Scanning Film With VueScan + Epson Scan Comparison

I scan my 4x5 negs with a Nikon D800 and sigma FX105 macro lens. I purchased Vuescan specifically to invert colour negs which it does really well. Been very impressed with it. Thanks for the vid. Film is catching on again.....

Just a quick note. Scanning is very useful and having great scanning capability is higjly desirable one can't really call it analog photography unless the prints are also produced from the film directly by optical enlarger or contact printed.

Hi, does VueScan do the scanning of all negatives automatically or you need to go one by one? Epson software does it automatically

I have been having such a hard time getting my scans to be as sharp as the ones I had done at the lab.. they just seem soft, but nobody else seems to have trouble with this. Is there any obvious tip for this?

@Kyle McDougall
Wonderful video. I like it very much and its useful. Do you have anything with scanning slides with the Epson scanner and Vuescan?
Or can you make one?

Do you ever scan 35mm?

Do you have to go through this process with each individual photo?

Epson is far better in my opinion. It allows much more post production being low contrast and is better colour balanced. Both of them are in any case not professional scanners. I'm 54 now and come from a three generations photographers family and I have myself printed on Gretag labs for a decade. I remember when my father leaded me to the dark room printings. It was so amazing to look at his skill in masking overexposed areas moving his hands under the enlarger lights. He tought me how important is working on tonal wide range. Definitely Epson produces more natural contrast.

After making the switch to Mac Silicon from Windows a couple of months ago I found myself unable to scan as Epson scan isn't compatible and Epson scan 2 doesn't support my 4490 or 4990.
This is the video that convinced me to put my hand in my pocket and purchase Vuescan, I'm only a day into using it and finding it confusing as hell in comparison to the Epson software, but I'll get there eventually.
Thanks for posting this.

You put a lot of time tweaking the image, prescan, in vue scan but then did nothing but 20 seconds of black/white points in Epson scan. A better comparison would have been to match level of effort in each software. I'm not saying one scanning software is better and I am sure you have done extensive testing for your choice but to compare them, you must give each one the same level of attention and manipulation in the video. Thanks for your time! Peace!

Thank you very much for this. If I want 11x14 should I change the "Output" "Printed Size" to "11x14" instead of the "4x6"? You skipped over that one adjustment.

This videos old so I’m not sure if I’ll get a reply but I figured it was worth a shot. I’ve been tasked with scanning in my all of my family’s slides and have thus far and using epson scan. Like you say - it gets the job done. My biggest frustration is that I have to change the target size and processing settings for every image individually. I can’t just scan using settings I’ve already put in and I have to go through each image in the preview and change all the settings. Am I missing something? Does VueScan have a way to change the settings for all the slides at once?

An excellent tutorial. Thank you.

Dear Kyle :) , I have no negative holder available for my epson 3200 photo. Do you know what happens if I have none? Did you ever bought one on your own ?

one question, you use epson perfection V500 scanner, but this model doesn't do 4x5" sheet film or up to 8x10", only the V850 model does!!, is THIS model(V850) capable of using this vuescan and epson scan software? and is the workflow simmilar, as you show here for 35 mm?

you use a MAC here, in this tutorial, is this software useable on WINDOWS machines?- aka windows 7/8/10 versions, or what software would you recomend for windows machines.

in this video you only scan one photo at a time, can't the vuescan or epson scan software scan the whole film strip at once?, making individual files out of it?

Thanks for the very informative video! I'm in kind of a pickle. I went to dust off my old Epson 3200 and purchased Vuescan. Then thought I would try and improve things by buying an Epson V600. It seems no matter what settings I use I cannot get more resolution out of the V600 compared with the 3200. Is it possible that an almost 20 year old scanner can do better than a modern one? I mean that's what I'm seeing but keep thinking I'm missing something...I've tried multiple scan resolutions...Vuescan and Epson Scan...any ideas?

You have to do all of this for each photo that is scanned?

Good Job

Maybe if this wasnt just a hobby, not worth 100 bucks, but I can see how this would be worth it for someone who uses this professionally

great video but there is one critical piece missing: batch scanning. Otherwise, you are forced to scan each frame individually, way too tedious. But figuring out how to set up batch scanning especially for 120 film in Vuescan is a huge pain! Just spent almost two hours figuring it out. Probably would have been worth a second ~10-15min video just on that topic though.

VueScan is nice.

I liked the vuescan result before you applied the film profile.

God bless you brother. Very helpful especially when Epson abandoned all Mac users for V500.

I have a V500 and used the same VueScan settings as shown in the video (including 3200 dpi) and my scan resolution is coming out pretty poorly. Is there something I could be doing wrong or is this just a limitation of these flatbed scanners?

My a7RIV with a 100mm 1:2 macro has given me some incredible home scans with a stupid amount of dynamic range to work with. My old director who took a class from Ansel Adams at Brooks in the 70s was like "oh you can shoot an under, a normal, and an over and get all the dynamic range you could get from the negative!" No need for that, this produces some better scans than the best drum scanners in the mid 2000s.

