VUESCAN BATCH SCAN SOFTWARE
Do you want to maximize the information in your scan or get close to a finished product? If you want to get in and get out, you manipulate the preview to bring out the most possible detail in both the highlights and shadows, in essence creating a very flat file, then bring that image into your image manipulation software of choice. Here's where you have to decide your workflow. Once the image is selected, we get to the nitty-gritty. The tradeoff, of course, is that the zoomed in image in VueScan is not very high resolution, but if you want to get in and out of the software quickly, this greatly cuts down on your time. When using Silverfast or Epson Scan, each time you zoom in on a selection the scanner will re-scan the image.
VUESCAN BATCH SCAN PLUS
A plus in VueScan's corner here is that you can zoom in on an image without the scanner making a slightly more detailed scan. Once we've previewed the whole sheet, we select a shot to zoom in on and work with. Previewing an entire sheet of film in Vuescan. More on that while we are fine-tuning our scans. There are a plethora of options under each subsection, and although some do have sliders, it's difficult to determine what does what without some experimentation.
VUESCAN BATCH SCAN TRIAL
A lot of my working through VueScan has been trial and error. Unfortunately, that's about where the user friendliness ends. There are six tabs on the left moving from "Input" on the far left to "Output" and "Prefs" on the right. There are hardly any graphic elements to be found. This software, visually, seems like a flashback from the nineties. When you get into VueScan, the first thing you're going to notice is the Spartan nature of the user interface. I'll step through my own scanning workflow and we will see how VueScan helps or hinders my own efficiency. It's difficult to review a software package without comparing it to other packages that I'm familiar with, so in this review, I'll be comparing VueScan to Epson Scan, the free software that comes with any Epson scanner, and SilverFast 8.8. As long as you get the image you want, do it the way you want. There's no right or wrong here, just personal preference. For myself, I'd rather get as much as I can done in the scanning software so that my Photoshop time is limited to retouching. Your choice of software can have a lot to do with where you land on the spectrum. There are generally two schools of thought when it comes to scanning: do as much of the work as you can while scanning, or get as much information as you can out of the scan and do the rest in Photoshop and Lightroom. It's through that lens that we take a look at VueScan. Your choice of software has a lot to do with how efficient and how tolerable it will be to get your negatives into the computer. Most of us want to get in, get the best scan we can, and get out to the greener pastures of Photoshop to make our final edits. For those that choose to develop their film at home, scanning is the next step in our workflow. You could argue that outside of the moment of exposure, scanning carries the most weight in determining the quality of the final image. If you're not printing in the darkroom, it's a necessary evil when dealing with film.