Vuescan -vs- Silverfast on Epson Perfection 4870

[Guest]

My scanner came with Silverfast ai, and that did what I needed
so I did not buy or explore Vuescan.

My old XP box that I used for photos died, and I am getting a new
Win 7 64 bit box. I can get a $30 upgrade to Silverfast for the
new box, or buy Vuescan pro.

What are the trade offs between the two scanner sofeware packages?

(In performance, not cost, both are cheap).

Thanks in advance,

 

[Silicon Sam]

My scanner came with Silverfast ai, and that did what I needed
so I did not buy or explore Vuescan.

My old XP box that I used for photos died, and I am getting a new
Win 7 64 bit box.  I can get a $30 upgrade to Silverfast for the
new box, or buy Vuescan pro.

What are the trade offs between the two scanner sofeware packages?

(In performance, not cost, both are cheap).

Thanks in advance,

I don't use Silverfast, but I will say this.

I bought Vuescan Pro over 8 years ago because it would work with so
many different types and brands of scanners, it works with Mac, PC and
Linux platforms. Gets updated several times a week sometimes, and pay
one price forever. I used it on a Mac initially, and when I made the
mistake of playing with a PC, I just downloaded it and kept going.
Back on Mac of course...

So pay the Pro price one time, and it's good from now on.

 

[Rthoreau]

(e-mail address removed);1251230 Wrote:

<snip>
SilverFast offers more features and they are more powerful, thus more
complex to learn. You have to be willing to invest a few hours in
learning about imaging in general and about the software in particular.
Then you have everything to achieve perfect scans.

Take the dust and scratch removal functionality for example. With
VueScan you can switch it on and of, wow. With SilverFast you have
sliders to adjust the size of defects to detect, to adjust the intensity
of correction. You can work with different masks on several layers.

CatDog

You make a lot of assumptions without much proof you might want to put
a link or two in your thesis to support your claims. Most people just
want to scan you comment about dust, and particles might be best
addressed by a photo processing application. Some people don't use
SilverFast as it does not have as good hardware support as VueScan.
Last time I looked having a simple UI was a good thing as most people
probably won't use every aspect of a confusing program not to mention
the professionals probably will use a post process anyway as they
realize that scanning is just part of the process.

Then you need to consider what the hardware supports, some might
complain that what good is all those features if your hardware does
not support some cool new feature that a software product has just
released. I would also worry about future support might come a time
with a new version of your favorite OS is no longer supported. Or you
are forced to upgrade to keep support, or your model falls off the
active development list and you don't know if your hardware will
really work with a newer version of your software as it has not been
tested.

I would say search this group and see what the general consensus is
about software and I think you will find a lot of people are very
happy with VueScan.

rthoreau

 

[Kennedy McEwen]

As an amateur I learned a few things about scanning and dust removal. I
no longer bother with dust removal software as it is far better to
clean the slide or film strip before inserting it in the scanner. I
knew this from my early days in TV when slides or moving film were
routinely projected. If a slide was dirty the control room told film
projection to clean it, if the film projection had a hair showing they
yelled, "Blow the gate!" All this was forgotten until I finally was at
my wits end trying to make dust removal work, even in Photoshop CS3. I
finally took the old lesson to heart and now I inspect and clean before
scanning. A bottle of PEC-12 and some lint free (no such thing really)
pads can work wonders, as will a simple blow brush.

Does that work with scratches or bubbles in the emulsion or film base?
Thought not.

Not all dust removal works the same way as CS3 or other photo-editing
software. Get a scanner which properly supports Digital ICE, eg. the
Nikon Coolscans, and you will never need to clone dust, scratches or
film defects in a photo-editor again, saving yourself hours, days and
even years of your life, depending on how much you scan. Both Vuescan
and Silverfast support ICE, CS3 and other photoeditors don't, they only
find defects on the final scan output, not as part of the scan process.

Its always worth cleaning the film before scanning, but that doesn't get
everything, especially when scanning at 4000ppi and higher.

 

[Gernot Hassenpflug]

I think the digital ICE is a nice idea if it is backed up by real
IR. Epson does a better job here than Canon, because Epson uses a
single-scan IR plus 3-color scan to give 4 channels, so no registration
is required (although maybe there are still issues with the optical path
difference); whereas Canon does the IR scan in a second path, with the
IR illumination at 90 degrees to that of the 3-color scan, and a
correction lens for the optical path difference.

Not to mention that for Canon (I cannot speak for Epson) the IR is only
available at a small subset of the resolutions, so the matching between
IR and color scan is only perfect for one or two resolutions. My
example, the Canoscan 8800F, had 600, 1200 and 2400 dpi available for
the IR, but for some reason the "real" 2400 dpi scan with ICE used 1200
dpi for the IR, whereas 600 and 1200 dpi "real" scans used corresponding
resolutions for IR. Very confusing, results will be unexpected unless
you study the control signals sent to the scanner.