VueScan Big Picture Suggestions Wanted

[Ed Hamrick]

Many, many people in this newsgroup have taken the time to write to
me with suggestions for improving VueScan in the past. I really
appreciate the many excellent suggestions I've gotten, and these
are the main reason VueScan has improved so much in the past few years.

I'd like to ask for suggestions again, but instead of asking for
suggestions for small changes to VueScan (which are always welcome),
I'd like to ask people to put on their thinking caps and think of
big-picture suggestions.

For instance, here's an idea for a revamped user interface:

http://www.hamrick.com/images/newui.jpg

What do people think of this?

Some other big-picture ideas I've had:

1) Lower prices for reflective scanners (or no watermarking for reflective
scans)
2) Make price proportional to scanner price (I don't really like this
though)
3) Lower prices for students (it's hard to do this automatically though)
4) Integrate with Mac OS X Image Capture (would this be useful?)
5) Integrate with TWAIN (might be a support nightmare though)
6) Add support for Fujitsu document scanners (not many in use though)
7) Add support for curves (can do this in Photoshop though)
8) Add support for scanning to multi-page PDF files
9) Automatic recognition of multiple snapshots on a flatbed (batch scanning)

I'd like to get other big-picture suggestions. One of the things I'm
well aware of is that my main competitor isn't SilverFast, but is the
free software that comes with most scanners. I think I need to focus
on adding capabilities to VueScan that are useful to people and that
aren't also included in the software that comes with scanners.

Please send your big-picture suggestions to (e-mail address removed)
with an e-mail subject of "Big Suggestion" and I'll summarize here.

Thanks!

Regards,
Ed Hamrick

 

[Ralf R. Radermacher]

http://www.hamrick.com/images/newui.jpg

What do people think of this?

Not bad at all.

Quite frankly, I'd rather see a few improvements regarding the
shortcomings and problems with the old GUI. Under Mac OS X, the response
of the crop frame is still annoyingly erratic if I try to crop close to
the frame edges. Pulling on one side usually produces unwanted changes
on another one. No apparent systematics to this, though.

Having 'Advanced' selected and still being able to hide some extremely
rarely used settings would go a long way at reducing the present
clutter, especially in the 'Input' and 'Color' panels.

2) Make price proportional to scanner price (I don't really like this
though)

Now, that would imply different versions for different scanners,
wouldn't it?

4) Integrate with Mac OS X Image Capture (would this be useful?)
Pardon?

5) Integrate with TWAIN (might be a support nightmare though)

This is sinking deeper and deeper on my personal list of priorities, if
that is of any significance.

7) Add support for curves (can do this in Photoshop though)

The single most important improvement I could think of.

8) Add support for scanning to multi-page PDF files

As long as the folks here insist Vuescan isn't meant to be a picture
processing software, why on earth should it now be doing DTP tasks???

One of the things I'm
well aware of is that my main competitor isn't SilverFast, but is the
free software that comes with most scanners.

Hmm.... I've NEVER used the software supplied with my LS-30/2000 or my
Epson Perfection 3200. But I do at times resort to Silverfast for
certain tasks or especially tricky negatives, simply because of the
better control it offers.

Ralf

 

[Ian Riches]

Ed Hamrick ([email protected]) wrote...

Many, many people in this newsgroup have taken the time to write to
me with suggestions for improving VueScan in the past. I really
appreciate the many excellent suggestions I've gotten, and these
are the main reason VueScan has improved so much in the past few years.

I'd like to ask for suggestions again, but instead of asking for
suggestions for small changes to VueScan (which are always welcome),
I'd like to ask people to put on their thinking caps and think of
big-picture suggestions.

For instance, here's an idea for a revamped user interface:

http://www.hamrick.com/images/newui.jpg

What do people think of this?

<snip>

Looks nice. I've never found the UI of Vuescan a huge problem
though. It might not be pretty, but it's effective for me.

My one cry for "Big Picture" changes would be improved scratch
removal / grain reduction performance. I have a Minolta Dual Scan
Elite II, and the only time I really use the Minolta software is when
I have either a badly damaged slide / negative, or am fighting with
unwanted grain. The Vuescan versions just don't seem to function
quite as well.

