Preface

Dear Reader,

First, I would like to say thank you for giving me your trust by purchasing this book! I owe and dedicate The VueScan Bible to my readers. It was your feedback that convinced me to write another book about scanning. After publishing my successful book, Scanning Negatives and Slides, that describes all scanning processes in detail, I received loads of letters via my website, www.scanguru.info. Along with giving me useful feedback, readers frequently demanded even more software-specific guidance—and VueScan was at the forefront of those readers’ interests.

So, here we go! The VueScan Bible is designed to help both beginners and experienced users get the most out of their VueScan-powered scanners. While it includes all the basic scanning know-how you need, VueScan-specific workflows are the center of attention. Scanning is not rocket science, but you simply have to know certain things; otherwise, you will waste a lot of time and effort. This is especially true when you use software as powerful as VueScan. Despite its rich features, VueScan is a remarkably lean scanning program that has been continually improved by its inventor, Ed Hamrick, for more than a decade. I want to express my gratitude to Ed Hamrick, who has been supporting this book project from the very beginning.

VueScan was the first scanning software ever to provide sophisticated features, like RAW data scanning functionality, that live up to their promise. And it runs on Mac, Windows and Linux computers alike. Whether you are a techie-loving pixel peeper or just an average user who wants to work quickly and efficiently with the software—you must get used to VueScan’s tricks and traps for the best scanning results. This book provides you with everything you need to know to convert your analog negatives, slides, documents, and photo prints into high-quality digital files.

Best Regards

Sascha Steinhoff Bangkok, April 2011

P.1. Using this book

VueScan has an astonishing variety of options. This book uses different styles for intuitive navigation through all these tabs, options, and buttons. Below is an explanation of how it works.

P.1.1. The entries of the menu bar

or when written separately:

go to File menu and pick Save image or Page setup.

P.1.2. The tabs of VueScan

or when written seperately:

go to Input ‣ Task and configure Scan to file .

This format is used for the tabs Preview and Scan as well.

P.1.3. Keys and Buttons

Pushbuttons either on the keyboard or in VueScan look like this:

Scan for Scan Button in the GUI

F1 for F1 key on the keyboard

This format is used for the pushbuttons Scan and Preview in the VueScan GUI as well. Don’t mix it up with the tabs Preview and Scan.

P.2. A note on VueScan updates

This book refers to VueScan Professional 9.0.22, which was the newest version of VueScan at the time of writing. Ed Hamrick continually releases updates; a new version every two weeks or so is quite common. Please consider that the updates mainly contain bug fixes; new functionality is implemented much less frequently. That means the information in this book will stay up to date even though you might be using a newer version of VueScan. If you have any questions contact the author at his website www.scanguru.info.

In general the images for this book have been taken by the author, the exceptions are marked clearly.