None

The bloated UI and menu system make Vuescan extremely difficult to use and the available documentation is not thorough enough to be helpful. The owner is a nasty curmudgeon who refuses to help paying customers.

I was attempting to do a batch scan of several slides and ran into a problem. I checked the Vuescan website, read the available documentation, and did not find an answer to my issue. I noticed the large "Email Us" button.

Ed Hamrick states that he personally replies to all messages seeking support, so I figured this was my best option. I emailed a thorough explanation of my problem and noted that I'm a paid licensed Vuescan owner. I got back a one-line unhelpful reply from Ed Hamrick himself. It was nice to see he replied, as promised, but he didn't offer any usable "support" at all.

I followed up politely to ask if Ed could elaborate on the issue because his reply was not helpful. He then replied angrily and rudely that he would not elaborate because he didn't have the time and was already replying to a list of 50+ emails. I replied, again politely, to suggest that he not offer support email if he can't actually offer support and he replied, verbatim, "You're a jerk. Stop writing to me."

I've never been called a "jerk" for no reason by someone to whom I've just paid $89.95. I suggest nobody buy this software based on that anecdote alone. The fact that the software is difficult to use and doesn't work is just more reason to avoid it.

Customer Service

The owner of Vuescan called me a "jerk" and refused to help me; what more can you say about "customer service"? Avoid this software at all costs.

Similar Products Used:

Silverfast, EpsonScan

On the Mac side, its one of a few third party programs which works well and is feature rich. Easy to use.

Don't count on getting help with tech support. After a month of trying, I gave up and returned a scanner which was suppose to be compatible but was not.

Great program, very weak support if you have problems

No strengths whatsoever, the software is unstable

Extremely unstable! Works then it doesn't. Almost always. I need to restart my computer to have it work. The actual scans are faint and washed out. You need to photoshop them back to normal.

All I can say is DO NOT BUY this software! Firstly you'll have good scan days, bad scan days. You'll find yourself spending more time restoring the scans true brightness and contrast levels. And to top it all off, when I tried to get advice about why my scanner was extremely unstable or not working under El Capitan, the owner of the business one ED HAMRICK was let's say less than helpful. His first suggestion to switch to Firewire was typed out in 2 short lines, nothing about why? I needed an adapter for this as my Mac only has a Thunderbolt connection, so $40 later and after following his less than 8 words advice the damn thing still didn't work. But the worse is yet to come. when I asked if he could assist with why it still wasn't working his answer was, and I quote: 'Buy and Epson from EBAY, they're pretty reliable' Ed. I could not believe his attitude and when i addressed it with a request for a refund, he answered back ............'Your'e a twit, don't write back'...!!!! Yes Mr. Ed Hamrick would be delighted to take your money but do not expect a decent customer service, unless of course you don't mind being called a 'twit'.

Customer Service

Short, in haste and filled with attitude before being abused! This guy doesn't deserve the business.

Cross platform support - Linux , Windows
Easy to setup 35mm slide scanning
Seems reliable, I scanned 140 slides with no problems

Slow....it takes twice as long to scan same image same settings as Xsane. If you have a lot of scanning to perform don't buy VueScan. The scanner motor stops and starts about 15 times for a full length scan (11 inches). With Xsane the scanner motor runs slowly throughout the scan and then stops. The stopping as starting can't be good for the scanner mechanism.
I found that the VueScan scan time improves when the bit depth is set to 8. I use 16 bit depth scanning - edit the image and then change to 8 bit when finished editing.

VueScan version 9 x64 9.5.42 Pro
Scanner Epson Perfection 1660 photo. Computer Intel i5-4460 Gigabyte motherboard, 8GB memory , 1tB sata2 drive.
OS Ubuntu 14.04 64bit.
I wrote Ed Hamrick about the slowness and his recommendation was use 8bit pixel depth.
Bottom line is I would not recommend this product.

Customer Service

Ed Hamrick answered my email.

Similar Products Used:

Xsane

Totally configurable. Allows complete access to the scanning hardware settings.

Must learn how to scan and make proper settings choices.

There is a learning curve with Vuescan Pro. Reading "The Vuescan Bible" is a help, but it won't teach one how to scan, just the settings to use initially for different applications. Also, don't expect the software to hold your hand and simply press a button to get good negative film scans. Vuescan Pro is completely user configurable, which also mean completely user screwer-upable. Read, study, and practice, and learn what settings to use and what not to use. But more importantly, after finding the settings you like, want, need, make an options file and save these options as a set of settings you'll use for a specific task. The hardest part is hitting preview, dragging the crop box edges to inside the frames, and right clicking on the gray background outside the preview scans, or on something gray or white in that frame you are working on to set color balance. The setting for that frame of crop and color adjustments will be save as you move the crop box to the next frame to do the same thing; and so on, and so forth, until you have adjusted/corrected to each frames needs. Then just hit "scan." The hard part is first learning something about scanning, so you can make the right setting choices for the options file creation. "The Vuescan Bible" has these settings, and you can read about what people like to do over in the Flickr group https://www.flickr.com/groups/isf_scanner/

This software has great potential, as the user interface is very clean, straightforward, and easy to understand.

Ed Hamrick, the owner, is an arrogant a**. He is horribly rude and nasty. He thinks all of his customers are stupid and is not shy about saying so. He has outlined his business practices in a recent email on April 13, 2015:

"Here's some background information about how I answer e-mails.

I get about 100 e-mails every day, and in the past 15 years
I've probably gotten 500,000 e-mails. I try to answer most
e-mails within a day, although longer e-mails may not get
answered for a month or two, or maybe not at all.

