VueScan Professional Review

VueScan by Hamrick Software is an app that works with over 7,400 scanners, many of which were manufactured over twenty years ago (yet may still be your best option for scanning film today).

After switching from SilverFast, which I felt was cumbersome, expensive, and frustrating, I’ve stayed with VueScan for over five years. I used it with two flatbed Epson scanners and two dedicated 35mm film scanners: PrimeFilm XAs and Nikon SUPER COOLSCAN 5000ED.

In this review, I’ll go over the interface, capabilities, drawbacks, my workflow, and the reasons why I think VueScan is indispensable for any photographer who scans film at home.

In this review: Why dedicated film scanners are better than digital cameras for scanning film. VueScan for vintage scanners. VueScan for modern scanners. Interface and controls (macOS). Film transport controls with VueScan. Flatbed scanning with VueScan. My workflow with VueScan for scanning 35mm film. Why VueScan is indispensable for any photographer who scans film at home. Support this blog & get premium features with GOLD memberships!

Why dedicated film scanners are better than digital cameras for scanning film.

Lots of us use digital cameras to scan film at home. The desire to use modern, familiar equipment to digitize analogue medium efficiently is understandable. But not all film photographers have nice digital cameras, desk space, or the budget for all the various accessories needed to make the rig work.

A 22-year-old Nikon SUPER COOLSCAN 5000ED that comfortably fits on a very small desk can quickly produce 20MP scans with 16 bits per channel TIFFs, and it costs less than $1,000. I doubt this workflow and price can be matched with any digital camera rig today.

The downsides with vintage dedicated film scanners are that they usually accept only a certain film format and, being very old, the software originally made for them does not work on modern computers. This is when VueScan becomes a key part of the operation.

VueScan for vintage scanners.

As long as you can get your scanner to connect to your computer and be recognized by your operating system, VueScan will take care of controlling your vintage equipment.

VueScan supports manual and automatic focusing, film transport, batch scanning, and more. But sometimes, I think that VueScan tries to do too much.

For my use case, all I need from it is to help me focus on the film, select the frame or set up batch scanning, allow me to control exposure, and give me the output as an uncompressed TIFF file. But there are a lot more options and controls, which can make navigating the app, especially for the first time, daunting.

Thankfully, the settings can be saved in a file and loaded up before each session, so most of the interface boxes, dropdowns, and input fields can be ignored.

VueScan for modern scanners.

Though the flatbed scanner that I use for my Polaroid and Instax film comes with its own drivers, it’s nice not having to rely on them.

Above, I mentioned that VueScan may have too many controls — yet it’s one of the better-designed scanning apps on the market. There are many, much clumsier interfaces out there, some of which stopped working when the hardware went out of production. So, instead of learning new tools each time I get a new device, I use VueScan with all my scanners and simply load an appropriate settings file for each. This cuts the prep work to just aligning the first frame and hitting “Scan.”

Interface and controls (macOS).

VueScan features excellent support — not just for the scanner hardware but also for operating systems. You can get it for Mac, Windows, and Linux. Given the amount of work it must’ve taken to make that work, I’m impressed with how well it looks and performs on my MacBook Pro.

VueScan uses native system input boxes which support the dark mode. This is a huge improvement over other apps that use custom, poorly designed interfaces that lack usability or continuity.

However, not all scanner controls work well as macOS components, especially in the context of differences between the 7,000+ scanner models supported. For example, measurements for frame spacing and offset use arbitrary numbers, which you’d have to guess and experiment with if you use a dedicated film scanner.

It may also be a little frustrating navigating batch scanning jobs via VueScan 9. With my Nikon COOLSCAN, I have to turn off batch scanning each time I insert a strip of film to adjust my frame alignment and then turn it back on once ready. If I didn’t do that, VueScan would create previews for all the frames on my strip which is unnecessary and time-consuming.

Film transport controls with VueScan.

If you use batch scanning, you will need to align your film frames so that they aren’t cut off as the scanner progresses onto the next one. My modern PrimeFilm XAs scanner has a very helpful window and hardware buttons that make the job easy. Unfortunately, Nikon COOLSCAN does not have that, and thus, I have to resort to using software controls in VueScan.

To align the first frame out of the batch with VueScan, I have to scan a preview and then adjust the “Frame offset” value. This value seems to be related to the measurements VueScan uses (presumably millimetres), and some guides out there suggest hovering your mouse pointer over the image and doing simple arithmetic to get it right. That, however, is an imperfect technique, so I simply guess, starting with “2.0” (a very common value that works for me). The offset number often changes from strip to strip, based on the thickness of the film and how good of a grip the scanner has on it.

VueScan does not recognize the edges of the film frames. In fact, I doubt that this can be done reliably with any software solution (even machine learning) as some frames (with extreme vignetting or taken in dark scenes) will inevitably require human correction, others may overlap, and yet others may be of an unusual aspect ratio. Because of this complexity, batch scans from vintage cameras will need your watchful eye as the spacing may change slightly between the frames. That said, you can also adjust the frame spacing in VueScan.

Flatbed scanning with VueScan.

Flatbed scanning with VueScan is as easy as with any software that may come with your scanner. There are still settings to navigate, but you can switch the interface mode from “Professional” to “Basic” under the “Input” tab to hide some of them. However, I recommend zeroing out some of the options to improve the colours of your scans. They won’t necessarily be perfect, which is why it’s good to process your images after you scan them with tools made for the job, like Photoshop.

My workflow with VueScan for scanning 35mm film.

VueScan is essentially a scanner driver, which is how I use it in my workflow. I’m not interested in colour correction, inversion, text overlays, or any other options. I just want the images from my scanner that I can invert and colour-correct using the tools made for the job.

The first thing I do is load a file with the settings that zero out all contrast and colour adjustments. My Nikon COOLSCAN is great at autofocus and exposure detection, so I let that be.

Then, I set VueScan to produce 16-bit-per-channel TIFF files (scanned without any inversions or adjustments) and save them in an appropriate location under a folder named “watch” inside my Dropbox. From there, film Q picks up those files and inverts them using a known, replicable method that needs no input from me. The result is an inverted film negative that’s ready to go, though it may need some colour correction and clean-up, which I perform in Photoshop.

You may’ve noticed that in my workflow, I make few or no adjustments while scanning film or inverting the negatives. My goal is to create a distortion-free path from the negative to my favourite image editing app (Photoshop), where I can manipulate the results using a powerful, familiar interface.

I’ve been using this method to illustrate every article with my film photography on Analog.Cafe the past four years. But that’s certainly not the only way to use this software and I’m sure that VueScan can be adapted to your workflow just as well.

Why VueScan is indispensable for any photographer who scans film at home.

The only way to use certain vintage film scanners without VueScan would be to buy a very old computer with an archaic operating system that’s no longer safe to connect to the internet. Even if you use modern hardware, the variety of apps, controls, and interfaces can be overwhelming and frustrating if you have more than two scanners at home (like a DSLR rig + a flatbed scanner) — VueScan smoothes the process out, giving you a single control surface and one set of controls.

It may be imperfect, but it works every time with almost all scanners.

The Professional edition reviewed here can be purchased directly from the Hamrick Software website.