VueScan is the world's most widely used software interface for digitizing film and prints on flatbed and film scanners. This powerful yet affordable program supports over 1500 scanners and 321 digital camera RAW file types, and is available for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux.

Much more than a simple scanner program, VueScan allows you to perform functions such as color restoration, adding sharpening filters, adjusting white balance, rotating images, and batch scanning multiple images. It also provides output to a variety of formats including TIFF, JPEG, and searchable PDF files (even all three simultaneously). The Pro version outputs to the RAW format and provides options for color adjustments, and more.

Despite its popularity, the documentation for VueScan does not provide enough information to use the full power of the system and makes it difficult to get started. The VueScan Bible is the missing manual for new, experienced, and prospective users of VueScan.

1. Chapter 1 VueScan – Look and Feel

   1. Field of application

   2. Compatibility and license issues

   3. VueScan GUI

   4. Dependencies – Automatic GUI changes

   5. Saving and restoring options

2. Chapter 2 Initial Setup

   1. Download and setup

   2. Color management in a nutshell

   3. Defining monitor color space

   4. Scanner profiling for positives

   5. Desired vs. actual colors: Scanner profiling

   6. Printer profiling for true color output

3. Chapter 3 Resolution and Scanning

   1. Talking about resolution: SPI, DPI, PPI, and absolute pixels

   2. SPI: Adjusting sampling quality

   3. DPI: Output size in print

   4. PPI: Output size on screen

   5. Relative output size does not matter: 300 dpi vs. 72 dpi

4. Chapter 4 File Formats

   1. RGB, grayscale, and infrared

   2. TIFF – Lossless but capacious

   3. JPEG – Compressing images

   4. PDF – Versatile document format

   5. RAW files – Storing internal scanner data

   6. DNG vs. RAW-TIFF

5. Chapter 5 Scanning Media Types

   1. Transmissive media – Color slide (E6)

   2. Transmissive media – Kodachrome slide (K14)

   3. Transmissive media – Color negative (C41)

   4. Transmissive media – Black-and-white negative

   5. Reflective media – Paper documents

   6. Reflective media – Scanning paper prints

   7. The originals: To dump or not to dump?

6. Chapter 6 Special Scanning Techniques

   1. Multiscanning

   2. Multi-exposure

   3. Scanner exposure

   4. Descreening

7. Chapter 7 Scanning Workflows

   1. General workflow suggestions

   2. Clever use of output size reduction

   3. Generic RAW scanning workflow

   4. Paper documents – Scanning text

   5. Newspapers – Scanning text and pictures in black-and-white

   6. Magazines – Scanning text and pictures in full color

   7. Photo prints – Scanning printed images

   8. Color slides – Scanning E6 and K14 transparencies

   9. Color negatives – Scanning C41 negatives

   10. Black-and-white negatives – Classic and chromogenic film

8. Chapter 8 Reference – Input Tab

   1. Reference – Input tab

9. Chapter 9 Reference – Crop Tab

   1. Reference – Crop tab

10. Chapter 10 Reference – Filter Tab

    1. Reference – Filter tab

11. Chapter 11 Reference – Color Tab

    1. Reference – Color tab

12. Chapter 12 Reference – Output Tab

    1. Reference – Output tab

    2. Output ‣ TIFF file

    3. Output ‣ JPEG file

    4. Output ‣ PDF file

    5. Output ‣ OCR text file

    6. Output ‣ Index file

    7. Output ‣ Raw file

13. Chapter 13 Reference – Prefs Tab

    1. Reference – Prefs tab

    2. Prefs ‣ Graph type

14. Chapter 14 Menus, Buttons, and Shortcuts

    1. File menu

    2. Edit menu

    3. Scanner menu

    4. Profile menu

    5. Image menu

    6. Page menu

    7. Help menu

    8. Troubleshooting