Vuescan questions

[vsbiting]

I downloaded the Vuescan trial version, and found it be the Standard
instead of the Pro version. Is that right? Without the many options
described in the user's guide, the Standard version's canned workflow
isn't a good way to evaluate the product. In particular, it is
impossible to tell a scan's quality is a result of how VS controls a
scanner's hw, or how VS post processes a raw scan by sw.

The user's guide has a long list of supported film types. But the
Fujichromes and Kodachromes, which I use, are missing. Why? Nor can I
find in the guide how to specify a film type.

Is there a good VS tutorial written by one of its faithful users?

 

[Roger S.]

It is the standard version. If you want to see what the (mostly)
unprocessed scan looks like, set color balance to "none" and output a
16 bit Tiff.

For slides, none of the "film types" are useful. Scan as "image" (not
color slide) and either set color balance manually, white balance, or
none. The IT8 profiling feature is useful to me for slides, but you
need VS pro to use it.

I don't know of a real tutorial, but the archives of this group are a
great place to start. Search for some posts from Erik Krause, Bart van
der Wolf and others.

 

[Don]

I downloaded the Vuescan trial version, and found it be the Standard
instead of the Pro version. Is that right? Without the many options
described in the user's guide, the Standard version's canned workflow
isn't a good way to evaluate the product. In particular, it is
impossible to tell a scan's quality is a result of how VS controls a
scanner's hw, or how VS post processes a raw scan by sw.

There's actually only one version and features are turned on and off
depending on which key you purchase.

But, you're right, if you do want to do extensive and thorough testing
to truly evaluate the program, that's not possible with the trial
version. And there's a reason for that... ;o)

VueScan is very buggy and unreliable so any testing you do will only
be valid for that particular version. The next release reshuffles the
deck completely. And because VueScan is so buggy these releases come
out fast and furious as the author trips over himself to try and fix
the bugs introduced in the previous "fix", and so on...

But you put your finger on it by making a distinction between what the
scanner delivers (i.e. hw) and any processing that takes place (i.e.
sw). VueScan is notorious for messing with this data in order to try
and hide the bugs and this applies to the so-called raw mode as well.

If you skim the archives you'll find many specific complaints you may
want to look into if they are relevant to you. It's second hand, but
the only other alternative is to actually purchase the program.

Most people don't care about all that and there are many happy users
with a low quality threshold (e.g. a tiny Web JPG or a quick print).

BTW, if you're concerned about data integrity (as your question seem
to imply) are there any reasons why you can't use the native scanner
program and scan raw? Usually, just turning all the editing off will
results in pure data. Or are you running an OS on which native
software doesn't work, such as Linux?

Don.

 

[vsbiting]

It is the standard version. If you want to see what the (mostly)
unprocessed scan looks like, set color balance to "none" and output a
16 bit Tiff.

Thanks for confirming that. Ed could have stated that more clearly
instead at his site. His said to "Use the "About" menu command in
VueScan to display what Edition you have", but that did not reveal any
edition info, only ordering solicitation.

I'll try what you suggested.

For slides, none of the "film types" are useful.

Not sure why different film types are useful for negatives and not for
slides. Is this statement only for VS or for scanner sw in general? Can
you clarify?

Scan as "image" (not
color slide) and either set color balance manually, white balance, or
none.

The VS guide also suggested using "image" instead of "slide film",
saying that "The difference between "image" and "slide film" is subtle."
But the preview difference switching between "image" and "color slide"
is drastic and dramatically. It is done by sw and not by rescanning
since there was no scanner movement.

I find the VS guide not any better than the scanners' user manuals -
poorly organized, incomplete, and often incoherent. It is definitely
worse by not including a single screen shot. A good business person
would realize that a good manual can save him many hours of responding
to user inquiries (assuming that he responds), not to mention bashing by
unhappy users.

The IT8 profiling feature is useful to me for slides, but you
need VS pro to use it.

One reason I'm trying VS is for generating an IT8 profile. See my
response to Don.

