners
What’s new in version 9.7.15
- Reduced size of JPEG files 10% (optimization of entropy coding)
- Reduced size of color text files (JPEG and PDF)
- Support batch scanning mix of 8.5x11, 8.5x14 and 8.5x17 media sizes
- Fixed problem with some newer PIE scanners and Reflecta scanners
What’s new in version 9.7.14
- Fixed problem with plugging/unplugging USB scanners
-
Fixed problem with ‘Scanner Find scanners’ command -
Fixed problem with ‘Input Media size’ set to ‘Auto’ - Added support for Plustek OpticFilm 135i on Windows and Mac OS X
What’s new in version 9.7.13
- Added support for inexpensive video film scanners on Mac OS X
- Fixed problem with some Avision scanners
- Added support for Plustek OpticBook 3800L
- Added support for document feeder on Fujitsu M4097
- Several small bug fixes
VueScan in the Press
Last month we were featured on NosillaCast – as someone discovered how brilliant VueScan is and brought their scanner back to life!
The NosillaCast is a technology podcast (with an EVER so slight Apple bias) that has been running every week since 2005 without missing a show! The podcast covers software, gadgets, accessibility and more. For those who prefer the written word, nearly every segment of the NosillaCast is available as standalone blog posts.
The discussion of VueScan is at this link:
https://www.podfeet.com/blog/2019/12/nc-761/
and the audio starts at 18:38.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q) My flatbed scanner has a lamp in the scanner lid, but I can’t scan film with it. How can I get this to work?
A) Double-check that you’ve removed the cover from the lamp in the scanner lid, that you’ve plugged the cable from the lamp in the scanner lid into the back of the scanner, and that you’ve positioned the plastic film holder correctly on the glass.
Q) My document scanner seems to slow down after a dozen or so pages. How can I speed this up?
| A) Set ‘Input | Media’ to ‘B/W text’. |
Q) My black/white document scans don’t look very good. How can I solve this?
| A) Set “Input | Media” to “B/W text” and experiment with ‘Color | Threshold’. |
Q) My color document scans don’t look very good and show shadows where the paper has been folded. How can I solve this?
| A) Set ‘Input | Media’ to ‘Color text’. Use ‘Color’ or ‘Gray’ when scanning photographs. |
Customer Comment
Thank you to everyone who contacts us and shares information. Please keep sending them in!
Our thanks this month to Robert Campbell – who has sent in this great write up about his photography career, and how he has used VueScan. Robert uses a Nikon 8000 and makes some amazing scans with it.
I’ve been specializing in aerial photography since the mid ‘60s. I was studying photography at San Francisco State College. I took a Color Printing course and we learned how to print and develop color prints. I soon set up a color processing line at home using processing trays in a water jacket to maintain the temperature. I was printing on Agfa paper, which was gorgeous, however, it soon became apparent that it was prone to fading unless protected from any exposure to light which, to my mind, defeated the purpose of printing.
I took some time in 1965 to learn to fly, and by 1967, I was flying night cargo in old Beech 18 and DC-3 propeller airplanes. I always carried my Leica M4 with me, and I would shoot aerials at every chance. I continued printing my own color photos, though I was using Kodak Paper which was more stable than the Agfa paper. I was also shooting 2¼ negs with a Bronica camera, and in the summer of 1968, I took the Ansel Adams course in Yosemite.
In 1980, I had my own aerial photo business and I bought a 30” Colenta Processor. I continued to shoot color negative film for most work, though I shot transparencies when I needed to with Nikon cameras. I was shooting quite a few artistic abstract photographs of the land and the salt ponds in San Francisco Bay. I had been doing cover photos for California Living Magazine, the Sunday Supplement in the San Francisco and Examiner Newspaper since 1969, and my work was getting noticed. Art Consultants were placing my work in banks, corporations and other businesses. I had been in New York in 1972, and I had the opportunity to take my small airplane up on a Sunday morning to shoot Manhattan at sunrise. Commercial air traffic was light on Sunday mornings, so the Air Traffic Controllers let me work from close to water level to 12,000 ft. on this, rare for the time, very clear morning. Some of these photos were featured in an exhibit at The New York Historical Society. Here I was, a young pilot and photographer showing alongside some of the world’s most famous and well-known photographers.
When digital scanning came in I started using VueScan software shortly after I bought my Nikon 8000 scanner in the ‘90s. The Nikon software was terrible. Photoshop was easy for me with my wet darkroom experience. Also, the fact that most of my good shots were taken with Leica, Hasselblad, Bronika and Fuji 6x9 cameras using color negative films turned out to have been a good decision. Some of the Kodak Ektacolor negatives that I had shot in the late ‘60s and ‘70s were starting to fade. I was able to save the images by scanning them with the Nikon 8000 using VueScan and then restoring them in Photoshop.
Color negatives provide far better and more natural looking scans than slides or transparencies do. VueScan software allowed me to get the best possible images from the negatives. VueScan was intuitive and easy to use, unlike some other scanning software I’d tried, and it keeps getting better. When scanned negatives became the norm, I remember all of the photo labs that specialized in E-6 processing were scrambling to convert to or add C-41 processors as the Lightjet and Lambda color print processors were introduced.
Here are a few samples of some of my more artistic aerial images plus a shot of the DC-3 I flew in the ‘90s for the Otis Spunkmeyer Cookie company. This plane was Hap Arnold’s personal transport in WWII. He got it from Donald Douglas in 1938. The Army called it a C-41. The famous C-47 wouldn’t be produced until 1941.
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