In reply to Andy Johnson:
> I'll go with that over something that's prettier. It's a tool, not a lifestyle accessory.
I don't need software to be "pretty" (ugh!), I need good workflow. Sorry, but I do think I do have an understanding what distinguishes good workflow from "prettiness" - working as a PJ, editing hundreds of photos on the sidelines during 15-minute football halftimes with a deadline over my neck. Comparably, scanning workflow with VueScan for big batches ain't good.
For me, VueScan does get in my way and makes my workflow slower and prone to mistakes. I value my time, especially since scanning is such a slow process. Of course, everybody's use is different and it might be ok for you, just not for me.
I scan mixed batches of different films from years past from a big archive, 120 and 135, on a big flatbed with tranny adapter (big Microtek, glass-less). I was surprised how much time I had to spent just having to click and adjust all the different options between each film. Presets didn't help at all, since you can't choose the specific settings to be saved. It's always so many mouse clicks between each film scan.
It's easy to make a mistake that ruins the whole batch (saving as grayscale, since you have several different options that set scan colour, all over the place in the options). File management, since you have several options to set file names again all over the place (and they don't stick). When I compare it to professional photo workflow tools like PhotoMechanic (different, but still a similarly niche photo tool), yep, it's bad. If you only scan a few films at once, yep, it might be just fine.
But for many older scanners, it's the only game in town (and I am really glad that anything still supports them, after all, without VueScan, most scanners would be just paperweights!). Any consumer scanner software sucks (if it even works with modern systems at all), there's been zero to little innovation in it, being such a small market. Everything feels like using SilkyPix or worse.
It's a like a love-hate relation - I really love that Ed Hamrick still makes software that can talk to any old scanner working on latest Apple M1 hardware (yay! incredible!), but hate that it looks and works just like when we had OS 9...
End of rant
Post edited at 21:16