Vuescan

[PhilBurton]

Fair enough. Totally get where you're coming from.



Lightroom doesn't have the slightest concept of what Digital ICE is, so the IR channel would be quite pointless in LR. I figured it'd be helpful to you so I pulled up my copy of Vuescan and scanned a blank area as if it was a transparency into a raw DNG file then inspected the meta-data (below). It creates a DNG file with 4 16 bit samples per pixel, one of those samples I'm assuming is the IR channel. Looking at the meta-data, it puts Linear Raw as the photometric interpretation so there's no gamma correction happening to the samples, and the raw samples are ranged from 0 to 65535, so it appears to literally be a raw dump off the scanner driver. It also puts the color matrix for the scanner in (nice touch), and the color balance XY coordinates of the scanner's light source (even nicer). If you look down at the bottom of the list, you'll see that's it's outputting a DNG version 1.1 file, which is literally a lowest common denominator version. Pretty much anything that supports DNG should be able to read this file with no problems, especially given that the current version of the spec is 1.4.

I then pulled the file into LR, and.... it imported it just fine. You don't see the 4th sample and LR just ignores it and behaves as if it's just isn't there, otherwise, it works exactly as I'd expect it to. You can go into the develop module, change the WB, exposure, pretty much do everything that you can do with any other DNG file.

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(rest of post deleted for brevity)


Adrian,

Thanks for this post. This is important information in favor of Vuescan.

Phil Burton

 

[Adrian Bacon]

Thanks for this post. This is important information in favor of Vuescan.

No Problem. For comparison, here's the metadata of a raw tiff file that has the IR channel included in it (below). As you can see, it's basically the same thing with the exception of a couple of pieces of meta info. If you wanted to keep the IR channel with the scan as a DNG, you won't get any benefit in LR, but from what I can tell, you can pull the DNG file up in Vuescan, and apply the digital ice, but you can't output another raw DNG file from that, just a standard DNG file. The same goes for raw tiff scans, though it looks like you can apply digital ice to the raw samples during the scan, then output the raw samples after they've been cleaned: https://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/html/vuesc31.htm. This would kind of negate the need to save the IR channel to the file, unless you wanted to go back later, but then you can't output another raw file.

F018985040D3:flat_bed_scans adrianbacon$ exiftool -a raw0001.tif
ExifTool Version Number : 11.11
File Name : raw0001.tif
Directory : .
File Size : 379 MB
File Modification Date/Time : 2019:04:22 21:27:06-07:00
File Access Date/Time : 2019:04:22 21:27:41-07:00
File Inode Change Date/Time : 2019:04:22 21:27:06-07:00
File Permissions : rw-r--r--
File Type : TIFF
File Type Extension : tif
MIME Type : image/tiff
Exif Byte Order : Little-endian (Intel, II)
Subfile Type : Full-resolution Image
Image Width : 8560
Image Height : 5795
Bits Per Sample : 16 16 16 16
Compression : Uncompressed
Photometric Interpretation : RGB
Fill Order : Normal
Make : Epson
Camera Model Name : PerfectionV800
Strip Offsets : (Binary data 56320 bytes, use -b option to extract)
Orientation : Horizontal (normal)
Samples Per Pixel : 4
Rows Per Strip : 1
Strip Byte Counts : (Binary data 34769 bytes, use -b option to extract)
Min Sample Value : 0 0 0 0
Max Sample Value : 65535 65535 65535 65535
X Resolution : 6400
Y Resolution : 6400
Planar Configuration : Chunky
Page Name : Transparency
Resolution Unit : inches
Software : VueScan 9 x64 (9.6.23)
Create Date : 2019:04:22 21:27:06
Image Size : 8560x5795
Megapixels : 49.6

 

[albireo]

I'm buying the Epson v550 mainly for 6x6 megs. Is Vuescan software worth buying to compliment this?

I, too, own a V550. I use this for my medium format scanning, whereas I use an old Minolta Scan Dual III for my 35mm. With both scanners, Vuescan is an essential part of my workflow, together with the Colourperfect plugin. I never used the original Minolta/Epson software. I'm sure these are great, but with Vuescan I get a unified film scanning interface, with similar degree of control across my hardware. Most importantly, it allows me to obtain the results I want with predictability. I would highly recommend it.

 

[Pentode]

Vuescan is very nice software and I’ve gotten some nice results with it.

That said, I found that for my purposes it didn’t offer anything I wasn’t getting from the native Epson Scan software that came with my 500. It’s definitely more versatile, I just found that I, personally, didn’t need that level of versatility. I use Epson Scan pretty much all the time now.

I will be another to recommend the ANR glass holders from Betterscanning. A nice product at a very fair price and a big step up from the (terrible) stock negative carriers. I’d also suggest picking up the Lomography Digitaliza negative carriers in both 35mm and 120 if you can track some down (I’m not sure if they’re being made anymore). They don’t hold 120 as flat as the Betterscanning holders but they’re very easy to use so for quick setups they’re hard to beat. No affiliation with either company; I just like both products much better than the stock holders.