Photo or film scanning? Best software ever... VueScan

[oshunluvr]

I don't normally "advertise" products but some things are worth the effort. About a decade ago I bought a Canoscan 8800F because it was affordable and scanned slides and negatives with a backlight as well as photos or documents. I was saving my Dad's slides from 1957 (my parents honeymoon) and on until the mid 80s. At the time, the scanner wasn't Linux supported but I had faith it would be, and I wasn't wrong.

I found VueScan by Hamrick Software - really just one guy doing software right. One product, cross platform, and supports over 6600 scanners. I bought a "Professional" license which guaranteed me updates for life. I think it was $79 (almost as much as the scanner) but worth every penny. He updates it several times a year, it has never failed, and does amazing work. It has more photo features than I even understand.

Tonight I was reminded of it because our daughter (the last one of 4 kids) received her senior pictures and I wanted to scan them to preserve the images. 4800 DPI on a 8x10 photo was almost a full Gig! Took several minutes to scan it. If you're doing slides, you need at least 3000DPI to get a proper scan. That's why I bought this scanner and VueScan.

If you want to scan more than an occasional document, this product it worth the price.

[woodsmoke]

Hi
thank you very much for this article.
In the middle of the pandemic I have finally started in earnest to produce my last family history book of "the other side" of the family and have a ton of old pics and slides to scan.

And, hey, I hope that you and yours are doing ok!
woody

[oshunluvr]

Long time no post, WoodstayingawayfromcovidIhopesmoke! We're all good out here. Global pandemics remind us why sometimes small towns are better than big cities!

[GreyGeek]

My wife began her geneology research around 1994 and finished about 2009. It was my job to scan in her photos and documents.

It was also my job to translate her notes into prose as I used OpenOffice to write her family history. The document filled 250 pages. My printer at the time was a Samsung ML-1210 monochrome laser without duplex capability. I'd print the odd pages, turn the stack over and print the even pages. I made copies for all our relatives, about 15 in all. It wore out my Samsung so I replaced it in the fall of 2010 with the HP LaserJet P1606dn duplex laser, which I am still using. I've printed several copies since then but the duplex printer makes it easy.

Also, I have to give praise to OpenOffice/LibreOffice. I used its "Master Document" capability, in which I created a title page, table of contents, and index of words for the appendix, and other features. Each chapter was treated as a separate document and the Master document tied them all together. If I inserted a page all the subsequent pages were re-numbered and the table of contents and indexes were updated for the entire document. It made writing aand editing the biograph so, so much easier.

[woodsmoke]

Hi Oshunluver!

Thanks for the kind reply!

woody