I have a simple process - I read each e-mail and if the response
can be a sentence or two, I answer it immediately. If it's a
software problem report, I generally look at the vuescan.log file
immediately, and if there isn't a vuescan.log file, I request that
one be sent. Without a vuescan.log file, there isn't really anything
I can do to diagnose problems.

A few other points:

1) I never look at the e-mail address that an e-mail is from.
2) I never look back at old e-mails - all e-mails are deleted when answered.
3) If there are multiple questions in an e-mail, I answer the first question
and then delete the e-mail.
4) If someone sends multiple e-mails in a day, I only look at the most recent
and delete the rest without reading them.
5) If an e-mail is rude or demanding, I stop reading it and delete it.
6) My answers often appear brusque - but I just try to answer directly.
7) My answers sometimes appear rude - but I don't have time to write a few
paragraphs of polite and soothing sentences - I just get to the point.
8) Many of my responses are form letters - because I get the same
questions over and over. The most common is "How do I download VueScan?".

I hope this information is useful to you.

Regards,
Ed Hamrick

Do not buy! There are glitches that cause the program to freeze. There is no tech support whatsoever, as confirmed by Mr. Hamrick. He simply does not care. You only have the database for tech support. It is pretty good for a database support system, but it falls short in addressing the problems that I faced with the program. The PDF interleave feature does not work properly. You also have to click the "scan" button several times to get it to start. Lots of potential to be a great program with a few fixes, but the owner does not care and you will not have any support when you do run into these problems.

Customer Service

There is none other than a database. Owner has confirmed that he does not care and deletes emails from customers routinely.

Similar Products Used:

Readiris Pro, Windows OEM scanning software, Okidata scanning software.

Nothing

Evil software

I had have plustek opticfilm 8200i ai with bundled with silverfast 8. Due to curiousity I install free vuescan software. After I tried scanning a couple of film I decide to stay with silverfast. When I turn on silverfast the program did not able to detect opticfilm scanner. I tried several times but still can not detect the scanner. Then I uninstall vuescan but still can not detect scanner. The problem still persist even after I reinstall opticfim software and silverfast software. Now I left with scanner that can not be used

Similar Products Used:

Silverfast

When is a FREE UPGRADE not a free upgrade?

When it’s a VueScan free upgrade

The software works better than the standard Canon interface software but never, never, NEVER press the Free Upgrade button!

This is Ed Hamrick's way of extorting regular cash out of his customers by changing your perfectly sound point-for version with a newer version that's plastered with Hamrick Marketing Labels. Ok if the scan is to be seen only by you but if a client or an employer is to see the scans, you look a bit cheap-skate.

This is a very crude and nasty trick for Ed Hamrick to play on his valuable customers.

Clearly, Ed Hamrick doesn't value his customers.

Customer Service

I agree that VueScan Service sucks. Here’s what led me to that conclusion…

I rarely need to use my October 2013 copy of VueScan because I’ve yet to find a simple graphics app for my MacBook Pro.

But when I used VueScan yesterday a window popped up saying “Free upgrade to VueScan 9.4.54 is available.” All three info boxes were pre-filled with ‘OK’s’ so I hit the ‘Upgrade Now’ button. Great!

The scan that came out following the ‘upgrade’ was unusable thanks to the overprinted labels stating...

“Buy VuScan now! http://www.hamrick.com”

What kind of Free Upgrade is this? Nowhere did Hamrick warn me that this would happen.

I emailed Hamrick and was AMAZED to receive a response from ‘Ed Hamrick’ himself. Wow! He must be on the ball. I exchanged emails with ‘Ed’ several times in my efforts to revert to my paid-for version. Then I suspected that no owner of a business that has sold 400,000 copies of its software would treat customers in such an arrogant, cavalier fashion.

The final straw was when ‘Ed’ wrote, “You should have saved a copy of what you bought” because Hamrick, the originators of the software did not have a copy of ‘my’ version to send me.

So it was all MY fault!

The only solution offered was for me to download a version of VueScan from the Hamrick website that was older than the version I had originally bought.

This is not the way to get repeat business Mr Hamrick. Especially when I read that the ‘upgrade’ that had ruined my life contained only corrections to Hamrick’s earlier programming errors.

Supports my Konica Minolta Dimage Scan Elite 5400
Creates proper DNG RAW files

Ugly and dated graphical user interface. Cryptic. Almost unusable.
The same non-working film profiles hang in there year after year.
Seems to have updates like every two weeks but nothing really seems to have changed past 8 years I've used VueScan.
Intimidating counter when purchasing VueScan. Tip, if you miss the "10% discount", just change the web browser you're using or empty cookies, etc and it'll start from zero.

I use this a lot. Scanning mainly BW negatives.
Batch scanning could be better when using flatbed, hard to "automatize" it properly. Same goes for cropping stuff, some artificial intelligence could be applied to automatic cropping.
It's good for basic scanning and supports many older scanners too.
Mr. Hamrick really good use some help with the code (maybe open source it a bit?) and the gui.
Still - This is the only option for many scanners and operating systems. I'm grateful VueScan exists.

I bought a new MacBook Pro which required a newer VueScan program. Mr. Hamrick quickly & politely refunded my $50 when it didn't work.

I could not get it to work. Granted I'm not a computer whiz, but this newer version seemed very complicated...more suited to a professional computer user. I couldn't even find many of Mr. Hamrick's guidelines listed to remedy my inability to make it work.

See above, but my older version worked like a charm. This new version is complicated. Followed the instructions, but none of them worked.