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.

Being an amature and old, too, I have a problem understanding printed detailed instructions. That being said, here's my experience with Ed Hamrick and VueScan:
I bought the
Vue Scan basic, then later had problems twice. I wrote Ed Hamrick after both troublesome experiences, explaining what, when, and how. Both times he responded, then told me what was needed. I approached him with a positive attitude and he answered me in kind. I use VueScan often and may up-grade.

I've yet to run into any software that was so simple that even idiots could use it. Most require a person to have a minimum of intelligence, patience, and desire; those who don't ... won't.

VueScan is worth more than the cost.

A good piece of kit, allows old scanner to be used with W7

Vuescan not very helpful

The web site offers $10 discount for purchases within 59mins but I could not find how to get this discount. asked how and was given instructions. of course by this time the hour was up so no discount. Annoyed, I asked to cancel sale and this was refused

Cheap

Ed Hamrick, customer service, buggy with multiple crashes and again ED HAMRICK! Ed Hamrick hates his customers! ?NO SOFTWARE FOR YOU!!

I am not even going to bother reviewing the software here. This review is all about the biggest a-hole that i have ever had to deal with. This guy is Ed Hamrick creator of Vuescan. I am not a young guy so this is saying a lot. Believe all of the things you have read in the other reviews about Ed Hamrick. He is one nasty, ungrateful, egotistical jerk! He makes the Soup Nazi look like Mother Teresa. i had many problems with Vuescan working with Primefilm XE (Reflecta Proscan 10T) scanner. A scanner Vuescan purportedly supports. Apparently Ed doesn't like being told his software isn't working with a particular scanner. In fact Ed doesn't like hearing from his customers, even if you have polite suggestions. If you do suggest to Ed his software is buggy then expect a non-response, or a 3 word email response, or an email berating you that you are wasting his time, or some other nasty response with comment that he will refund and you should never to bother him again and go away or all of the above. if you happen to have zero issues with this software then consider yourself blessed. If you do have problems then just politely ask for a refund and step aside (ala soup nazi). One thing i am convinced of in my short experience with this colossal jerk is that Ed hates his customers. He loves their money and no doubt has made a ton of it off them. He treats his business like he is selling donuts-buy the donut and go away, no customer service needed. What an ugly excuse of a human being. Karma baby, karma.

Very good results and performance, when it works

So-so Interface
Severely unpleasant "support"

I used this software happily for about 10 years, putting up with its idiosyncratic user interface because of the superb job that it did, and was very pleased with the way it developed and improved over its very many and frequent updates. It has been a constant daily workhorse in my office, bettering by far the software that HP provided for my all-in-one scanner/printer. (HP software could not even manage to produce valid PDF files!)

Then, a new version of VueScan caused a couple of problems, and I had the miserable experience of contacting the developer (who also does his own customer support). What an objectionable experience that was! I even made a point of saying to him that I had been delighted with his software for almost a decade, but he was rude, objectionable and unhelpful from the outset. He seems to think that any communication with him that does not fit with a formula of his own is a waste of his time. He repeatedly gives a link to his website that supposedly tells you how to communicate with him - but it does not; it is just a FAQ page.

A bit of Internet research suggests to me that I am not at all alone in this opinion!

Having got nowhere in dealing with him, I just rolled back all my software to the last working version, and I will certainly not have anything further to do with Hamrick Software again. So nasty was he, I actually feel rather queasy now every time I use the software, because it reminds me of my dealings with him.

So, if you download the trial, and it works perfectly, then use it and you may well be happy with it, as I was for almost ten years of constant, heavy use. If you have the slightest hint of difficulty with it, then please make sure you get it sorted before you part with any money.

Customer Service

Abysmal

Upgraded to the Pro Version from a much older version. Recogonized all the scanners curently attached (Brother MFC and Cannon Lid600F ) OCR and scanning ability so far has met my expectations.

Haven't found any.

Not a heavy user but this software meets and exceeds my expectations. For a test I slapped an old printed instruction page into my flatbed scanner and selected the OCR option. (BTW to the other doofuss who kept getting photos of the text... de-select the jpeg output option next time) I expected a minor error or so but the scan was perfect, it read every character correctly in upper and lower case.

Using and iMac with latest version of Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion