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 slides or negatives. You can also manually crop images by using the left mouse button to select the crop area in the image preview window.
VueScan's user interface has a large number of options, but the only thing you normally need to do is set the frame number(s) to scan (in the lower left corner) and then choose the "Scan|Device" command. 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.
VueScan has a sophisticated dust/scratch removal algorithm. This algorithm automatically finds and removes dust and scratches from color slide/negative film, and doesn't alter the color cast of the images when doing this (even for Kodachrome slides). This feature comes in handy when batch scanning slides or negatives - the time needed for touch-ups is significantly reduced.
VueScan uses color correction tables which have been derived from a Kodak Q60 calibration slide and which produce colors accurate to better than 1%. The default color primaries and white point are the same as used by the Kodak PhotoCD system - Rec. 709 primaries with a D65 white point. (There is also an option to choose different color spaces.)
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 with the "Black point" and "White point" options.
You can use VueScan for batch scanning with the HP PhotoSmart, Minolta, Polaroid SprintScan 4000, Microtek ArtixScan 4000 and Nikon scanners. VueScan has been designed to scan as fast as possible, and to do post-processing of the images while the film ejects and while you prepare the next slide or negative to be scanned. This way you can do batch processing as fast as is practical.
VueScan will produce any combination of TIF files, JPG files, and index prints (BMP files with 360x240 thumbnails of scanned images), which further saves time when doing batch scanning.