Another idea would be improved automatic support for creating
panoramas or blended images from multiple exposures. I think a lot
of what I need may already be in Vuescan, in terms of locking
exposure, colours etc. between scans of different frames, but it
still seems a problem sometimes. A distinct mode for combining
images and matching them would be appreciated by me.

Ian

 

[RSD99]

"Curves" and "Levels" capabilities similar to PhotoShop's.

 

[Ralf R. Radermacher]

My one cry for "Big Picture" changes would be improved scratch
removal / grain reduction performance.

I'll second that, although for the LS-30/2000 Specks and spots are
treated reasonably well, but things are really bad with scratches where
the cleaning effect is almost non-existant. Oh, and just to put things
into perspective, SF is no better in this respect.

Haven't been been able to try Nikon Scan since they still don't provide
an OS-X version for my scanner.

Ralf

 

[Bart van der Wolf]

SNIP

Please send your big-picture suggestions to
(e-mail address removed) with an e-mail subject
of "Big Suggestion" and I'll summarize here.

Folks, although it may be useful to spark some creative input by
posting suggestions here, don't forget to mail it as requested above!
It'll be much easier for Ed to manage it that way.

After-all, before you know it there will be those that falsely claim
that Ed wants to monopolize this newsgroup.

Personally, I'm afraid that task Wizards will help newbies enough to
warrant adding a lot of bloat. I'll try and think of some better
big-picture improvements...

Bart (speaking for himself)

 

[Erik Krause]

For instance, here's an idea for a revamped user interface:

http://www.hamrick.com/images/newui.jpg

What do people think of this?

Very bad. I want as much area as possible for image preview. No wide
frames and this kind of wasted space.

A Big Picture improvement would be persistent and reliable ini-files
between versions in my opinion.

 

[Julian Vrieslander]

A Big Picture improvement would be persistent and reliable ini-files
between versions in my opinion.

Yes. Please.

 

[Wayne Fulton]

2) Make price proportional to scanner price (I don't really like this
though)

I really hate this one idea, really really really hate it. Being gouged on
price because its a good scanner is bad enough, but only working with one
model, even of the same brand that is identical, is really really really bad.
I have to go cool down now.

 

[ThomasH]

Yes. Please.

Oh yes, I echo this as well! No more del *.ini please!

 

[Ralf R. Radermacher]

Oh yes, I echo this as well! No more del *.ini please!

Amen to that.

Ralf

 

[David J. Littleboy]

Amen to that.

I think you guys are all very wrong here. Being able to use normal tools for
cleanup and maintenance is a smart idea. I hate Unix*, but they did have a
few good ideas, and keeping everything as human readable text files was one
of them.

And I like del *.ini a _lot_ more than NikonScan's RegSweep.exe. Things like
that arbitrarily munge with the registry aren't a good idea.

*: Largely due to an unpleasant 2 years at AT&T's Tokyo Unix office.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

 

[Ed Hamrick]

I really hate this one idea, really really really hate it. Being gouged
on
price because its a good scanner is bad enough, but only working with one
model, even of the same brand that is identical, is really really really
bad.
I have to go cool down now.

I definitely don't plan to do this, but I wanted to throw ideas
out there to get feedback. You can cool down now Wayne <smile>.

Regards,
Ed Hamrick

 

[Wayne Fulton]

I definitely don't plan to do this, but I wanted to throw ideas
out there to get feedback. You can cool down now Wayne <smile>.

OK, thanks, I am more calm now. <g>

Twain doesnt seem so important (to me) for photos, in that VueScan works
great as it is. However Twain would enable direct use with OCR and Acrobat
and WinFax and such, and that does seem important, certainly a feature.

The screen shot looks good and OK, but not important to me. I think I
remember that XP looks somewhat like that, but the first thing I did was to
restore Classic look. That big red X close icon on the title bar was just
too much for me.

Multiple photos and PDF seem like desirable features.

