Color tab

This tab is used to control the colors of the preview and scan. It lets you specify the film type, the film color, the image brightness, the color balancing, the black and white points and the color space.

Color balance

Use this option to set the type of color balance you want for each image. If your image is dominated by a single color or bright colors (i.e. flowers or foliage), use the auto levels option, otherwise use the White balance option.

None

- The black and white points aren't used at all, and the image is only corrected for the CCD's color response (if the Media type option is set to Image) or by the film's color response.

Neutral

- Both the black and white points are used to stretch the image's intensity range. However, the relative proportions of red, green, and blue are kept constant.

Tungsten

- Both the black and white points are adjusted to compensate for an image lit by tungsten light (i.e. a normal incandescent light bulb). This removes the reddish cast from indoor pictures taken without a flash.

Fluorescent

- Both the black and white points are adjusted to compensate for an image lit by fluorescent light. This removes the greenish cast from indoor pictures lit by fluorescent lights or lit by flash.

Night

- Both the black and white points are adjusted to compensate for an image taken at night. The white balance is determined from the darkest 10% of the image, which often produces the best results when images have bright fluorescent or incandescent lights that are greenish or yellowish.

White balance

- VueScan analyzes the image and adjusts it to make the color balance look like the scene is lit by daylight.

Auto levels

- This is a simple mapping of the darkest color to 0.00 intensity and the brightest color to 0.95 intensity.

Black point (%)

The black point is used by the color balance algorithm and is computed by using the histogram of each color in the image. Use this option to leave the black point at the minimum intensity (0%), or to choose the black point such that some percentage of the pixels in the image are below the black point.

Black point red/green/blue

This option lets you set the black point manually. Note that these values are in linear space, not gamma corrected space, so the only practical way to use these values is to use the "Device|Lock image color" option.

White point (%)

The white point is used by the color balance algorithm and is computed by using the histogram of each color in the image. Use this option to leave the white point at the maximum intensity (0%), or to choose the white point such that some percentage of the pixels in the image are above the white point.

White point red/green/blue

This option lets you set the white point manually. Note that these values are in linear space, not gamma corrected space, so the only practical way to use these values is to use the "Device|Lock image color" option.

Monitor/File color space

Use these options to set the color space. A color space is a combination of color primaries and white point. For most situations, the default color space is probably best.

The Monitor color space is the color space used to display images in the Preview and Scan tabs. The File color space is used when writing images to JPEG, TIFF and Index files.

Note that if you use the Apple RGB, ColorMatch RGB or ProPhoto RGB color space, the image gamma will be 1.8. If you use any other color space, the image gamma will be 2.2.

You can change the image gamma by using the "Color|Image brightness" option. This is a multiplier of the gamma of the color space chosen.

If you're using Photoshop, you'll probably also want to enable writing the ICC profile to the TIFF and/or JPEG file by using the TIFF profile and/or JPEG profile option in the Files tab.

The "Device RGB" color space doesn't embed any ICC profile into the TIFF or JPEG files, and outputs images in the color space of the device. The "Device RGB" option is only useful when "Device|Media type" is set to "Image".

Brightness

Use this option to increase or decrease the overall image brightness. Note that this is effectively a multipler of the gamma in the color space chosen.

Brightness red/green/blue

Use these options to increase or decrease the red/green/blue image brightness. Note that this is a gamma multiplier, where 1.0 is the default setting.

Slide/Negative/B/W vendor/brand/type

Use these options to set up the film type for various settings for the "Device|Media type" option.

Film color red/green/blue

This option lets you manually enter values for the base color of the film. This is primarily useful if you're scanning a series of negatives or slides from the same roll of film.