Vue Scan VS Silverfast

I have a Minolta Scan Dual IV and was considering going to one of these if I upgrade to Windows 7 as I don't think the Minolta software will run on Windows 7. Just wondering what others think of these software packages.

Have run both packages on the Minolta and they both work very well, and yield good results. General observations as follows. I have always found the Silverfast package that I use: Silverfast SE Super, very nice to use, and able to yield quality results. Vuescan IMO will also yield very decent scans, but: I have always found it to be a bit more difficult to work with - primarily in the basic adjustments for black and white points, and the slider controls used for Curves. I have always managed to pull out a scan - but never feel that I have mastered the package. In fact I have just purchased "The Vuescan Bible" Sascha Steinhoff, to see if I can improve my general Vuescan skill level.

A couple more points in passing that you might also want to consider. Silverfast has just released "Silverfast 8" which we are waiting for more information on. Might be worth a look before you decide. The Vuescan Professional version probably supports a major percentage of every scanner out there, and is updated quite frequently by Paul Hamrick, the gentleman who created it, and runs the site. Those updates are free.

My advice! Get them both, and have fun with your scanning.

Vuescan is relatively inexpensive, and can be used with scanners of different make and model.
I use Vuescan to generate "raw" scans. All the rest of the work is in Lightroom and Photoshop. I don't do any kind of adjusting (levels, contast, colour) in the scanning phase. A "raw" scan lets you scan only once and postpone all decisions to a later phase. Unless you want to make fast scans of many pictures (such as for internet use after a party or a holiday) the way to go, IMO, is to always make a raw scan. For that I don't think that Silverfast would be superior to VueScan.

The only possible grievance I might have with VueScan is that I did not manage to have it work with more elaborated scanner profiles such as those created by SIPC. I am left with the Profiling procedure which is embedded into VueScan, which makes a "simplified" kind of profiling. That said, some people argue that an elaborated scanner profile is not necessarily better than a simple one, and they may easily be right.

VueScan documentation is not well written, to put it mildly, but in the long run I managed to grasp most of its behaviour, through many experiments and tests. On the other hand, Silverfast English documentation is so awful that I discarded Silverfast immediately after reading it some years ago (maybe it is better now).

I bought Wolf Faust targets, and use them to calibrate the scanner with VueScan. I then use VueScan to obtain raw scans, and that works very well.

This may have come too late, but Konica-Minolta scanners will run perfectly on Windows 7 using this simple fix: http://www.frisno.com/2009/11/konica-minolta-dimage-scan-dual-iv-works-in-vista/ (works for Win7 too).

Thanks for all the info and I may look at ViewScan any way. I guess if you updated the Minolta driver you could use both Minolta and ViewScan. My goal would be to get scans good enough for the stock photo site that I submit to and their QC is pretty strict. So far I have only submitted files from my DSLRs but have lots of old slides and negs that could be possibly used. I don't know if the Minolta software will do RAW scans and that might be a reason for ViewScan. I like the fact that ViewScan has many scanners available as I may try scanning 4x5 with a flatbed later.

That Scan Dual IV is as sharp as a Coolscan but will let you down in ways that show up even on a web thumbnail. Bad colour, poor dynamic range and no ICE will make it hard to pass QC.

glhs116 said:

That Scan Dual IV is as sharp as a Coolscan but will let you down in ways that show up even on a web thumbnail. Bad colour, poor dynamic range and no ICE will make it hard to pass QC.

Click to expand...

Hmm. Just a few words in support of the Scan Dual IV. Firstly, ICE has nothing to do with QC, IQ or anything else except convenience. I've used ICE on several machines and never without some degradation of the image. Perhaps Silverfast's iSRD is better - it's certainly more configurable; but it's so slow that I'd sooner spot by hand.

As for colour rendition, that's kind of irrelevant unless you plan to use your scans directly from the scanner, with no PP. Does anybody really do that these days?

Dynamic range is specified as 3.6 - less than the best Coolscans, but as good as any consumer film scanner on the market today. Of course, everything depends on how you set up the scan, and, unlike many scanners, the K-M allows per-channel exposure adjustments prior to scanning.

artobest said:

Hmm. Just a few words in support of the Scan Dual IV. Firstly, ICE has nothing to do with QC, IQ or anything else except convenience. I've used ICE on several machines and never without some degradation of the image. Perhaps Silverfast's iSRD is better - it's certainly more configurable; but it's so slow that I'd sooner spot by hand.

As for colour rendition, that's kind of irrelevant unless you plan to use your scans directly from the scanner, with no PP. Does anybody really do that these days?

Dynamic range is specified as 3.6 - less than the best Coolscans, but as good as any consumer film scanner on the market today. Of course, everything depends on how you set up the scan, and, unlike many scanners, the K-M allows per-channel exposure adjustments prior to scanning.

Click to expand...

This may help clarify what I mean:
Konica Minolta Scan DualIV:
Konica Minolta Dimage Scan Dual IV - a set on Flickr

Nikon Coolscan 9000ED:
Nikon Coolscan 9000 ED - a set on Flickr

I still have the Dual IV in a box. Whatever the numbers say, trust your eyes. There is a reason for its reasonable price. Note that if you are scanning mainly positive material you may be more happy with it since this involves less contrast expansion. The weak point is clearly the sensor.

As far as ICE is concerned it is fantastic if it works. The Nikon ICE works great. Each frame on the Scan Dual IV used to cost me about fifteen minutes of my time and energy cloning out dust. I've got better uses for that time and energy.

I have Silverfast AI for my Nikon 9000 and Epson 4990. I've been pretty happy with it, once I figured out how to set it up. I had Vuescan before SF, and am probably switching back to Vuescan. It will take some work, but I now have the Vuescan Bible, which I find helpful. If Vuescan can do the job (and it does for others), I think that will be the way to go.

My only problem with SF is that I would need to upgrade to SF8 to use it with the new Mac OS- SF 6.6 won't work with the new Mac OS. I kept the 6.6 OS on an external drive, so I can reboot into the older OS and use SF 6.6 if I need to go that route (but somewhat of a PITA). If I were to upgrade to SF8, it would cost me about $450 in upgrade charges, plus whatever they will want for the HDR program, which I'd gotten at a very good price with special deal. Vuescan upgrades cost nothing (with Pro version). So if I get the Vuescan process down pat, I'm good to go forward without the high cost of upgrading SF. I don't like being sucked into a future of expensive upgrades if I just go with the flow/SF.

I am not familiar with RAW scans, and just wondered what type of file it produces. I have Photoshop CS and Lightroom 3 presently and am condidering Lightroom 4. I think I would go with ViewScan since it would work with different scanners without expensive upgrades. I would probably use the Scan
Dual 4 for 35mm and possibly buy a Cannoscan 9000 for medium format.
Marvin