Scanning software choice

[Anthony Lewis]

I use Silverfast Ai HDR and think its great and easy. Then again I have never used any other software. The beauty of HDR scanning is that there are almost no options to chose from and you get the highest scanning quality - it is described as a RAW scan.
Its only when you go into Silverfast HDR for processing of your RAW scan that you make the options. If you make mistakes you just re-process the scan, you do not re-scan the film.
I highly recommend Silverfast HDR because it is so simple. Also I shoot Neg and as far as I know there are only two Neg conversions that are any good, Silverfast and ColorNeg (which does not scan).

[Peter De Smidt]

Its only when you go into Silverfast HDR for processing of your RAW scan that you make the options. If you make mistakes you just re-process the scan, you do not re-scan the film.

Vuescan can do the same thing.

[domaz]

Also I shoot Neg and as far as I know there are only two Neg conversions that are any good, Silverfast and ColorNeg (which does not scan).

Don't think that's true. I get great results with negatives and Vuescan when I do the Lock Exposure, Lock film base color workflow. Silverfast does have more calibrated film profiles though I will give it that. I find that the calibrated film profiles don't help all that much if you are tuning each picture to match your photographic intent anyways though.

[Professional]

I would like you people to tell me if it is available or not, but i scan mostly MF, and what i like in Epson Scan is that it has an Auto crop option for different MF sizes, from 6x4.5 up to 6x9, this helped me a lot, so is this option available in VueScan or SilverFast? I only use Pro mode in Epson Scan which is amazing and so easy, just few clicks and viola, the thing that i like in VueScan or SilverFast is the "Multi-Exposure" option, i really don't know exactly if that is very useful but from what i read it says that it increase the DR and maybe the sharpness a bit, if that is true then this is a big pros for them, and i agree about SilverFast HDR option, even i used once but i am sure it has something nice to the scan if done properly, so if i will have enough time and in mood i will give VueScan and SilverFast more experiments.

I think if i will scan large format sheets then the Auto crop option is not available for all softwares then it will not be a plus for Epson Scan, i would like to test SilverFast more but as i said before that if i don't know all those options shown up in the interface then i may end up to scan normal or corrupting things which will not give me any advantage over the other 2 software, but sure they put all those functions there to master it, would like to know if someone mastered the Silverfast and he found it that way better over the other softwares.

[Bob McCarthy]

I'm up to being fluent in 5 different scanning software packages.

Epson
Vuescan
Silverfast
Nikon Scan
ColorGenius

To me, the key question is where are you going to do the editing of the capture.

If its photoshop, then the differences in the scanning software mentioned are minimal. Price was more important to me since I wasnt going to use much of the functionality of the more expensive programs.

I used Vuescan for a few reasons. It was one license and I am allowed to use it on any scanner I own without fee. I always had an issue with Silverfast for charging by the machine. It allowed multipass and multiscan and HDR, and was the cheapest to do so. I don't believe the Epson provided software allows these features, but I'm a few generations back when I had a 4990. If you buy the Pro version of Vuescan, upgrades are free for life(??), I think that is correct, anyway the pro version is just a few $'s over basic.

If your going to edit in scanning software beyond basic capture settings, Nikon Scan was super (but..only worked on Nikon scanners) and Silverfast should work. I didnt not care for the UI of Silverfast, btw.

Anyway, if you edit with a dedicated program(and you should in my opinion), then the scanning software should only supply the most basic of features.

bob

[photobymike]

"The Epson scan software works fine"

I've used all 3 programs. For that Epson scanner, in my humble opinion, the Epson software is not only fine, it's the best.

Great photo by the way

I am with Ken on this. I have been using film scanner for years now. I use the sliders in the histogram to make sure i scan the whole image. If you get good at this you will notice the scanner (epson v700 v750 ) sees the base fog. You can move the slider to start the scan just above the film base fog. It is really is prominent on some color negatives. You can control the output contrast as well as the gray mid point. When you shoot a gray card, this is about where you want mid point.

[Professional]

I'm up to being fluent in 5 different scanning software packages.

Epson
Vuescan
Silverfast
Nikon Scan
ColorGenius

To me, the key question is where are you going to do the editing of the capture.

If its photoshop, then the differences in the scanning software mentioned are minimal. Price was more important to me since I wasnt going to use much of the functionality of the more expensive programs.

I used Vuescan for a few reasons. It was one license and I am allowed to use it on any scanner I own without fee. I always had an issue with Silverfast for charging by the machine. It allowed multipass and multiscan and HDR, and was the cheapest to do so. I don't believe the Epson provided software allows these features, but I'm a few generations back when I had a 4990. If you buy the Pro version of Vuescan, upgrades are free for life(??), I think that is correct, anyway the pro version is just a few $'s over basic.

If your going to edit in scanning software beyond basic capture settings, Nikon Scan was super (but..only worked on Nikon scanners) and Silverfast should work. I didnt not care for the UI of Silverfast, btw.

Anyway, if you edit with a dedicated program(and you should in my opinion), then the scanning software should only supply the most basic of features.

bob

I bought the Pro VueScan because it is cheap and nothing much at all, i used it few times last time and managed to have great results, so i can have it sometimes over Epson Scan, i have only Epson scanner so Nikon software is out of my game, not sure about ColorGenuis, but what is there with Pro version of VueScan over the Basic? And i paid for Pro as i said because it is cheap and the update is lifetime as they stated, so it is like i pay nothing for it, and i updated my Epson Scan software but i couldn't see any changes there that worthy, i feel Epson is not gonna update it at all for now, they are like stopping to invest on improving Epson Scan, but i hope i can be wrong and they bring something new and better.

I use Photoshop almost 90% with my scans, so that i feel that i don't want to spend long time on scanning software controls then another time with Photoshop, this is another reason i like Epson Scan because it can give me that good-to-work-with scans so i don't need long time on Photoshop to edit/workflow/process the scans.