VueScan is an inexpensive program that works with most scanners to produce high-quality scans that have excellent color fidelity. It takes advantage of the advanced hardware capabilities of most scanners on the market today, and helps you do batch scanning while at the same time producing color-balanced and cropped images.
Basic Use of VueScan
You can use the mouse to move the edges/corners of the crop box or to draw a new crop box. If you hold down the shift key, you can drag the whole crop box to a new location.
If the colors don't look quite right in the preview, try clicking with the right mouse button (with control key on Mac OS) on an area of the image that should be gray.
To reset to the automatic color balance setting, double-click on the image with the right mouse button (with control key on Mac OS).
If the lighting in the scene is unusual (i.e. at sunset or with stage lighting), try setting "Color|Color balance" to "Neutral".
Using VueScan as Copier
Basic Elements of User Interface
VueScan lets you change options in the tabbed panels on the left side of the window and displays images and histograms on the right side of the window. The bottom left corner of the window gives instructions for the chosen task and the bottom right corner of the window shows the dimensions of the image that will be written if you press the Scan button. Other commands are available in the menu bar, and the most commonly used commands are available as buttons at the bottom of the window.
VueScan has a large number of options, and you can use "More options" in any tab to control whether specialized options are displayed.
You can adjust numeric options by typing a number into a box, moving the slider, or clicking the up/down arrow to the right of the option. You can change file name options by either typing a file name into a box or pressing the button to the right of the file name to browse to the file name. You can also adjust the frame number with the PageUp and PageDown keys.
You can adjust cropping of images by first pressing the preview button, then dragging the edges of the crop box to the desired position or dragging the whole box to a new position. You can also change the focus position by using the mouse to move the small animated box that indicates the focus position, and can reset the automatic cropping by double-clicking on the image.
The preview window is primarily used to show the cropping that the automatic cropping has selected and to let you change this cropping if necessary. It's also used to give you a rough idea of what the color and contrast will look like in the final scan. The scan window shows the cropped image that can be written to a file or printed.
Adjusting Color Balance
You can adjust the color balance of images by clicking on a neutral (gray) area of the image with the right mouse button (or clicking while holding down the control key on Mac OS). You can reset the color balance to automatic white balance by double-clicking on the image with the right mouse button (holding down the control key on Mac OS).
You can display the color and position of the pixel underneath the mouse cursor by moving the mouse over an image. You can also display the density of any point in the image by moving the mouse in the image while holding down the Control key.
Refreshing Display
Whenever you change an option that affects the preview or scan, there is a small delay and then the preview or scan is refreshed. You can disable this by setting "Prefs|Refresh delay" to 0, and then manually refresh the display when needed by using the "Image|Refresh" command.
You can also see the effects of changes to an image by clicking on the image while holding down the Alt key (Option key on Mac OS). This lets you change an option and then clicking on the image with the Alt (Option) key to toggle between the old image and the new image.
You can see the effects of multiple option changes by setting "Prefs|Refresh delay" to 0, refreshing the display manually, changing options, refreshing the display again, and then clicking on the image while holding down the Alt (Option) key to see the changes.
Default options
VueScan does automatic cropping and automatic white balance, and then lets you use an external image viewer to tweak the cropping (if you desire) and tweak the color balance (if necessary). A lot of effort has been put into VueScan to make it accurately crop and white-balance scans, so the amount of manual adjustment needed is minimal - something you'll appreciate when batch scanning large numbers of images.
VueScan's user interface has a large number of options, but the only thing you normally need to do is set the frame number to scan (using "Input|Frame number") and then press the "Scan" button. If you've changed a lot of options and things aren't working right, just reset all the options to their default values with the "File|Default options" command.
How VueScan Works
There are two types of scans - a preview and a scan. The main difference between the preview and the scan is that no files are written when doing a preview and a larger area is scanned for the preview (so you can crop it).
A scan involves reading the raw scan data (from one of 3 sources), processing the raw scan data to get accurate colors, and writing the processed image data (to up to 4 destinations).
The raw scan data can come from one of:
The processed image data for a preview goes to the Preview tab. The processed image data for a scan can go to any combination of:
Note that there is a separate memory buffer for each frame, and you can change between frames without doing another preview or scan. However, the total amount of memory that can be used for this is limited by "Prefs|Preview mem (MB)" and "Prefs|Scan mem (MB)". If more memory is needed, the oldest memory buffers are freed until there is enough memory for a new preview or scan.
Using Raw Scan Files
One of the most powerful features of VueScan is that you can save the raw scan data in a file (using "Output|Output raw file") when scanning. These raw scan files can then be reprocessed later without needing to re-scan the actual media again. You shouldn't ever need to scan the same physical image twice.
The raw scan files are raw data straight from the CCD in the scanner, without any sort of color processing or modification. None of the options in the Filter or Color tabs affect the raw scan files in any way (except that when "Output|Raw output with" is set to "Save", the raw file has had rotation, mirroring, infrared cleaning and grain reduction applied).
You only need to save raw scan files if you foresee a need to reprocess the image in a later session. In any case, VueScan always keeps the raw data from the most recent scan in memory, so you can always reprocess it without needing to rescan the image. The only time you'll need to rescan the image is if you want to change the cropping, scan at a higher resolution, or if you want to manually change the exposure or focus.
Using Color Negative Film
Note that the images produced by VueScan from scanned negatives may vary in intensity and contrast from the prints you get back from a photofinisher. If you look closely at the prints, you'll probably see that the detail in the highlights of the image have been lost, and the detail in the dark parts of images can't be seen. VueScan tries to preserve the detail in the dark and light parts of images, and you can control how much detail in the dark and light parts is preserved by experimenting with the "Color|White point (%)" option. If you want to more closely duplicate the loss of detail in dark and light parts of images that you get when getting prints from a photofinisher, try setting "Color|White point (%)" and "Color|Black point (%)" to "5".