Digital BW, The Print

Hello

For those of you who use Ed Hamrick's Vuescan with their scanner and don't
check Usenet (comp.periphs.scanners) ...
There was a recent post setting out all the requests he'd had for
improvements. I quote the message in its entirety.

bye for now   

Keith Cooper
Northlight Images
http://northlight-images.co.uk

And he only charges $40 for the software!!

The address for comments was usenet@...

---------------------------QUOTE-----------------------------------
Here is a summary of the suggestions I've gotten by
e-mail in response to this thread.

In summary, people seem to be most interested in User Interface
improvements.  It was surprising to me that there was only one
request for a TWAIN driver and no requests for a Photoshop
plug-in.

There were lots of good ideas in these e-mails, and I'd like
to thank everyone who sent suggestions.

Regards,
Ed Hamrick

User Interface
--------------
5 Black/white point setting like Photoshop
4 Interactive (randomly placed) batch scans on flatbed
2 Make VueScan scriptable (or have command line options or AppleScript)
2 Add Refresh button
  Set black/white point before brightness adjustment
  Use dockable windows
  Use wizard for advanced workflow suggestions
  Add black/white point padding option
  Fix problem with window resizing (on some systems)
  Change cursor to hourglass when busy
  Display histogram from selected area
  Make "beep when done" apply to "Image->Refresh"
  Combine Filter and Color tabs
  Context sensitive help
  Eliminate option types, move advanced options to their own tab
  Customizable toolbars
  See all thumbnails at once
  Use multiple icons for image rotation
  Improve user interface
  Two preview images - one before corrections, one after
  Eliminate command menu (use buttons instead)
  Change to "Page setup", "Print..." and "Print one copy"
  Use hotkeys to cycle between frames
  Add TWAIN interface
  Add option to set automatic cropping for each preview, even if set to
manual
  Allow seeing RGB and infrared exposure, even when not locked
  Put last file written in status bar
  Move "Files|Disk file name" to Files tab
  Display name of current .ini file, use (modified), change color of changed
options
  Add Refresh button
  Put basic/intermedite/advanced in each tab (use checkbox for advanced
options)
  Create thumbnails when batch scanning

Features
--------
2 Option for strength of descreen filter
  Use ICC profile for scanner
  Allow attaching scanner profile to raw files
  Apply gamma correction to raw scan files
  Add option for a gamma 1.0 color space
  Raw scan files with ICE applied
  Save files in LAB color space
  Use Photoshop curve files
  Color wheel feature like HP SmartScan
  Better handling of underexposed negatives
  When scanning raw files, make output file same number as input
  Add option to increase color saturation
  Support saving PNG files
  Small-angle image rotation
  Option for storing non-default options in comments field in files
  Allow remote scanning (over network)
  Improve Infrared cleaning
  Command-line option to specify raw scan file
  Display black point pixels more clearly in histogram

User's Guide
------------
  More robust User's Guide
  More verbose in message boxes and User's Guide
  Produce PDF version of User's Guide
  Produce index for User's Guide
  Give roadmap to identify film from color markings

Performance
-----------
  Speed up scanning, especially when filters used
  Multitasking - scanning and processing at the same time

File locations
--------------
  Put .ini file in each user's Preferences folder on Mac OS X
  Put .ini file location ($HOMEDIR/xxx) in system-wide file (like serial
number)
  use ~/.vuescanrc on Linux
  save multiple configurations in ~/.vuescanrc
  Allow installing to different directory on Windows

Film support
------------
2 Better negative support for Fuji Superia etc
  More predefined film types
  More black/white film profiles
  Allow users to create their own film profiles
  Allow manual adjustments of key film parameters
  Allow entering a floating point number for slide curve

Scanner Specific Features
-------------------------
2 Automatically determine frame offset on LS-40/LS-4000 strip film adapter
2 Separate RGB channel adjustment for analog gain on Nikon
  Auto power-down of scanners (especially Epson)
  Automatic detection of film borders on Epson 2450
  Improve scan quality on Epson 2450
  Option for "slow scan" on PhotoSmart S20
  LS8000 trilinear support
  Support Microtek 5900
  Don't let Nikon film strip auto-eject if doing long-running processing