I haven’t tried it & haven’t seen user feedback, but the new VueScan 9 scanning app promises 64-bit compatibility and the ability to create very large scans. If you take it for a spin with Photoshop CS5, you’re welcome to post your impressions here. [Via Jeff Tranberry]
Installed it a few days ago and very happy with it. 64-bit allows me to scan in much more detail without having problems with the scanner freezing or running out of memory. A big film scan now works at 1200DPI rather than having to go down to 600DPI as I did previously.
Haven’t tried the PS plugin yet, simply because it’s new and therefore not in my workflow!
Also just got a IT8 target and am trying to calibrate scanner and then printer with it; poor results so far, but that’s almost certainly me rather than the software – bendy educational thing to surmount yet.
[Thanks for the quick feedback, Steve. –J.]
As Steve alluded to,VueScan is no longer just a standalone app that saves files that you then open in Photoshop. It now installs a TWAIN driver that lets you optionally scan from within Photoshop–a feature others have long asked for (though not me). You’ll find this under File > Import > VueScan. After you scan, you quit VueScan as if it was a plug-in and the image is returned to Photoshop.
This might turn out to be a more reliable TWAIN solution than all those old drivers that people have to flip Photoshop into 32-bit mode to run. I only tried the new VueScan plug-in a couple of times with my Canon flatbed scanner and it seemed to work well. But like other plug-ins, until you quit the VueScan plug-in you are walled off from the rest of Photoshop. I still prefer running VueScan standalone and having it dump scans into a folder watched by Bridge or Lightroom, so that I can edit scans in Photoshop while other images are scanning.