To be honest if you spent the same amount of time making those adjustments in vue scan on the epson software you would’ve gotten a similar result. Both programs do the same thing, just with a different UI. It almost felt like you wanted to epson scan to be a worse outcome. I don’t feel like it was quite a fair comparison. Either way I appreciate the time it took to make the video.

Amazing.....Thanks a ton
God bless

For anyone who wants to know, this does not work with an Epson Perfection 4990 Photo scanner. The "results" I obtained can't even be called abstract. It is a shame because on my PC I could do wonderful negative scanning with it.

It is difficult to compare the scanning resolution of film scanners, flatbed scanners and DSLRs. Film scanners are the most accurate, the most manually controlled method is DSLR, and I like flatbeds with their fill light and ICE for scratched film.

Hi Kyle, I recently subscribed and am looking at older videos.
I have a Coolscan 5000, use VueScan but have never been really happy with my scans of 35mm slides. Do you use the same color balance, black & white point, and curve settings for positives as you do for negatives? Also, VueScan does not have the wide choice of films for positives as it apparently does for negatives. There are not choices to chose between the several Ektachrome films that were available. I used the SW type. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

too bad the Epson back-light is so small, just for a couple of strips, or you could do a whole PrintFile contact sheet for a whole roll. When I bought it I assumed the back-light would be as big as the whole scanning glass, boy was I wrong. I wonder if there's some way I could use a cheap led light-pad as a back-light.

I have a view scanner that is almost 10 years old I just recently wanted to use it for scanning slides. I downloaded the software for vuescan they want 99.00 to use the software for film scanning. Is there any other work around?

Awesome to see detailed breakdown of your process. I prefer scanning raw orr 16tiff in epson scan myself just getting a straight Raw style flat scn and then evrrything in LR.. would love to use my neg lab pro but it onoynworks with negarive inages and epson scn doesnt seem to support that.

I am a bit confused - if someone can help please - about the Epson scan size scan, when I bring it to Photoshop and res is high but the actual size is small like the film, do I just upscale the image and lower the resolution?

I have Windows 11 and VueScan. Also a Epson V500 Perfection Photo scanner. I am trying to scan color slides, but I get an orange blinking light. Any ideas?

thanks for that! i’ve been struggling scanning in epson scan too and when i was in school years ago we used the pro version; completely couldn’t figure it out as i thought it was the only software for the v500 🥴

all the things you can do in there are immaculate compared to just the basic one. worth the money and now time to dive into scanning all my colored stuff that i’ve been putting off for years because of not liking any results. my friend was dealing with the same so sending this to her haha

you made this years ago obv. but glad it’s helping me now!

I am new to the scanner film photography. just purchased Epson v850 pro using epson scan 2...is the film holder being scanned normal? Thank you in advance

Thanks a lot for making this video! I am looking for an alternative for Epson Scan, since it doesn't work anymore under Windows 11 for my V750 scanner, and seeing VueScan was very helpful. May I make two comments about the video: First, when adjusting the histogram in Epson Scan, I always use the "Show Output" button in the middle of that dialog to see the result histogram. That's probably similar to the histogram shown in the lower left of the VueScan screen. I suspect that when you adjusted the black and white triangles outwards, the image became flatter as a result, and the output histogram would have shown by how much the black and white triangles to adjust (this is referring to the "Histogram Adjustment" screen). This is definitely one of the weirder sides of Epson Scan, but over time I got accustomed to pushing the "Show Output" button. Second, compression for TIFF files is lossless in all common cases, so it should have no effect on the image quality. Having said that, 48 bit TIFF files usually don't compress very well, that works better for 24 bits.

I don’t know much about scanning, but I’m trying it out for the first time on an Epson scanner.

I’ve got some photographs, mostly Kodacolor 400 which are probably 40 years old.

The negatives look like they’re in pretty good shape, but all of the colors seem to gravitate to green and blue.

Is there some way to get that out of there? Thanks for your help.

Michael

Great video, Kyle. Thanks! I'm scanning Kodak Film GC 400-B. What settings should I use for Media under the Input tab and for Negative Vendor and Negative Brand under the. Color tab? Thanks!

Hi Kyle, I recently got a V550 and having some issues with negatives out of focus. Did you ever experience something similar with your V500?

I learned a few years ago what a mistake it can be to edit in AdobeRGB. Unless the intended output is to be used on a device capable of higher bit depth reproduction, you will be throwing away image data, and the result on screen will be disappointing.
The world's computer screens are using the sRGB gamut, and that is the gamut you should edit to if you intend it to be seen by the world. If your output is only going to be seen on high-bit-depth devices, then by all means grade to a high-color output - otherwise, don't.

Hey Kyle, would you still recommend a flatbed for budget scanning 35 & 120? I’ve tried SLR and it just doesn’t work in the space I have.