Nikon 9000 scanner software

Victor C Glanville. Hamrick Software - I have been using VueScan for 10 years on several different computers using 3 scanner models. It really is an excellent product well maintained and exceptional value for money.

It has given me a lot of pleasure over the years and helped produce some high quality scans of vintage family photography. I can recommend it to anyone. Tim Flanigan. I am absolutely in love with this software! Thanks to VueScan, it back online and working better than ever. It is so efficient and easy to use that I'm looking forward to scanning several thousand slides that have been stored away and unusable.

My scanner now works so much better than it did originally that I am incredulous. I purchased the Pro version and it is worth every penny of the reasonable price.

Love it! Thank You Hamrick!!! Marc Bodewes. I used it a lot, more functions than the standard driver. Got new computers with new operating systems, forgot about VueScan.

I got a new Epson scanner - old one doesn't have Win10 drivers. I remembered VueScan. Wow, a purchase made in , works on a PC with an operating system that doesn't exist in And that for a very small amount of money. Peter Glusker. Works perfectly with VueScan 9. Senta Schuijers. Very sustainable. It works on my Macbook with Catalina OS!!!! The settings for a good scan can be adjusted easily and intuitively. And last but not least the scan software delivers very good images and really makes the best out of the connected scanner.

For me NikonScan still is the best film scanner manufacturer own scan software. Unfortunately there is no possibility of embedding colour management, so that you still won't get around Silverfast. Appendix The scan software NikonScan from Nikon does not run on actual operating systems any more.

When talking about the image quality of Nikon's flagship scanner there actually should be not a single negative word to be said. After all the name Nikon, the price and the gorgeous specifications on the data sheet of the film scanner oblige. But first things first. How can the image quality of a Nikon Super Coolscan be actually judged?

Should we scan maybe 10 standardized test slides with resolution bar, colour patterns and gray scales to check to what extent the scans match the original?

With such experiments you can indeed determine certain numerical values, but you often can't use them to find out what an image will look like. Maybe it's better to simply scan different images to make a conclusion by rule of thumb. Or should we just assume the Nikon scans normal snap shots perfectly and fade to discerning originals like night shots or back light shots? A good image is first of all made by a good film scanner, second by the scan software and third by the following image editing.

It's clear that you can't fix too much with the image editing software if already the first link of this chain is weak. The second link of the chain is also very important - and often overlooked: the scan software. A scan of an underexposed image though will be too dark as well if scanned with the standard settings. Does this mean poor image quality?

An image like this can be slightly lightended either directly with the scan software or afterwards with an image editing software. You can make all settings adjusted with the scan software with the image editing software, too, except for one: the dust and scratches correction ICE. From this it follows that it's not that important what the scanned image effectively looks like, but rather which information it contains.

Example: a black and white astronomy shot looks worthless with standard scan settings. A lot of stars, dust in space, not on the image and clouds disappear.

If you scan an image with 48 Bit colour depth and save the outcome in the TIF format, you'll have all image information in a large file, so that you can make a virtually perfect digital image by editing it afterwards.

You can particularly see it with discerning twilight or night shots. The following example is to show the meaning of finest colour shades. The left picture shows a failed shot, which irritated the camera's automatic exposure because of the bright sky. The original scan suggests a mountain range without any particularities.

In the foreground there's a large black area - there seems to be no more information to bring out of the image. But it's surprising when you analyse the colour levels. Everything that seems to be black in the left image in effect is numerous dark colours which the scanner has indeed detected but which are not visible on the screen.

But adjusting the neutrals and blacks make things appear that make you wonder: suddenly a green meadow appears out of the darkness and a mixed forrest shows itself in front of a range of mountains. I'd not say that the corrected image resembles a perfect shot now - the image is brightened exaggeratedly just to show which information dark shadows contain. It was important to me to point out the meaning of a very good scanner differentiating the colours of a seemingly black area in finest details.

This also confirms my statement that it doesn't depend on what the image looks like after scanning but on which information the file contains, i. Because the 35mm film scanners Nikon Coolscan V and Super Coolscan came up with an excellent resolution of dpi the Super Coolscan raised expectations. The question is if the can make real dpi or if it's a few percent less just like with its smaller brothers.

If you analyse the scan of an USAF target you'll quickly realize the Super Coolscan 's horizontal resoloution differs from its vertical resolution just like with its smaller brothers. With large magnification you can differentiate the horizontal lines up to element 6.

