Vuescan - Multiple Exposure Mode

Some time ago Silverfast added a multiple exposure mode to increase the dynamic range it could extract. It uses a two pass method, with certain alignment issues.

Vuescan has added a multiple exposure mode that works differently. Silverfast can do ME on any scanner, but the downside is alignement and occasional artifacts. Vuescan can only do ME on scanners that allow multiple exposures to be made in a single pass. I think this includes the better Epson scanners and it includes the Canon 9950 (RIP - discontinued by Canon) that I use. Works very well. If you have been having problems with Silverfast ME, you might try it. It has reduced the occasions where I use Silverfast, although I still find that difficult negs will scan better in one or the other.

As always with Vuescan, get the latest version from www.hamrick.com - there are incremental fixes and improvements several times a month. It works much better now than it did a year ago, and dramatically better than 2 years ago.

I have no ties to the company. I do think that people who like to have control over all aspects of scanning should try Vuescan as an adjunct to Silverfast. It is esp. nice if you have more than one type of scanner because you do not have buy extra copies. Plus updates are FREE! I must have bought 6 silverfast updates, each of which cost as much or more than the whole Vuescan program.

I use Vuescan almost exclusively because I work under Linux. Occasionally, when working under Windows, I try the limited version of Silverfast that came packaged with something else, but I haven't found it satisfactory. It may be that the full version is much better.

In any case I am very happy with Vuescan. It has a few problems every now and then, but Ed Hamrick fixes them quickly. You can download it and try it. You get a version that puts a "watermark" in your scan, which is removed when you pay for it.

Vuescan works very well for bw. I must admit, though, that NikonScan works much better for me on color slides. The colors are much closer to what I see on the light table right from the scan.

Vuescan allows calibration with a standard transparency target. This will let you scan slides with correct colors. Unfortunately, when I shot slides, they were all KodaChrome and no one makes a KodaChrome target.:-(

Thanks Ed, but like you, I'm often scanning "legacy" films, and so no targets are available. For some reason, Nikon Scan does a great job without any fancy calibration. It also does a good job with color negative scans. Nonetheless, my main scanning tasks are BW, and Vuescan does an outstanding job with these. Like Ed, I use a Canon 9950F, and Vuescan's multiexposure does work well.