I don't know of a real tutorial, but the archives of this group are a
great place to start. Search for some posts from Erik Krause, Bart van
der Wolf and others.

I'll try searching the archive. Thanks.

 

[vsbiting]

Don, I'm aware of how people feel about VS here. Hence I waited a long
time to try it out. I'll try to be objective with my comments.

But you put your finger on it by making a distinction between what the
scanner delivers (i.e. hw) and any processing that takes place (i.e.
sw). VueScan is notorious for messing with this data in order to try
and hide the bugs and this applies to the so-called raw mode as well.

To be fair, hiding what is being done by hw and sw seems to be the norm
with scanner (and digital camera) manufacturers. I give the VS guide
credit for describing and separating a raw scan and post processing. But
then the guide fails miserably by *not* spelling out how each option and
feature falls into the hw and sw bin. See my response to Roger regarding
"image" and "slide film".

If you skim the archives you'll find many specific complaints you may
want to look into if they are relevant to you. It's second hand, but
the only other alternative is to actually purchase the program.

Most people don't care about all that and there are many happy users
with a low quality threshold (e.g. a tiny Web JPG or a quick print).

Yes, different products suit different users' needs and that's how it
should be. It would be nice if the posts here can provide some context
when they support or bash a product. If I just want a simple workflow
for web jpg or a quick print (such as the VS Standard's), the native sw
that comes with my scanner can do just as well. If VS' claim to fame is
being able to squeeze the most out of a scanner' hw, or it can
postprocess better than PS, then provide a demo version that can demo
these.

BTW, if you're concerned about data integrity (as your question seem
to imply) are there any reasons why you can't use the native scanner
program and scan raw? Usually, just turning all the editing off will
results in pure data. Or are you running an OS on which native
software doesn't work, such as Linux?

I am a believer to get the most out of what I have, and only purchase
something that I can prove can solve a problem. I have been using my
Minolta 5400's native sw for raw slide scans for some time on my PC. One
problem I have with my workflow is the PS overhead needed to gamma and
color/tonal correct the raw scans. I have yet to find a good gamma
adjusting method to brighten the raw scans without causing other
problems. Adjusting levels and curves, or using screen blending option
etc. can brighten the scans. But they all would cause one or more
problems such as messing up contrast, saturation and color accuracy,
etc. Then I have to tweak PS to fix these.

My reason for VS evaluation is to see if it can help in this regard. My
wishful thinking (extremely unlikely) is that the 5400 has a hidden hw
gamma control (separate from the hw exposure control) which VS can
tweak. Or VS can generate better scanner and film profiles to produce a
better gamma corrected raw scan (probably more likely).

 

[David J. Littleboy]

Not sure why different film types are useful for negatives and not for
slides. Is this statement only for VS or for scanner sw in general? Can
you clarify?

For slides, what you want (usually) is exactly what you see when you look at
the slide. So playing film type (and/or IT8 sorts of) games doesn't (in
general) make a lot of sense.

You can, of course, use slide film (with corrections) to do colorimetrically
correct photography. But landscape types generally think the "character"
provided by the film is a feature, not a problem.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

 

[Dan Rempel]

Don, I'm aware of how people feel about VS here. Hence I waited a long
time to try it out. I'll try to be objective with my comments.

[much snipping]

My reason for VS evaluation is to see if it can help in this regard. My
wishful thinking (extremely unlikely) is that the 5400 has a hidden hw
gamma control (separate from the hw exposure control) which VS can
tweak. Or VS can generate better scanner and film profiles to produce a
better gamma corrected raw scan (probably more likely).

My experience with VueScan is that the internals seem to work ok, but
the user interface and documentation are awful, and Ed Hamrick seems to
have a bit of a 'tude problem; could be wrong about the last one,
though. I haven't investigated gamma correction; perhaps someone who's
looked at it seriously can provide some hard data.

The UI simply sucks. For example, it's unpredictable: change something
here and another change occurs over there, which of course you won't
notice until you've scanned 20 or 30 images. And, Ed seems to make
small, arbitrary changes with each release, often leaving me to wonder
"what happened to X; did I somehow turn it off?" As for the
documentation, it's incomplete and outdated; nuff said.