The vertical lines can barely be differentiated with element 6. The average of these two resolutions is dpi. This is very creditable and remarkable - it simply distinguishes a Nikon scanner from its competitors. Here quality does not decrease according to the price!

The scan software NikonScan offers to the user a multitude of settings to immediately perform a good looking fine scan after the prescan. Just like with an image editing software you can achieve the same effects on the individual gradation curves by using different controls.

I myself prefer working directly with the gradation curves, although setting brightness and contrast could be done more comfortable as well. I already mentioned that the ICE dust and scratches correction works flawlessly.

I can only confirm rumors which accuse a certain blur to the ICE process insofar that in areas where big dust particles have to be corrected away with the surrounding pixels a certain impression of blur inevitably occurs.

But this does by no means apply for the whole image. GEM works very well with very coarse grained film material. Analyzing the image for repeating patterns which can be assigned to the grain works very well, but inevitably causes a slight blur, too.

Thus GEM is not a function that you can always keep turned on without hesitation, but you should perform tests with every single film to find out if there is any annyoing grain effect or not. The automatic colour enhancement ROC somtimes works wonders. Ancient, faded images suddenly appear like newly shot, just like restored.

See my page about image correction. Corrections as they are done by the ROC technique can be done manually, too, but you'll need a lot of time to adjust the individual colour channels in a way that the restoration effect is visible.

You should in no case turn ROC on permanently though. With a night shot or an image of the sea or of a ski trail you will get such disguised images, that it's rather manipulation than restoration we're talking about. Besides the three already known ICE 3 techniques a fourth one now came along with the Nikon Super Coolscan ED: when scanning underexposed images or back light shots the digital DDE technique reportedly performs automatic corrections which enhances the details in very dark and very bright areas and achieves natural colours and brightness.

This sounds very promising, but after careful consideration and a little testing you will quickly find out that you can achieve this kind of effects by changing the gradation curves, too. By the way you can not only automatically adjust the shadows with DDE but the highlights as well. In my opinion the DDE function is needless, because it's not generally useable, i.

But I don't want to ignore those users who are not familiar with using gradation curves: for them the DDE slider is a comfortable way to get more details into very dark image areas. This function is a very recommendable feature of the NikonScan software, because it can notably improve a bigger part of the images.

But as aforementioned this kind of function does not enhance image quality but only allows comfortable adjustment of image editing tools directly within the scan software. An image scanned with the Scan Image Enhancer in fact appears better than a standard scan, but this advantage is leveled out by the following image editing though.

The Scan Image Enhancer is also a very useful feature that must not be turned on permanently. Everybody knows what auto level does with an image of a ski trail: the few people shilhoutted against the consistent white become extremely coloured and glaring. Conclusion of the last 5 paragraphs: The scan software of the Nikon contains a great many algorithms for automatic image enhancement which positively affect the image qualitiy in a comfortable way.

But the actually good image quality is not due to these comfort features, but it's due to the fact, that the Nikon Super Coolscan ED is capable of distinguishing finest shades of colours.

In a scan with a colour depth of 16 Bit there can easily be shades of grey between black and dark grey - and that makes up the image quality. But let's deal with an essential issue that distinguishes the Nikon Super Coolscan from all its competitors at its market launch: it's the first film scanner with integrated ICE professional system. This is an advancement of the ICE system to the effect that it works well with Kodachrome slides, too. When comparing a Kodachrome scan with activated ICE the differences between the LS and the LS are striking - please see my article about scanning Kodachrome films.

Hence there finally is a film scanner which is able to scan Kodachrome slides with activated dust and scratches removal in outstanding quality due to a special Kodachrome setting. There still is a drawback concerning image quality of the Super Coolscan just like with its predecessor: when scanning 35mm panorama images or medium formats it sometimes happens that lines appear on the image.

It's a mystery to me where these lines come from, the more so as I can't figure out a system of when they appear. You don't see these stripes at first glance, they only appear if you magnify the scan a lot. As workaround you can only perform an extra fine scan best 4 times with only one row of CCDs activated.

Such a scan naturally takes a lot of time but prevents appearence of the lines. Speaking of banding: the predecessor Nikon Super Coolscan ED had banding problems mainly with medium formats, i. Correctively you could activate an extra fine scan, so that only one of the three CCD rows was used for scanning.

