# VueScan Woes



## OogieM (Mar 4, 2018)

I'm trying to test using VueScan running my older Epson4870 Photo Scanner for my big project. 

Initial tests with slides seemed promising so I moved on to attempting to test scanning the 2.25 inch B&W negatives.

Here are the steps I’ve done and the results 

Input tab Professional
scan to file 
B&W negative 
batch scan List

Crop tab
Manual
X size 2.25 
Y size 2.25

Multicrop Custom
X images 2
Y images 3

Do a preview

Click on input be sure it’s looking at frame 1 click on crop and verify the selection is correct. 1st one is fine
Click on input select frame 2 click on crop drag the selection to image 2 which is to the right of image 1
Click on input and now it’s saying I am at frame 5.

The numbering goes down then across I need it to go across then down and I thought by using manual I could make it do that but I can’t get it to work.

Without that the automatic file naming won’t work properly 

No matter what I try in terms of dragging the crop frame to the correct location it won’t stay there and actually renumber them properly. 

I can’t get the screen shots to both show the numbering and the selection as it’s based on mouse location so when I try to take the screen shot the number on top of the image goes away. 

This is how it initially comes up for frame 1. I can drag the crop to the correct portion of the image and it stays there properly but I just didn’t get a screen shot of it once it was in the correct position.






If I then go to input select frame 2 then I see what is shown here




I
f I drag that crop frame up to the correct image number 2 which is the horse and sulky in the upper right corner then select input to verify that I am on the correct frame It has decided that I am now cropping frame 4.



 

The correct numbering for these negatives is

1    2
3    4
5    6

But I can’t figure out how to get VueScan to understand that. 

I will be saving to a file with automatic numbers for each frame. I have nearly 500 negatives to scan and if I have to rename them all by hand it’s a huge time cost.

When I asked for assistance from Ed Hamrick the only response was to experiment. Well I have been experimenting for over 4 hours with zero useful results!

I've tried automatic cropping and I get 24 individual frames none of which is correct. I've tried standard, letting the software try to figure out how to do it and that didn't work either. I've tried measuring the x y offset by hand and entering it in but it resets to zero.

Does anyone have a procedure to set up multiple scans at a specific custom size that will work? Not only do i have to do that for these 2.25 inch ones but I also have to do it for the other odd film sizes so I really need to get this to work. 

In a related issue, when I set it up to scan 35 mm color negatives VueScan assumes that I have 4 film strips with 6 frames on each strip. My film s usually 4 frames per strip with some one or 2 only. How do I tell VueScan to ignore the blank frames in each row of frames?


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## dabsond (Mar 5, 2018)

I still shoot quite a bit of film and do a lot of scanning.  Color negative, black and white negative and slides, I have looked for and tested all of the major scanning software out there.  I have tinkered with Vuescan and Silverfast quite a bit.  I have come to the forgone conclusion that the best workflow I have found for scanning was to use the EpsonScan software bundled with my V600.  I do flat scans with no corrections, import into LR and make my corrections there.  I import as TIFFs and find there is quite a bit of information available for LR to use.  The key is not to use any corrections in the scanner software.  Let LR do the heavy lifting.


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## PhilBurton (Mar 5, 2018)

dabsond said:


> I still shoot quite a bit of film and do a lot of scanning.  Color negative, black and white negative and slides, I have looked for and tested all of the major scanning software out there.  I have tinkered with Vuescan and Silverfast quite a bit.  I have come to the forgone conclusion that the best workflow I have found for scanning was to use the EpsonScan software bundled with my V600.  I do flat scans with no corrections, import into LR and make my corrections there.  I import as TIFFs and find there is quite a bit of information available for LR to use.  The key is not to use any corrections in the scanner software.  Let LR do the heavy lifting.


What criteria led to your conclusion that the EpsonScan software was best for your workflow?

Phil


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## OogieM (Mar 5, 2018)

My problem with EpsonScan is that with no corrections, nothing the scan SW is doing a scan takes over an hour compared to 15 minutes or less using VueScan. But if I can't fix the automatic naming/numbering problem then I will spend that much time fixing filenames.


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## PhilBurton (Mar 5, 2018)

OogieM said:


> My problem with EpsonScan is that with no corrections, nothing the scan SW is doing a scan takes over an hour compared to 15 minutes or less using VueScan. But if I can't fix the automatic naming/numbering problem then I will spend that much time fixing filenames.


And EpsonScan is still your preferred alternative?  VueScan and Silverfast are worse?