Once you sort things out, though, it seems to generally do what it's
supposed to: generate useable profiles, do batch scannning and
conversion, perform somewhat useable OCR, etc. Whether or not that's
worth $90 US is up to you: I wish I'd saved my money, but now that I
have it I use it.

Dan

 

[Roger S.]

For slides, none of the "film types" are useful.
I should clarify that I don't find film types for negatives at all
useful either. They are generally outdated, for films I don't use, and
none of them seem to work right for me. They're supposed to be canned
solutions to help you get good color with minimal work, but I find they
just give you bad color and more work correcting it. I do think the
IT8 profiling has some value in getting the scan to match the slide,
but if you want Vuescan to give you profiles you can use in other
programs, you are not going to be happy. If that's what you want, try
getting an IT8 target and the freeware program SCARSE.

For color balance, I find this workflow much more useful, and I
recently started using a QP card under sunlight in place of the grey
card and white card:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp...2?q=erik+krause+color&rnum=1#1436a237cdaf9032

 

[Randy Howard]

Dan Rempel wrote
(in article

Don, I'm aware of how people feel about VS here. Hence I waited a long
time to try it out. I'll try to be objective with my comments.

[much snipping]

My reason for VS evaluation is to see if it can help in this regard. My
wishful thinking (extremely unlikely) is that the 5400 has a hidden hw
gamma control (separate from the hw exposure control) which VS can
tweak. Or VS can generate better scanner and film profiles to produce a
better gamma corrected raw scan (probably more likely).

My experience with VueScan is that the internals seem to work ok, but
the user interface and documentation are awful, and Ed Hamrick seems to
have a bit of a 'tude problem; could be wrong about the last one,
though. I haven't investigated gamma correction; perhaps someone who's
looked at it seriously can provide some hard data.

The UI simply sucks. For example, it's unpredictable: change something
here and another change occurs over there, which of course you won't
notice until you've scanned 20 or 30 images. And, Ed seems to make
small, arbitrary changes with each release, often leaving me to wonder
"what happened to X; did I somehow turn it off?" As for the
documentation, it's incomplete and outdated; nuff said.

Once you sort things out, though, it seems to generally do what it's
supposed to: generate useable profiles, do batch scannning and
conversion, perform somewhat useable OCR, etc. Whether or not that's
worth $90 US is up to you: I wish I'd saved my money, but now that I
have it I use it.

Sounds about right.

VueScan cries out for being bought out by a real software
company and overhauled. It supports (to varying degrees) a ton
of hardware, but the UI looks like it was designed by a
schizophrenic that lost his sight 4 years ago in 3 out of his 4
personalities.

It needs an "Apple makeover".

 

[Raphael Bustin]

Sounds about right.

VueScan cries out for being bought out by a real software
company and overhauled. It supports (to varying degrees) a ton
of hardware, but the UI looks like it was designed by a
schizophrenic that lost his sight 4 years ago in 3 out of his 4
personalities.

It needs an "Apple makeover".

My $0.02.

A scanner driver needs only a few basic capabilities.

It should allow for and fully support focus control, if
it exists on the scanner.

Ditto for exposure controls. Not post-processing, but
integration times in milliseconds per scanline. For CIS
and Nikon film scanners, it should support LED duty-cycle
control, per-channel. [In the Nikon, the Master gain
control would be ms/scanline, and the per-channel
controls would use LED duty cycles.]

It needs a decent size preview window with a
"densitometer" function (aka Photoshop "Info" tool.")

The scanner driver then needs a working curves and/or
Levels tool, using Photoshop's UI.

Vuescan has never had these last two, and so IMO
it barely qualifies for serious work. I don't need a scanner
driver to look pretty, but I can't work without a Curves
or Levels tool.

