Review 3 of 12
Price Paid:
$49.00
from Direct Summary: This is software that I love to hate or hate to love. The user interface is so bad that it screams "amateur" all over it. On the other hand, when it is properly tuned, it can produce absolutely beautiful scans from my Polaroid SprintScan 120 scanner using 35mm film (both Portra 160NC and Kodacolor Gold work great).
I'm less impressed with its ability to adapt to the 120/220 format film holders on the SS120. It took a long time to figure out how to tweak it to switch between 6X6 and 6X9 negs, and it involves several adjustments... SilverFast automatically senses what kind of film holder is in the scanner and gives you a single button to toggle image sizes. This is just one example of how VueScan's bad user interface can make a technically great product frustrating and inefficient to use.
While some people may have had great luck just installing the software and clicking "Scan", my experience was that upon first install, the scans were horrible - almost posterized - initially, and it took some considerable fiddling to get decent images, using the poorly documented "Advanced" mode.
If the developer of this software would spend some his revenue on modern user interface capabilities designed by a professional - with input from the photo community, he could have a world-class product here. Strengths: Beautiful scans, if you can get everything adjusted right. Lots of ability to make color and contrast adjustments, if you can figure out the cryptic jargon and can put up with the tiny, fiddly screen controls.
Good features for repetitive scanning and batch processing, including a simple way to auto-number file names.
Works with a wide variety of scanners, only one product to buy... and license allows for installation on more than one computer owned and used by the same person.
Big list of customized film scanning adjustment profiles - especially for color negative work, which can be problematic for some software. Weaknesses: Miserable user interface. Complete absence of controls for direct control of brightness and color curves. Relatively slower than SilverFast, especially for multi-pass scanning (although see comments above regarding image quality). Similar Products Used: SilverFast, PolaColor, Epson software, HP software Customer Service: No experience with this.
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