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Getting started with VueScan

VueScan is a powerful scanning tool that's aimed at helping you get the most the most out of your scanner and producing stunning results from your scanned photos.

It's packed with loads of useful and powerful features and currently supports over 750 scanners and 209 digital camera RAW files.

The following tutorial is designed to familiarise you with the software and its user interface, and to help you scan your first photos and slides.

You'll find useful hints and tips here on how to carry out common tasks such as batch scanning and scanning to PDF files.

Getting to know VueScan

If you've used a scanner before, you've probably encountered something that looks a little similar to VueScan. But it's still worth taking a little time to get used to where everything is before diving in.

Using VueScan's Guide Me mode

The easiest way of getting started with VueScan is to use the Guide Me mode.

This takes you, step by step, through the basic tasks (described in more detail later in this tutorial) that you need to carry out to perform a document or image scan.

Guide me...

  1. Click the Guide Me button

  2. Follow the instructions given in the Options panel, choosing the options you require from the dropdown menus as you go

  3. Don't forget to click the Next button between each stage

  4. Once you've finished scanning, VueScan will launch a save file dialog box so you can name and save your image

Basic Workflow

Now that you're familiar with the interface and basic scanning tasks, it's time to try out some of VueScan's more powerful features.

Outside the Guide Me mode, the basic process for scanning one image can be summed up in three simple steps (for an explanation of the more advanced functions, see the appendices in this manual):

Load your image

  1. Place your photo face down inside the scanner or load your slide/negative into your slide scanner
  2. For photos, set Input | Media to "Color Photo"

  3. For slides or negatives, set Input | Media to "Image", "Color Negative" or "B&W"

Preview and crop

  1. Click the Preview button. This produces a quick, low resolution snapshot for you to work on, before carrying out a full resolution scan

  2. When the preview has finished your image will be displayed in the Preview panel
  3. Click and drag the mouse to draw a box around the image. This ensures the scanner does not waste time scanning blank areas

Scan and save

  1. Click the Scan button

  2. Wait for the scan to finish. This varies depending on your scanner, the speed of your computer and the resolution you are scanning at
  3. Once the scan is complete it is automatically named and saved in the VueScan directory