Vuescan has proven handy on a few occasions
when I thought the scanner hardware might be in
question.


rafe b
www.terrapinphoto.com

 

[Robert Feinman]

Thanks for confirming that. Ed could have stated that more clearly
instead at his site. His said to "Use the "About" menu command in
VueScan to display what Edition you have", but that did not reveal any
edition info, only ordering solicitation.

I'll try what you suggested.


Not sure why different film types are useful for negatives and not for
slides. Is this statement only for VS or for scanner sw in general? Can
you clarify?


The VS guide also suggested using "image" instead of "slide film",
saying that "The difference between "image" and "slide film" is subtle."
But the preview difference switching between "image" and "color slide"
is drastic and dramatically. It is done by sw and not by rescanning
since there was no scanner movement.

I find the VS guide not any better than the scanners' user manuals -
poorly organized, incomplete, and often incoherent. It is definitely
worse by not including a single screen shot. A good business person
would realize that a good manual can save him many hours of responding
to user inquiries (assuming that he responds), not to mention bashing by
unhappy users.


One reason I'm trying VS is for generating an IT8 profile. See my
response to Don.


I'll try searching the archive. Thanks.

Vuescan should be considered as a program that captures the data.
Everything else it does is post processing and can be done more
flexibly with Photoshop or similar.
If you want comprehensive adjustment capability and the ability
to set up a complicated workflow I suggest using Silverfast instead.
It is designed to deliver scans that need little further correction.
It also has an interface that takes time to get used to and its price
is much higher than Vuescan, but if you do a lot of scanning of images
taken under standardized conditions it will pay for itself in time
saved.

Also, unlike Vuescan, you need a different version for each model
scanner.

 

[Don]

I changed the order of things a bit to tackle important stuff first.

I am a believer to get the most out of what I have, and only purchase
something that I can prove can solve a problem. I have been using my
Minolta 5400's native sw for raw slide scans for some time on my PC. One
problem I have with my workflow is the PS overhead needed to gamma and
color/tonal correct the raw scans. I have yet to find a good gamma
adjusting method to brighten the raw scans without causing other
problems. Adjusting levels and curves, or using screen blending option
etc. can brighten the scans. But they all would cause one or more
problems such as messing up contrast, saturation and color accuracy,
etc. Then I have to tweak PS to fix these.

OK, I see now! There are a number of issues here. If I go into too
much detail, please ignore and only focus on the relevant stuff.

If I understand correctly, you'd like to streamline your workflow and
avoid having to post-process in Photoshop afterwards. Is that right?

If so, editing in scanner software is not really a good idea, on
principle. There are a number of reasons for that. For example, basing
major editing decision on a tiny preview "keyhole" instead of 100% (or
magnified) full display an external editing program will provide.
Also, editing features of scanner programs are very limited because
their job is to scan, not to edit. Any editing is only provided as a
courtesy for people who want a "quick-and-dirty" scan and can't afford
to buy (or don't care for) an external editor.

As to gamma correction, have you tried Timo's gamma curves?

http://www.aim-dtp.net/aim/download/gamma_maps.zip

His views are considered controversial by some but I found that his
gamma curves produced less banding than the Photoshop (version 6)
curves. (In the interest of full disclosure, I now don't use either
because my own scanner program uses full 16-bit look-up tables.)

Finally, what specific gamma problems are you referring to?

One thing to note is that due to the way (most) programs generate
histograms they may look worse than the actual underlying data.
Specifically, the "recursive waves" i.e. spikes. The reason for that
is how the original 16-bit histogram data is scaled down to 8-bit.

My reason for VS evaluation is to see if it can help in this regard. My
wishful thinking (extremely unlikely) is that the 5400 has a hidden hw
gamma control (separate from the hw exposure control) which VS can
tweak. Or VS can generate better scanner and film profiles to produce a
better gamma corrected raw scan (probably more likely).

I don't have a Minolta but, in theory, there's no hidden gamma control
because gamma is done is software.

One other thing, VueScan is particularly buggy with a Minolta (Mark 1)
i.e. the notorious "VueScan stripes". The author was unable to fix
this for over two years causing him to run away from here due to all
the Minolta users' complaints. He finally (allegedly) "fixed" it after
a knowledgeable contributor here explained how it's done in 5 mins.

