Here's a stupid opening line, the scanner does a reasonable job with PERFECTLY exposed slides, but dense slides scan dark. Should be no surprise here. However, it seems that they scan dark exponentially.

I tried VueScan, but only with limited success. VueScan does seem to send the scanner into a calibration routine, but the program is cumbersome, requires multiple scans, and I can't figure out a way to have the scans exported into Photoshop. VueScan does come with some sort of a Kodak plug-in, but it is extremely weak. Honestly, VueScan isn't worth the added steps and leg-work. VERY poor documentation as well.

Months ago there was a discussion regarding a v1.1 driver update for the Minolta Scan Speed. Minolta has confirmed that an updated driver was never released for the DSS, ONLY for the Scan Dual, AND they have NO PLANS on updating the driver.

My options? I keep seeing amazing slide scans from the HP Photosmart with NO ADJUSTMENTS whatsoever. The max resolution from the HP is 2400DPI vs. 2820DPI for the DSS. Am I going to really lose that much if I "downgrade" to the HP, aside from slightly lower max resolution and a faster SCSI interface?

-- MikeB (airlinestuff@yahoo.com), May 12, 2000

Answers

FWIW, I just downloaded VueScan versions 5.9 and the beta of 6. Both work very well here in a PC/Windows 98 configuration. So far I haven't had to do a multiple scan--in fact, I've not even tried that yet. As for Photoshop, it's been opening automatically at the end of a scan. If it doesn't open on your system, I guess there's an option somewhere that controls this function. If you can't get it to open Photoshop, you could try opening Photoshop yourself and loading the saved TIF file into it.

-- John Woram (jworam@msn.com), May 13, 2000.

In order that Photoshop opens at the end of the scan with Vuescan it is necessary to make Photoshop the "default" program for opening and viewing Tiff files. Normally it will be the "dinky" Msoft Imaging or something even more woeful.

-- Ian Lyons (ilyons@msn.com), May 14, 2000.

You can always get the file straight from the VueScan directory as well. The RAW scan, which will be in 48bit format if you've scanned at 36bit, is called scan0001.tif, and the crop is called crop0001.tif.

It's best to check this directory occassionally, anyway; Vuescan doesn't automatically remove crops, and this directory can get full of very big files.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), May 15, 2000.