Hamrick VueScan

Review Date
October 24, 2009

Overall Rating
 4 of 5

Value Rating
 4 of 5

Used product for
Less than 1 month

Reviewed by
mapgo , Casual

Price Paid
$0.00

Photography Experience
2-5 years , Outdoor

Summary
Just installed Windows 7 64bit to find my Epson scanner would no longer work, link on Epson website led me to Vuesoft download.
Five minutes later Vuesoft installed and scanner up and running.
Big thumbs up!

Strengths
Save me scrapping a good scanner

Weaknesses
To early to tell

Review Date
May 27, 2009

Overall Rating
 1 of 5

Value Rating
 1 of 5

Used product for
Less than 1 month

Visitors rate this review
3.00 of 5, 1 votes

Reviewed by
Mark Smith , Intermediate

Price Paid
$0.00

Photography Experience
11-20 years

Summary
Despite the representations on the website, this software will not work with 64 bit windows. No offer of refund and support requests were ignored. Recommend that you avoid this program if you have a high end computer.

Strengths
None.

Weaknesses
Misrepresentations about capabilities of the software.

Customer Service
poor

Review Date
September 28, 2007

Overall Rating
 5 of 5

Value Rating
 5 of 5

Used product for
More than 1 year

Reviewed by
Heinz Anderle , Expert

Price Paid
$49.00 at hamrick

Photography Experience
21+ years , Outdoor

Summary
VueScan is the miracle program that turns your consumer scanner into a piece of high-end graphics studio equipment and - with some film scanners - shows the true dynamic range of color print film and gets out all details from slides. VueScan would be worth a sixth star in both categories.

Strengths
Hardware-control of scanner parameters such as CCD exposure (depending on scanner used) makes VueScan clearly superior to most manufacturer's scanning software.

Weaknesses
Tricky to use with color print (negative) film, requiring quite much tweaking and fine adjustment. The choice of films comprises mostly older, obsolete types.

Similar Products Used
MiraFoto; Dimage Scan

Customer Service
Excellent. With the professional versions, updates are unlimited.

Review Date
June 22, 2005

Overall Rating
 3 of 5

Value Rating
 4 of 5

Used product for
1 to 3 months

Visitors rate this review
3.67 of 5, 6 votes

Reviewed by
jimbopdx , Expert

Price Paid
$49.00 at Direct

Photography Experience
21+ years , Fine Art

Summary
This is software that I love to hate or hate to love. The user interface is so bad that it screams "amateur" all over it. On the other hand, when it is properly tuned, it can produce absolutely beautiful scans from my Polaroid SprintScan 120 scanner using 35mm film (both Portra 160NC and Kodacolor Gold work great).

I'm less impressed with its ability to adapt to the 120/220 format film holders on the SS120. It took a long time to figure out how to tweak it to switch between 6X6 and 6X9 negs, and it involves several adjustments... SilverFast automatically senses what kind of film holder is in the scanner and gives you a single button to toggle image sizes. This is just one example of how VueScan's bad user interface can make a technically great product frustrating and inefficient to use.

While some people may have had great luck just installing the software and clicking "Scan", my experience was that upon first install, the scans were horrible - almost posterized - initially, and it took some considerable fiddling to get decent images, using the poorly documented "Advanced" mode.

If the developer of this software would spend some his revenue on modern user interface capabilities designed by a professional - with input from the photo community, he could have a world-class product here.

Strengths
Beautiful scans, if you can get everything adjusted right. Lots of ability to make color and contrast adjustments, if you can figure out the cryptic jargon and can put up with the tiny, fiddly screen controls.
Good features for repetitive scanning and batch processing, including a simple way to auto-number file names.
Works with a wide variety of scanners, only one product to buy... and license allows for installation on more than one computer owned and used by the same person.
Big list of customized film scanning adjustment profiles - especially for color negative work, which can be problematic for some software.

Weaknesses
Miserable user interface. Complete absence of controls for direct control of brightness and color curves. Relatively slower than SilverFast, especially for multi-pass scanning (although see comments above regarding image quality).

Similar Products Used
SilverFast, PolaColor, Epson software, HP software

Customer Service
No experience with this.

Review Date
February 29, 2004

Overall Rating
 5 of 5

Value Rating
 5 of 5

Used product for
Less than 1 month

Visitors rate this review
3.33 of 5, 3 votes

Reviewed by
jmwhite1 , Professional

Price Paid
$79.00 at online

Photography Experience
11-20 years , Fine Art

Summary
I purchased this product because it was the only way to use my Nikon LS-4000 after installing Mac OS 10.3. After several futile emails and calls to Nikon and SIlverfast I remembered a reference to VueScan and after downloading the demo and finding the scanner actually worked, I paid for the program. To say it works is an understatement. I have used all of the other high dollar and native programs and this one rocks. It is intuitive and usually on the money. I have produced beuatiful slide scans (read looks like the positives on a light table) with just a little tweaking.

Strengths
recognizes most scanners with no OS issues. Great output with a small learning curve.

Weaknesses
none

Similar Products Used
Silverfast
Nikon Scan

Customer Service
no experience