[sane-devel] Affordable film scanner supported by SANE

[Jonathan Buzzard]

andras@users.sourceforge.net said:
> I think you have a strong bias towards VueScan. That's fine, but it
> doesn't mean we have to give up coding to make things better. And it
> certainly doesn't mean SANE is by definition inferior to VueScan. 

I have a strong bias towards fully functioning software that does
the job. In the area of scanning negatives and slides VueScan is
currently vastly superior to SANE in terms of functionality. It may
not remain that way and it does not mean that we should give up coding
to make things better either.

However to suggest that at the moment SANE is perfectly good for scanning
negatives and slides is an outright falsehood. That said VueScan is
rubbish for normal flatbed scanning and I use XSane all the time
for this.

> What's easier than setting the scanner up (in about 5 minutes) once
> for a given type of film and then scan millions of frames with these
> settings?

Because most of the time I just need to select the film I am using from
a list. It takes just a few seconds.

> No, VueScan doesn't make life easier and doesn't give better scans
> either.

That is rubbish, it certainly makes life easier, and for the most
part gives better results. I can mess about for ages in filmGIMP
trying to improve on what VueScan does for faded scans without success,
which jsut requries a click on a checkbox in VueScan.

> I've scanned 150 C41 frames at full frame, full resolution with IR
> correction with the LS-30, and it didn't take me more than an
> afternoon. I don't think VueScan could beat that.

Have you actually tried VueScan? Certainly I have tried XSane and
VueScan for my scanner and the two don't compare, VueScan wins
hands down. I look forward to the day when I can use a open source
replacement to VueScan, but that time is not today or in the
very near future.

> It the scanner doesn't support it, then it's probably not a very good
> idea anyway -- you'll run into registration problems if you scan the
> same image multiple times just to get the data to be averaged. 

Funnily enough VueScan does this for scanners without hardware multipass
scanning. Even with registration problems it can sometimes be useful.
Anyway you are dodging the fact that currently you cannot do this
with any SANE based system period.

I would also point out that VueScan supports a much wider range of
filmscanners than SANE does.

JAB.

-- 
Jonathan A. Buzzard                 Email: jonathan@buzzard.me.uk
Northumberland, United Kingdom.       Tel: +44(0)1661-832195