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## OogieM (Mar 5, 2018)

No actually I can't deal with EpsonScan at all due to the time issues. It's dabsond who uses EpsonScan.

I'm still trying to get VueScan to work the way I need it to as that looks like my best alternative to use my old scanner with my newer machine.


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## dabsond (Mar 5, 2018)

EpsonScan is my preference due to it's simplicity.  I find with all enhancements off, it delivers a clean TIFF file for processing in Lightroom.  At the most, a quick white balance adjustment, is all that is needed to bring scan in line.  I use the V600 for scanning, by no means a resolution monster.  I find it fits my needs for scanning negatives.

www.stillshootingfilm.com


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## PhilBurton (Mar 5, 2018)

OogieM said:


> No actually I can't deal with EpsonScan at all due to the time issues. It's dabsond who uses EpsonScan.
> 
> I'm still trying to get VueScan to work the way I need it to as that looks like my best alternative to use my old scanner with my newer machine.


Oops.  Sorry for the mixup.

Phil


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## OogieM (Mar 5, 2018)

dabsond said:


> I use the V600 for scanning, by no means a resolution monster.


Can you share some times to do typical scans at various resolutions? Or see the thread about if anyone has a V600 and post there? 

Thanks


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## dabsond (Mar 5, 2018)

Scanning 12 exposures of 35mm color at 3200dpi takes approximately 14 minutes or so on my system.


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## OogieM (Mar 12, 2018)

Update on the status. First off I purchased this book : "The VueScan Bible: Everything You Need to Know for Perfect Scanning" by Sascha Steinhoff. Not as useful as Victoria's books in terms of really explaining things but at least a whole lot better than the on-line manual. 

First step was to create a fake cardboard carrier that masked out the scanner just like the plastic ones that come with it. 

 

This provided a way to line up slides and negatives easily.

Solving the cropping being wrong involved changing the crop units to pixels and using the up and down arrows on the crop box to move them out of the way so that when I moved one on top of the frame I wanted it didn't match the old crop box I wanted it to replace. So the initial procedure was to select each frame in turn and move the crop boxes into the middle of empty space not touching and with their centers not within the locations where I wanted them to end up. Then go back and move each one individually to the correct location. 

Once I had the crop boxes and other parameters as I wanted them I saved the settings in file for re-use later. The crop boxes tend to drift, for some reason they are not perfectly saved, but that is not as big a problem as I imagined.

Work flow for color slides has been this:

Take a batch of the 2.25 x2.25 color slides out and clean if necessary. Be sure the scanner surface is clean and VueScan is already up with my preset. Place the slides emulsion side up in the holder as follows

4 1
5 2
6 3

I used the film type Kodak, Ektachrome, Color balance auto levels, restore colors on, but no other corrections. The film may not be Ektachrome but that was the closest to recovering the red shifted slides to something approaching normal colors. 

I do a preview with the dpi set to 150

verify final placement of the crop boxes

scan at 2400 dpi saving TIFF files out with automatic numbering according to my defined scheme.

My filenames are in the form <Resource Group Number>_<Roll Number>_<Item number>.<File Suffix>

All the color slides from my parents are RG301. Many of them are already labeled with a roll number and a frame number so if present I used those. If not I assigned a number for the roll and frame if It was not on the slide mount.

Select scan. Scanning all 6 images takes about 12 minutes. 

After scanning I adjust the item number to match the number on the slide mount. For example I have a batch of slides with roll number K-007. The only slides I have are labeled 1, 3, 4 and 5 so I labeled the scans with the same item numbers. That way as I am sorting boxes of old papers and other items if I find the missing slides I won't have to renumber the scanned files. 

I did some testing at 4800 but at that the scanning took half an hour for 6 frames and there wasn't a huge difference in visible quality of the scan. My feeling is for the vast majority of these items the 2400 dpi scan will be good enough and if I find some especially good ones I might send them out to be professionally scanned. I also decided that further color correction and restoration can happen within LightRoom.

House the originals into their newly purchased archival boxes separated by lignin and acid free papers on which I used scrapbook photo safe pens to write the roll number and that they have all been scanned.



As you can see some of the slides were already in boxes. For now I've put them back onto those boxes but for long term storage they really need to be removed.

This worked well even for the slides that were in glass mounts. 

I'm about 1/3 done with the color slides in this format and will them move on to the B&W negatives.

My scanner is an Epson Perfection 4870 and I am running VueScan 9.6.06 on a 2013 iMac with a 3.1Ghz Intel Core i7 processor, 16 GB memory, running Sierra version 10.12.6.