---

Don, I'm aware of how people feel about VS here. Hence I waited a long
time to try it out. I'll try to be objective with my comments.

That's OK. There's nothing wrong with being subjective as such as long
as that's indicated. After all, each of our individual purchasing (or
any other) decisions are subjective in the end.

The only problem is when (some) people here try to project their
personal feelings and attempt to pass them off as objective "fact".

To be fair, hiding what is being done by hw and sw seems to be the norm
with scanner (and digital camera) manufacturers.

There's a qualitative difference between that and what VueScan does.

In case of reputable manufacturers, that "hiding" is a part of being
user friendly so as not to overwhelm the average user with technical
details, but (very important!) still allow advanced users full access.

In case of VueScan, we're talking about corruption of data beyond user
control in order to mask the program's failings e.g. taking raw
scanner data, mutilating it to hide the program's shortcomings, and
then passing that mess on as a "raw" scan.

I give the VS guide
credit for describing and separating a raw scan and post processing. But
then the guide fails miserably by *not* spelling out how each option and
feature falls into the hw and sw bin. See my response to Roger regarding
"image" and "slide film".

There are basically two reasons for that. One is the "unusual thought
processes" of the author. As virtually everyone agrees (even the most
ardent VueScan supporters) the so-called user interface is a mess.

However, to the author it's perfectly "logical" and he insists that
the world follows him, in part because he doesn't have the integrity
or professionalism to fix a wrong concept from the ground up. Both of
those are clear signs of an amateur programmer.

Secondly, a confusing guide on top of a confusing so-called user
interface makes it easier for the author to hide behind that mess and
simply blame the users for his own failings.

If I just want a simple workflow
for web jpg or a quick print (such as the VS Standard's), the native sw
that comes with my scanner can do just as well.
Exactly!

If VS' claim to fame is
being able to squeeze the most out of a scanner' hw, or it can
postprocess better than PS, then provide a demo version that can demo
these.

Two for two!

Don.

 

[Don]

One reason I'm trying VS is for generating an IT8 profile.

In that case you should note that VueScan's matrix color profiling is
very primitive, not to mention buggy.

Vuescan does not create a LUT (look up table) like other profiling
packages do, but is relatively inexact requiring additional tweaking
in an image editor afterwards to mop up its shortcomings.

Even Wolf Faust (www.coloraid.de) who manufactures profiles which
people here regard highly said so, calling Vuescan profiles
"simplistic".

Don.

 

[David J. Littleboy]

The scanner driver then needs a working curves and/or
Levels tool, using Photoshop's UI.

Vuescan has never had these last two, and so IMO
it barely qualifies for serious work. I don't need a scanner
driver to look pretty, but I can't work without a Curves
or Levels tool.

Hmm. I don't like doing curves/levels in the scanner software simply because
its more accurate after the fact. I've never been able to set the
black/white points anywhere near as accurately in a scanner program as I can
in PWP or Photoshop, (similarly for RAW converters), and PWP's curves/levels
is far more accurate/controllable than even photoshop's.

So it seems to me that at scan/raw convertion time, you want to get the
histogram roughly into within the range of the histogram without clipping
and do the fine tuning later.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

 

[Roger S.]

/levels in the scanner software simply because

its more accurate after the fact. I've never been able to set the
black/white points anywhere near as accurately in a scanner program as I can
in PWP or Photoshop, (similarly for RAW converters), and PWP's curves/levels
is far more accurate/controllable than even photoshop's.

So it seems to me that at scan/raw convertion time, you want to get the
histogram roughly into within the range of the histogram without clipping
and do the fine tuning later.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

I completely agree with David, and my only regret is that it took me so
long to figure out that it's actually *faster* to do this in Photoshop
as PS is more consistent (I can have a canned levels or curves command
where I just manually tweak the white/black point for each image and
click OK).

