Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/05/14
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I'm astonished that so many folks prefer Nikon scanning software over VueScan for scanning negatives! I was ready to toss my LS-4000 out the window until I switched to VueScan. The Nikon software was great for scanning slides, OK for color neg, but absolutely clueless for BW negs. VueScan gives me full-range scans of negs, and has excellent profiles to choose for many specific color and BW neg films. My recollection is that the Nikon software only has generic negative film profiles. If you've been settling for these generic profiles, you will be surprised by what your scans will be like with a more accurate film profile. You can test the appearance of various film profiles on the same raw scan, and even save the raw scan to apply different profiles, white balances, or other treatments later. This is like shooting RAW in a digital camera. My experience has been that VueScan TIFFs rarely need more than "artistic" adjustment in Photoshop, while Nikon-guided scans needed major work just to get something that looked like a contact print of a neg. I decided that Nikon had put its focus on the slide shooters, with negative films secondary. As to the supposedly complex user interface of VueScan, what's to learn? You choose the source, the destination, and the film profile. The rest is optional adjustment, explained in the on-line User Guide. The default scans are usually excellent because the software sets exposure and white balance automatically. Perhaps the unhappy VueScan experiences were with an earlier version? It is now up to VueScan 8. Tim Nelson