Just thought I'd update here so it might help someone else. I'll provide shorter updates as I get to each type of material I am scanning.


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## OogieM (Oct 12, 2018)

Got all teh slides scanned. Thos I ca put in the order VueScan wants and so get them numberd correctly barring missing slide numbers. 

However, I still don't have a solution for the scanning in order properly described at the beginning of my post for the negatives that are 2 frames from teh same roll that are  not cut apart. 
The correct numbering for these negatives is
1 2
3 4
5 6

I first selected multi-crop and custom and set the number of frames properly as 2 x 3. Select one and try to move the crop frame to the correct locaiton. As soon as it gets close to the area of another number it flips and says I'm moving that one. I've tried to measure the distance and set them by entereing in numbers. Ive've tried to move all teh crop frames a bit out of alignment, then slowly move them back into the correct position one at a time. Still no joy.  Asked a couple of folks who use VueScan a lot to check it out and they also were unable to get it to work. I finally decided that what I was asking for was an enhancement so I wrote a detailed explanation of what I was trying to do and sent it off to Ed Hamrick as a request for enhancement. 

First mesage came back as this:



> Set "Crop | Multi crop" to "Custom" and experiment
> a bit.
> 
> Regards,
> Ed Hamrick



So I responded with this message:

I have been you cannot change the order of it no matter how you move the custom boxes they revert to those location. It’s impossible to do it using custom crop. I’ve spent nearly 20 hours trying all sorts of options on multiple machines. From trying to measure and set the crop specifically, to dragging the crop boxes around. As soon as you drag one crop box over to the new location it changes to the numbering I describe. 

Go test it for yourself

If you can actually get this to work then please make a screen cast and put it up on YouTube. I’ve had several different people try who use VueScan for lots of things and NO ONE can get it to actually work!

His response:

You probably need to use a different program.

Regards,
Ed Hamrick

My vote for worst customer support ever goes to Ed Hamrick of VueScan.

He's spent more time reading and giving BS answers than he would have spent to just explain in detail the exact steps to actually get the program to do that.

So I'm asking again here. can ANYONE get the custom crop to work as I describe? If so can you please give me the stupid step by step instrucitons as I am at my wits end.


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## PhilBurton (Oct 12, 2018)

OogieM said:


> Got all teh slides scanned. Thos I ca put in the order VueScan wants and so get them numberd correctly barring missing slide numbers.
> 
> However, I still don't have a solution for the scanning in order properly described at the beginning of my post for the negatives that are 2 frames from teh same roll that are  not cut apart.
> The correct numbering for these negatives is
> ...


I haven't used VueScan (but I appreciate the warning).  How about if you make an extra copy of each of those two-negative file, with a different name of course.  Then crop each of those two copies to just one negative each.

I agree that the Hamrick response was pretty bad.   Are you going to ask for a refund?    For "serious" scannng, if your scanner did not come with software supplied by the vendor, then your only other choice is Silverfast.  I don't know if Silverfast can do multi-neg scans.  I do know that it is very powerful and that it has a significant learning curve.  And it is not exactly cheap.  

Phil Burton


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## OogieM (Oct 12, 2018)

So I gave it 2 more tries. I am persistent...
This is what I sent
"If another program supported my scanner I would change.

Is it really that difficult to please provide an answer or a set of steps to make this work? I’ve tried your suggestions and clearly you believe this is possible but I cannot figure it out. Something more than “experiment a bit” when I’ve tried. If you would like to see I’ll make a screencast of exactly how I’ve tried and you can then explain to me what obvious step I’ve missed.

Or even faster, just make a screen cast yourself showing how it works and I can probably figure it out from watching but there is nothing I can do that seems to work.

The manual says to use custom crop and to set or drag the cropping areas. I’ve told you that I’ve tried that and it STILL will not scan them and label the resulting scans in the correct order.

Please try to explain the steps you use to make it work."

I got this response

"No, I just don't do this kind of support.  I'd normally charge
a few thousand dollars to do a screencast.

Regards,
Ed Hamrick"

So I gave it one last try

"OK I need to know exactly how much you would charge to create a detailed
screen cast that shows every step from a stock default position in the
parameters to custom crop for 2.25 x 2.25 images that are 2 frames per piece
of negative film, held in an Epson scanner holder like the one I sent a
picture of that shows how to get VueScan software to properly number the
automatic scans in any custom order wanted.

And whether you can take Paypal as payment."

I was willing to consider paying him to prove me wrong.

And the final response

"Go away

Regards,
Ed Hamrick"


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