The crop tab lets you specify full automatic cropping, full manual cropping and a range of options between.
Note that a VueScan also lets you change these values by using the mouse in the preview image. The crop area is displayed as a blinking dashed line that defines the area for subsequent VueScan operations. Position the mouse over the blinking line and drag to reposition any edge. Click and drag anywhere within the crop area to reposition the entire crop area. Click the scan tab to have VueScan automatically display the result of the cropping. The scan tab will use the data from the preview if a full scan has not been done yet.
The area included in the crop are is important in two ways. First, obviously this is the area of the scan that will be included in the output files. Second, this area is used to calculate color balance, histogram, and other settings. Be sure not to including the border around the edge of an image as part of the crop as this may cause these settings to be calculated incorrectly. "Crop|Buffer" can also be used to prevent inadvertent inclusion of data outside of the desired frame in color settings.
Use this option to choose the units to use when display measurements in the Crop tab. You can choose pixel, mm, cm or inch units.
This setting does not affect the size of output.
If this option is set, the crop box is positioned automatically, finding the best placement of this box to capture as much of the image as possible.
If you clear this option and set the "Input|Lock exposure" option, pressing the "Scan" button won't first do a preview scan. This can save time when batch scanning.
This is the offset in the preview area of the start of the image data.
These positions are relative to the upper left-hand corner of the preview area. See "Crop|Preview area".
This option specifies the method used to determine the size of the cropped image:
Lets you enter all of the crop sizes manually. This option will also be selected if you have adjusted the crop size or position using the mouse on the preview window.
Analyzes the image to find the edges automatically using built-in rules. This setting works well most of the time if you want to capture the whole image.
Sets the crop size to be the same as the size of "Crop|Preview area". This setting is especially useful when using VueScan to save the raw scan data to files as it ensures that all of what the scanner reads will be saved.
Sets the crop area to known dimensions. If a specific size is selected, the "Crop|Crop orientation" option will be available.
This option forces the crop box to keep a constant aspect ratio while one (or two) edges are being dragged by the mouse.
This ratio is always greater than one, and is the ratio of the longest edge of the crop box to the shortest edge of the crop box.
If set to "Off", the aspect ratio isn't locked.
If set to "Image size", the aspect ratio is computed using the "Output|Printed size" option.
If set to "Manual", the "Crop|Aspect ratio" option will appear and you can manually set the aspect ratio of the crop box.
If "Crop|Lock aspect ratio" is set to "Manual", use this option to manually set the ratio of the longest edge of the crop box to the shortest edge of the crop box. For instance, if you plan on printing an image on 4x6 paper, the aspect ratio should be 1.5 (6 divided by 4).
Use this option to control whether the size specified in the "Crop size" option is oriented in portrait (taller than wide) or landscape (wider than tall).
This option is available when "Crop|Crop size" is set to a specific size.
This is the size in of the image area that you are cropping. If set to zero, the entire scanned area will be used.
Set these options to define the dimensions of a grid each of whose elements contains an image for VueScan to separately consider after performing scan.
Typically this will be just a 1x1 grid -- a single image, as in the case where you put a single photo on a flatbed scanner, or in the case that you scan a frame of film held in a film holder. These options are not used in this normal case.
These settings allow you to specify a grid of crop boxes within a single preview area. The grid may have a single row, or multiple rows. Each crop box within the grid will be the same size, as specified by "Crop|X/Y spacing", described below.
There are several special cases where you may set values greater than one.
In this case, you will have multiple images along the length of film (X direction) and 1 image over the width of film (Y direction).
If a film strip doesn't crop correctly, try reducing this value to the exact number of images on the film strip. This may be necessary if you have tape on part of the negative strip.
In this case, you may have strips of film with a number of frames each, probably held in a transparency adapter. When placed on the scanner bed horizontally, X images is the number of frames in each strip. If you have more than one strip of film in rows Y images is the number of strips.
In this case, you can array slides in a grid X slides across, Y slides down. The number of X and Y correspond to your settings for X images and Y images.
In this case, you may have multiple photos in both dimensions, for example, you could scan 8 4x6 photos on a 12x16 flatbed scanner with a single scan. In this case, you would lay the photos side-by-side in two rows of four photos in portrait orientation. For this example, X images would be 4, and Y images would be 2.
Use this feature in conjunction with "Crop|X/Y spacing".
These values can be set when "Crop|X/Y images" is set to a value greater than 1. See "Crop|X/Y images".
Set the approximate width (X spacing) and height (Y spacing) of each element in the grid defined by "Crop|X/Y images". For example, 8 4x6 photos on a 12x16 flatbed scanner would have X spacing of 4 inches and Y spacing of 6 inches.
On 35mm film, frames are spaced 38mm apart; the width is 35mm, of course.
Mounted 35mm slides arrayed in a grid with edges touching are 50mm square.
This causes VueScan to enlarge the image beyond the edge of the crop box. This added border is ignored when computing the color balance of the image.
This option is useful to adjust for sizing or positioning errors of the crop box that incorrectly cut off parts of the image you want to keep. Because border will extend the effective area that is cropped, it will tend to include areas of white (or black) in the resulting image; if these parts of the image were not ignored when computing color balance, they could skew the results.
Border is a percentage relative to the dimensions of the cropped area, up to the maximum size of the preview area.
Border can also be set as a negative value in order to reduce the size of the image.
Compare this option to "Crop|Buffer (%)".
This causes VueScan to ignore some image data just inside the edge of the crop box of the image when computing the color balance of the image. Unlike "Crop|Border", the buffer does not affect the size of the image.
This option is useful to account for sizing or positioning errors of the crop box that incorrectly include parts of the image from its outer edges. These white or black areas can significantly skew the calculation of color balance if not ignored.
Buffer is a percentage relative to the dimensions of the image area. Because it includes a "Crop|Border" it should always be set slightly higher than Border.
Compare this option to "Crop|Border (%)".
The preview area is the subset of the total scan area that gets scanned to produce a preview. This option can be set manually, set to the same as the last preview, set to the crop box, set to the default or set to the maximum possible.
Note: if you set a smaller preview area, the scanner head will move only far enough to cover that area. This can reduce the amount of time needed to scan, especially on flatbed scanners. Because the stepper motor that moves the scan head is often the factor that limits speed, it also makes sense to orient images in landscape. (and set the preview area accordingly).
These options describe the size of the preview area. They are relative to the upper left-hand corner of the image, negative, or slide.
Note that you should be careful to not set the Y size to a value larger than 190.5 mm on the PhotoSmart scanners, since there have been reports of scratched film when scanning longer lengths than this.
This option determines where the auto focus is centered. This position is displayed on the preview as a small animated box.
Film tends to curl along its length, as well as across its width in which case the focus will be slightly off as the edges of the film will be closer to the lens than the center. To minimize this effect, position the focus point between the center of the film and its edge in both dimensions, or slightly closer to the edge to account for less depth-of-field the closer to the lens.
Select this option to reveal the specialized options in this tab.
Note that some options are available only when your scanning hardware supports a specific function. Other options will display only when certain other related options are set.