 

[Raphael Bustin]

Hmm. I don't like doing curves/levels in the scanner software simply because
its more accurate after the fact. I've never been able to set the
black/white points anywhere near as accurately in a scanner program as I can
in PWP or Photoshop, (similarly for RAW converters), and PWP's curves/levels
is far more accurate/controllable than even photoshop's.

So it seems to me that at scan/raw convertion time, you want to get the
histogram roughly into within the range of the histogram without clipping
and do the fine tuning later.

Point is, Vuescan doesn't even have a proper means of
setting white and black points.

NikonScan's Curves tool is as functional as Photoshop's,
its preview window is generous (and accurate) so I do
my first-level corrections there. I leave a few unused
codes at either end of each channel's histogram.

Sure, you can defer almost everything (except gain
and focus) when working in 16-bit mode. Even so,
I prefer to see the image in reasonably good shape
before hitting the scan button.


rafe b
www.terrapinphoto.com

 

[Bart van der Wolf]

SNIP

Hmm. I don't like doing curves/levels in the scanner software simply
because its more accurate after the fact.

It is also more logical to do postprocessing in a dedicated
environment, but there will probably be too small an audience for
recovering the cost of programming and maintaining a scan data
extraction tool alone.

SNIP

So it seems to me that at scan/raw convertion time, you want to get
the histogram roughly into within the range of the histogram without
clipping and do the fine tuning later.

Yes, exposure control for superior Raw quality will pay-off as one
progresses through the workflow, although it would also help if
profile creation (since it is tied in so closely with the scan
process) was part of the options.

Bart

 

[Bart van der Wolf]

SNIP

Point is, Vuescan doesn't even have a proper means of
setting white and black points.

Hmm, in fact it has had that for a long time. Maybe you don't like the
implementation, but that's neither the same as it isn't proper, nor
that it couldn't be changed if people ask for it.

In fact VueScan allows to set B/W points per channel or for the
weighted average of luminance in the Gamma adjusted and color balanced
and color managed data. It also signals clipping in the preview for
B/W points, or for out-of-gamut colors. It also allows to see if there
is a correlation with the IR cleaning mask.

What's more, you can change the histogram into a Logarithmic bin count
display, thus amplifying small bin countsfor accurate visual histogram
clipping.

Bart

 

[Bart van der Wolf]

SNIP

A scanner driver needs only a few basic capabilities.

It should allow for and fully support focus control, if
it exists on the scanner.

Yes, as a minimum, but it could go a lot further. I could e.g. average
the optimal focus position by sampling at different points in the crop
area and determine the best DOF position. It could even go a lot
further by assembling optimally focussed areas into a single image.

Ditto for exposure controls. Not post-processing, but
integration times in milliseconds per scanline. For CIS
and Nikon film scanners, it should support LED duty-cycle
control, per-channel. [In the Nikon, the Master gain
control would be ms/scanline, and the per-channel
controls would use LED duty cycles.]

Regarding exposure, there are several improvement possibilities,
Black-frame subtraction and multiple scans are two obvious ones, but
there may also be room for improvement if uneven lighting becomes a
problem.

It needs a decent size preview window with a
"densitometer" function (aka Photoshop "Info" tool.")

Depending on what you want to measure and why, colormanagement will
change or potentially clip the data, so it would soon have to become
part of the package.

The scanner driver then needs a working curves and/or
Levels tool, using Photoshop's UI.

I don't see the need to duplicate functionality that is available in
many dedicated photoeditors, but some preview of Gamma adjusted and
profiled data would help to to allow and tweak prior to a lengthy
scan.

Vuescan has never had these last two, and so IMO
it barely qualifies for serious work. I don't need a scanner
driver to look pretty, but I can't work without a Curves
or Levels tool.

VueScan has had both functionalities for quite a while already, but
it's less intuitive to use as in several other postprocessing tools.

Bart

 

[vsbiting]

I was hoping that the VS film types will "help you get good color with
minimal work" also. But if they don't serve that purpose, or "just give
you bad color and more work correcting it", why did Ed make such a big
deal about them?