Curves - those that might use curves surely have a photo editor with Curves
(Elements is probably main exception, they should fix this). But it cant
hurt, other than Curves seems a difficult option to implement, so I'd put it
well down the list after others more important. I tend to use VueScan at
defaults with minimal settings or fuss, and finish up externally anyway.

 

[Wilfred van der Vegte]

[copy of e-mail sent to Ed Hamrick]

I'd like to ask for suggestions again, but instead of asking for
suggestions for small changes to VueScan (which are always welcome),
I'd like to ask people to put on their thinking caps and think of
big-picture suggestions.

For instance, here's an idea for a revamped user interface:

http://www.hamrick.com/images/newui.jpg

Hi Ed,

Looks nice, but to me it's merely cosmetic. I agree with the person who
commented that the preview should be as large as possible. This might
even mean that in case of a landscape image, the controls should move to
the bottom of the application window to make more room for the picture.
Some other ideas that come to my mind (some of these have also been
proposed by others on usenet):

* like in the Minolta software: providing a very fast low-res preview of
the entire film strip

* possibility to obtain a 1:1 pixel preview of a very small area without
losing the cropping settings (and the other options) for the whole
image. This would be very pratical for judging the sharpness. Sometimes
I shoot the same scene more than once, and in selecting the one image to
be scanned, judgement of sharpness is an important factor. It would also
be nice to see what the different cleaning options do to the actual pixels.

* optimization of the calculations that are made to produce the image in
the preview window. I'm hoping this could be done much faster. The
Minolta software doesn't need so much time, but then again it doesn't
deliver the same color accuracy. On the other hand, it could be a matter
of supporting AltiVec or not.

* Easier way to compare different settings for the same scan by
switching between images in the preview window. I vaguely remember
there's a keystroke for this mentioned somewhere in the manual but I
can't find it anymore.

* Better user interface to manipulate the histogram / levels:
(1) smoother operation of the sliders (in Mac oS X they sometimes
disappear during or after after dragging);
(2) Currently, the position of the sliders doesn't seem to be related to
the distributions in the top (input) histogram. If I want to drag a
white-point slider past the 'foot of the mountain' to prevent clipping
it isn't possible to go all the way, yet, the bottom (output) histogram
shows that there's no clipping. Why is a separate output histo needed
anyway?

* personally I don't need curves. I adjust them in Photoshop. The
histograms are more important because they determine the range of values
that is actually scanned.

* consistency between .ini files in different versions.

* easier and more reliable procedure (wizard?) to determine the orange
mask of negative films; possibility to store orange-mask settings for
certain film types

* if slides have to be scanned as 'image', why is there still a 'slide'
setting. This is confusing; an 'image/slide' setting would make more
sense IMO

* Automatic saving as TIFF instead of JPEG in the Pro version

* If not in batch scan mode, it would be nice to have the option to name
files individually, instead of cropxxxx.tif. Manually entering the frame
number would make it easier to find the same image on the film, for
instance.

* possibility to make some of the more exotic options invisble, even in
'advanced' mode.

* An option for noise reduction in shadow areas. I made an action to do
this in Photoshop when I discovered how easy it was to automate the
selection of one-pixel defects in dark areas. I think it can be easily
implemented in VueScan as well. An example is on my website
(http://www.vandervegte.com/SNR-example1.html)

1) Lower prices for reflective scanners (or no watermarking for reflective
scans)

Maybe - or no watermarking for 'e-mail' and 'web' type images in sRGB mode

2) Make price proportional to scanner price (I don't really like this
though)

This suggests you want to compete with Silverfast in the first place ;-)
No, I don't think that's a good idea. What about people that buy
once-expensive scanners second-hand?

3) Lower prices for students (it's hard to do this automatically though)

You may want to consider distribution in cooperation with universities.
In Europe, many software companies operate that way.

4) Integrate with Mac OS X Image Capture (would this be useful?)

I don't see why.

5) Integrate with TWAIN (might be a support nightmare though)

I don't see why. Would that give us a Photoshop plugin for VueScan?

6) Add support for Fujitsu document scanners (not many in use though)

I don't own one ...

7) Add support for curves (can do this in Photoshop though)

.... as I said ...

