You also have very granular control over color and other aspects of your scan. The Filter tab has checkmarks for restoring colors, restoring fading, grain reduction and sharpening. The Color tab is even more in-depth.

The professional version of VueScan allows for ICC color profiles. You can have different profiles for your monitor, the scanner, the printer, and your output file. This allows you to insure that your scan will look the same no matter how and where you view it.

Next, you have the ability to choose various "white balance" settings. You'll have the typical choices such as tungsten and fluorescent, but it also includes options like night, portraits and landscapes. These settings are sometimes hit and miss, so experiment to see what gets you the most accurate results.

If the white balance settings aren't quite exact enough for you, you can set the white and black points, and even set brightness for the red, blue and green channels, as shown in Figure C. Most people won't necessarily mess around with these options, but for the professionals and graphics folks, their inclusion is a huge help.

FIGURE C

You can definitely pinpoint your color decisions Click picture for a larger image.

Once you've got everything tweaked the way you like it, you can jump into the Preferences and Output tabs. Here you will find settings like the ability to anti-alias your image or text, and how you want to save your file. You can save in TIFF, JPEG, or a host of RAW formats. The RAW formats would mainly be used for archival purposes for those that need to save their scans at the best possible quality.

Once you've finished all of your choices, you simply scan your object and you're all set. The results are excellent, and you'll wonder why you never jumped to VueScan sooner.

One of the things that you don't really think about at first is the ability to have a consistent, standard interface between scanners. If you use multiple scanners, or even upgrade to a newer scanner, you can still use VueScan. You can even use it on your Windows machine at work and your Mac machine at home. And if you are Linux enthusiast you aren't left out in the cold either. You only have to learn one piece of software which makes it easier for you as an end-user.

You can buy VueScan for $89.00 for the professional version which gives you ICC color profile support, unlimited free upgrades, and the ability to save scans as archival RAW files. If you can live without those high-end features, the standard version will set you back $49 with 12 months of upgrades.

Either way, it's money well-spent. We give VueScan 5 out of 5.

OUR RATING: 5 of 5

Anne Violette is a freelance writer and photographer in Delray Beach, Florida. Find her at http://www.ifreelance.com/pro/24979 or http://www.photomaine.com.