VueScan can help you get images from images from a scanner. The application is compatible with many models of scanners, even those which are no longer supported in recent Windows versions.
One thing that I always appreciate from a tool of this kind is the ability to recognize text, so I am glad that VueScan allows exporting scans as text, searchable PDF and RTF. However, the OCR is not always successful, particularly when the original text is formatted in columns. Another valuable feature is multi-exposure, which consists of performing a double scan with different exposure levels each time so that the dynamic range of your scanner is amplified. Besides, it lets you calibrate colors to make the resulting image as similar to the original as possible.
From my point of view, the best advantage of VueScan is that it allows you to prolong the life of old scanners whose developers stopped releasing new drivers. The product can be tried without any restrictions, except that it leaves an undesired watermark. There are two editions: Standard and Professional. The latter has the same basic features but scans films and has additional color adjustment options.
Pros
- Compatible with many models of scanners
- Post-processing features
- Multiple output formats
- Optical character recognition
- Exports to multiple formats in a single operation
- Multi-exposure
- Color calibration
Cons
- OCR results are not always accurate
The instructions on this page are clearly out-of-date: https://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/html/vuesc4.htm.For one thing, there is NO tick box for "PDF multi page" It's a pop-up choice list. Scan does NOT work. Preview does. There is NO "Last Page" option on the File menu. The screen shots are from Windows, but I can live with that.This used to work for me. Not only was there a Last Page option on the file menu, there was a clickable Last Page command at the bottom of the input page. What gives?