This naturally increased scanning times by the factor of 3. This is substantial progress compared to its predecessor.

The scan software Silverfast was yet included in delivery of the predecessor Nikon , thus virtually every owner of this scanner was using the professional Silverfast software.

Of course Silverfast offers a good deal more settings than Nikonscan but image quality does not extensively increase when using Silverfast instead of Nikonscan normally. Not until you perform an IT-8 colour calibration. When performing an IT-8 colour calibration the scanner is individually calibrated by means of the IT-8 target and an ICC profile is generated.

This colour profile gets embeded into Silverfast and is applied to every scan. What's the consequence? You'll get real colours which virtually don't need to be corrected anymore. Thus little faults of the individual scanner are ironed out by means of this calibration. Thus Silverfast alone doesn't increase image quality of the Nikon , only using the IT-8 colour calibration, which belongs to Silverfast can remarkably increase quality. Just like the little Nikons LS and LS considerably increased speed compared to their predecessors, the new LS clearly outguns its predecessor LS concerning scanning times.

While the differences in the field of 35mm are small you get an increase of speed almost by the factor 2 when scanning medium formats.

This is very noticable because digitising medium format frames can be very time consuming. It's a bit disappointing that a 35mm scan passes off much slower than with the Nikon Super Coolscan ED. I think it's surprising that scanning a 6x7 negative is only 2,5 times slower than scanning a 35mm negative although the image area is bigger by the factor of 5.

While you can insert 35mm film material very quickly it takes a lot of time to place and tension not mounted medium format negatives or positives in the film holder. This time needs to be added to the scanning times. You can save a lot of time by purchasing an extra strip film holder, so that you can load it while the other is being scanned. Scanning time considerably decreases when not scanning with the highest resolution dpi but with dpi or less. A resolution between those two does not increase speed.

And of course scanning times boundlessly increase when performing multiple scans. When using a weaker computer scanning times slightly increase. The LS impresses with its excellent image quality, its effective resolution of dpi and with its wide effective density range.

The Digital ICE professional process is especially worth mentioning because it makes the LS the currently only film scanner that can digitise Kodachromes almost perfectly with ICE. Scanning times decreased compared to its predecessor, so that the LS is a real sprinter with medium formats. In order to effectively work with the LS you need a second one of each of those film holders, so that you can load one while the other is in the scanner. But only with this holder the scanner becomes a real all-rounder which can handle any film material up to a size of 6x9 cm.

It's a pitty that Silverfast is not included in delivery anymore, as it was with its predecessor. Because the standard software can not perform IT-8 calibration you're virtually obliged to spend several hundret Euros extra for Silverfast Ai. Those who buy a professional scanner like the Nikon ED want to operate in a professional colour management workflow and don't want to leave anything to chance.

Back to the film scanner tests index. This test report describes the test object as we have received and tested it. Changes in configuration, specification, hardware, software etc. This site has been translated from German into English and serves for a better understanding for the English speaking visitors of our website.

By differences the content of the German original website holds. Changes on the original German site after the translation will not be maintained automatically on the English site. We still have a couple of Nikon scanners and Nikon accessories available in our film scanner shop. Filmscanner Buy. Filmscanner Tests. Braun Multimag SlideScan Braun FS Epson Perfection V Photo.

Epson Perfection V Pro. Epson Expression XL. Hasselblad Flextight X1. Hasselblad Flextight X5. Nikon Coolscan 5 ED. Nikon Super Coolscan ED. Plustek OpticFilm Plustek OpticFilm i. Reflecta CrystalScan Reflecta ProScan 10T. Reflecta RPS 10M. Reflecta DigitDia Reflecta MF Reflecta XScan.

Reflecta Super8-Scanner. Reflecta PF Hardware Tests. Software Tests. Projection Screens. Color Management. Know How.

Image Editing. Basic Knowledge. ScanDig - About us. Imprint, Contact. Filmscanner Shop. Photo travel guides. Equipment and accessories Who orders a Nikon Super Coolscan ED will receive a packet which blasts all known dimensions.

Copy the drivers. Copy the INF file. Prepare Windows 10 to install an unsigned driver. Once the computer has rebooted you will be given a list of startup settings. Once again Windows will reboot as usual.

Install the drivers. In the Device Manager the scanner will be listed and marked with a yellow warning. Hier finden Sie uns.