Going down the list, ‘Media’ is set to ‘B/W negative.’ I don’t buy into the ‘scan in full color mode’ thing. I personally preview scan each frame I’m interested in, so if I ever hit the scan button, I know I want to save it, hence the setting. Many of these settings are set by personal preference, like the Auto save menu. In figure 1, we can see a screenshot of the Input panel. First of all, make sure we are in Advanced mode by hitting the More button at the bottom of the window. The first thing to do is to setup VueScan’s preferences the way we want them. The corollary to that is if exposures and processing are consistent, one can run actions which require little operator intervention in Photoshop to finish off the processing quickly. The basic philosophy of this scanning procedure is to scan with as few adjustments as possible while scanning and adjust the rest in Photoshop.

I personally only scan traditional B&W negatives with VueScan, since after several comparisons, I found it more straightforward for me to scan color negative and slide film with Nikon Scan (with no adjustments while scanning). Some people will recommend using the ‘lock base’ feature of VueScan to fix exposure. There are many different ways to proceed I only outline the process that works for me. I would imagine other scanners should be similar. While this piece is based on use with a Nikon Coolscan V, other Coolscans should be almost identical in operation. This is a quick tutorial on using Ed Hamrick’s excellent VueScan with a Nikon Coolscan to scan traditional B&W negatives.

Free vuescan foe ever