This tab lets you set preferences that control the behavior of VueScan.
VueScan is capable of detecting changes to options that affect the preview or scan display. You can use this option to lengthen or shorten the delay between changing an option and the display being refreshed.
This delay is in seconds. The default value is 1.0 seconds.
If set to zero, the preview and scan won't be automatically refreshed when you change options. In this case, you can refresh the preview and scan by using the "Image|Refresh" command.
VueScan normally refreshes the display in two steps - once to give a fast overview of the image and then once again at full resolution. Use this option to control the initial fast refresh of the display.
If set, the display will be refreshed at the completion of each scan. The option is set by default.
If you turn this option off, the display will be refreshed after the last frame in a batch is scanner, which can speed up batch scanning a bit.
If this option is set, cropped and processed images will be displayed using the viewer specified in the "Viewer" option.
If the "External viewer" option is enabled, the specified program will be started with each cropped image upon completion of a scan.
The default value is "default".
On Windows, if the viewer name is "default", the file association for this type of file will be used. You can also put command-line options after the name of the viewer (e.g. "vuepro32 /fillwindow" to display images without a window frame with VuePrint). If the name of the viewer has "%1" after it (e.g. vuepro32 "%1"), the file name will be substituted at that point. If you use the %1 argument on the command line, be sure to put double-quotes around it, or file names that have embedded spaces won't work.
On Linux, the viewer name can have command-line options after it, and the file name will be appended to the end of the command-line before it's run.
On Mac OS 9/X, if the viewer name is "default", the files will start in the same application that would start if you double-click on the files.
On Mac OS 9, the default file type and file creator for the TIFF, JPEG, and BMP files are determined by the settings in the "File Exchange" control panel.
On Mac OS X, you can set up the default viewer for a type of file by clicking on an image, choosing "File|Show info", choosing "Open with application", selecting an application, and then choosing "Change all".
Use these options to set the VueScan window position and size. These options are updated automatically when you move or resize the window.
Use this option to set the font size used in VueScan. The font size is specified in points, which are basically the same as pixels on most systems.
The default value is 8 points.
Note that the display will jump when you change this option.
Use this option to set the width in pixels of the panel containing the VueScan options.
The default value is 330 pixels.
Note that the display will jump when you change this option.
Use this option to choose whether to display a single panel for all tabs. If this option is off, the options will be displayed in the left panel and the images and histograms will be displayed in the right panel. Otherwise, the options, images and histograms will be displayed in a single panel.
Set this option if you want more screen space to be used for displaying images.
Use this option to specify whether the Y axis of histograms is the number of samples (linear), the square root of the number of samples or the logarithm of the number of samples. The default is "Linear"
This option controls whether the crop box in the Preview is animated. It's easier to see when animated, but also can be a bit distracting. The option is set by default.
This option controls whether the TIFF, JPEG, and Index file names automatically have a ".tif", ".jpg", or ".bmp" extension added to the file name. This reduces the amount of typing needed when manually setting the saved file names. No file extension will be added if the file name has a period in it. This option is set by default.
When enabled, VueScan will display a warning message before overwriting a TIFF or JPEG file, and allow you to prevent the file from being overwritten. This option is set by default.
When enabled, VueScan will display a warning message when the scanner isn't ready (or the raw scan file doesn't exist) and you press the Preview or Scan button.
When enabled, VueScan will clear the preview and scan displays when the Preview or Scan button is pressed.
Enabling this option causes a sound to be played on the computer's speakers when scanning completes. This is sometimes useful to alert you to the end of a long- running scan. On Windows, this is the "Default sound" in the "Sounds and Multimedia" control panel. On Linux, this is a simple beep. This isn't yet implemented on the Macintosh.
This option is not set by default.
This option should never need to be used. However, if you have a multi-processor system and scans seem to be failing, try turning this option off. This option can also be used to try to work around buggy USB or SCSI drivers that aren't properly multi-threaded.
If turned on, two threads are used to read from the scanner - one thread to read scan data into memory, and another thread to do preliminary processing of this scan data and store it in an efficient way into a memory buffer. (Previous versions of VueScan always used multi-threading while scanning.)
You can optionally add a watermark (grid of lines) to saved files by selecting this option. This option is not set by default.
The unregistered version of VueScan always applies a watermark.
If this option is set, VueScan will release the memory buffer for the scan at the end of each scan. This is useful if you're post-processing images with an image editor and you need to free some memory.
Memory can also be released manually from the option in the File menu.
Enables the "Output|Output raw file" option when scanning from disk. This is useful if you want to re-scan raw scan files at a lower resolution or bits per pixel and save a raw scan file with these changes.
If this option is set when VueScan starts, no scanners will be accessed. It is set by default.
This is useful if you want to run multiple copies of VueScan at the same time, scanning with one copy and processing raw disk files with another copy. To use this option, put copies of VueScan in different directories, run VueScan, set this checkbox, then exit and restart VueScan.
You can use this option to remove the slider and spin button controls. This is sometimes useful if you want the option panel to be quite small to maximize the image display area. This option is set by default.
You can use this option to enable a short description that pops up in a small yellow box when the mouse hovers over options and buttons.
Use this option to set the maximum amount of memory that VueScan will use to hold all the previews or scans in memory.
If "Input|Preview resolution" is set to "Auto", then each preview needs about one million pixels, and if "Input|Scan resolution" is set to "Auto", each scan needs about four million pixels. Each pixel either needs three bytes (24-bit RGB), six bytes (48-bit RGB) or eight bytes (64 bit RGBI) depending on the setting of "Input|Bits per pixel".
The default value for this option lets you keep six preview frames in memory (for most scanners) and one or two full-resolution scans in memory.
Use this option to set the resolution of the displayed image (in millions of pixels). The default value of 2 million pixels is usually enough for most purposes, but sometimes it's useful to increase this value when zooming into the image.
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.