8) Add support for scanning to multi-page PDF files

Maybe interesting for flatbeds, I don't know

9) Automatic recognition of multiple snapshots on a flatbed (batch scanning)

Photoshop CS has an option for this. The advantage of doing it in
VieScan would be that you'd have smaller files to begin with.


I hope my input is useful.

Regards,
Wilfred van der Vegte.

 

[Thomas F. Unke]

I definitely don't plan to do this, but I wanted to throw ideas
out there to get feedback.

Please don't dump the Linux version and perhaps think about a FreeBSD
version as well, which would be not very difficult using the sane h/w
drivers (USB, SCSI)

 

[Julian Vrieslander]

I think you guys are all very wrong here. Being able to use normal tools for
cleanup and maintenance is a smart idea. I hate Unix*, but they did have a
few good ideas, and keeping everything as human readable text files was one
of them.

And I like del *.ini a _lot_ more than NikonScan's RegSweep.exe. Things like
that arbitrarily munge with the registry aren't a good idea.

Well, I'm a Mac user, so I don't have to worry about the registry. But
I wonder if David is missing the point, or whether these .ini files
function differently in Windows.

On the Mac, vuescan.ini functions as a preferences file. The problem is
that I never know if the .ini file created by an earlier VS version will
work with a newer version. Sometimes it does, sometimes it does not.
Maybe Ed has fixed this issue, but in the past using VS with an
incompatible or corrupted .ini file could cause unpredictable and
hard-to-diagnose problems. That may be one reason why he recommends
throwing away the .ini file when problems are encountered.

Perhaps I am excessively paranoid, but whenever I install a new version,
I toss the .ini file and reload all my settings. I sometimes do this
with the "Save settings, Load settings" operations, which saves a bit of
time. But I don't see why this is necessary. Most of the programs that
I use are capable of importing preference files through version
upgrades. Some of them will even do sanity/corruption checks to verify
that the preference settings are readable and reasonable.

 

[Erik Krause]

* if slides have to be scanned as 'image', why is there still a 'slide'
setting. This is confusing; an 'image/slide' setting would make more
sense IMO

I agree with all your points, Wilfred, but not with this one. 'Slide'
is necessary, but it is not documented at all. 'Slide' subtracts the
film base color, same as it is done for 'color negative' but it is only
useful together with advanced workflow, since there usually is -
contrary to negative - no clear film in the scanning area.

I get the most perfect results with slide, advanced workflow and color
balance neutral. With media type 'image' and color balance 'neutral' I
get cyan clouds instead of white if I scan Provia 10F...

You might wonder whether the film base color plays any roll in slide
scanning. Well, the average values I use are:

Provia 100F Velvia
Red 0.966 0.956
Green 0.869 0.895
Blue 0.833 0.89

 

[Thomas F. Unke]

work with a newer version. Sometimes it does, sometimes it does not.
Maybe Ed has fixed this issue, but in the past using VS with an
incompatible or corrupted .ini file could cause unpredictable and
hard-to-diagnose problems. That may be one reason why he recommends
throwing away the .ini file when problems are encountered.

.... which could easily be solved by a "reload default settings" button.

 

[Wilfred]

Wilfred van der Vegte <[email protected]> stand:

I agree with all your points, Wilfred, but not with this one. 'Slide'
is necessary, but it is not documented at all. 'Slide' subtracts the
film base color, same as it is done for 'color negative' but it is only
useful together with advanced workflow, since there usually is -
contrary to negative - no clear film in the scanning area.

I see. But I guess an overexposed area is needed in a slide in order to
obtain useful results with the advanced workflow. I agree that this
film-base color business needs beter documentation. For instance, how
much of a slide needs to be overexposed, and do you need a completely
unexposed part of a negative film to make it work? To be on the safe
side I always scan a completely unexposed frame to determine the mask,
with mixed results. Somehow I have the impression that the advanced
workflow for negs is most effective if the 'calibration frame' not only
contains an unexposed area, but also some blue sky, green grass and
human skin tones.
I never tried it for slides, but I will try because, indeed, the
'neutral' setting always leaves me with a color cast.