I bought four 2010 Macs -- one Mac Pro (exactly like mine which had died and for which I had an installation disk) and then three Mac Minis (after I found an OS 10.6 disk in my box of old software which would work on any computer which could use that OS). Intent was to be able to install Nikon Scan and CS6, so I could avoid having to pay Adobe for subscription to Photoshop, other software.
There was something wrong with each machine. Fortunately, I only bought from people/stores on Ebay who accepted returns. Trying to get the old computers going for the old software was truly frustrating experience.
I finally gave up and bought a Mac Studio (one of Apple's M1 machines), got Adobe subscription (damn you Adobe, you got me!), bought VueScan and have been experimenting with various settings. Have been able to get good scans. It will be fine.
Forced into 2023 kicking and screaming. But it's actually nice to be working on such a fast machine. I did have to get all the preferences the way I wanted them in the current PS, turn off all the new junk they've added which I have no interest in.
Oh......I also tried putting OS 10.6 on a bootable external drive connected to my laptop. Problems with that, too.
But back in business now.
Also -- found something nice about VueScan which solved an issue I had with Nikon Scan. With Nikon Scan, for certain images, if I didn't put a mask at top of an image, to block out area of neg around the image, I'd get a dark, horizontal shadow on top. And placing mask was a pain, and it meant on the top, where I had to put the mask, I didn't have black edges of neg in scan (which I like to have with Hassy images). I'd have to add one to that side manually in Photoshop. In VueScan, there is the "buffer" setting which seems to address this issue. As I understand it, the software ignores whatever percentage around edge of image you tell it to ignore, such as 10%, when it's figuring out how to expose.
So all good.
Thanks everyone for their thoughts.
