Jenn P. Zonca - I use Silverfast AI Studio with my CanoScan 8400F scanner. The Silverfast controls allow me to acquire my transparencies and negatives with greater sharpness, contrast and color saturation, much closer to the original image, than the scanner's native software. I wouldn't use any other product than Silverfast!

Silverfast AI Studio's winning combination of Auto Adaptive Contrast Optimization, Multi-Sampling, and the MidPip4 - Advanced Color Cast Removal tools allow me to acquire images that the CanoScan 8400F software cannot handle.

Silverfast AI Studio's NegaFix tool does a much better job of handling color negatives than the native software of the CanoScan 8400F.

Silverfast AI Studio's suite of tools and my CanoScan 8400F allow me to acquire transparency and color negative images that I feel are comparable to a dedicated film scanner and a well-known suite of tools that rhyme with "price".

John McNeill - As an enthusiast photographer and a history buff with an interest in genealogy, I have scanned thousands of images over the past few years. My scanned images have included Civil War era daguerreotypes, family photos and scrap books from 1880 to present, negatives from the 1950s; and 35mm slides from the Vietnam War. I currently use the Canon CanoScan 9550F scanner on Windows XP and XP Pro systems.

Despite many favorably reviews of the CanoScan 9550F, my original scans, using the included ScanGear software, can best be described as average, with mixed results - loss of detail in highlights and shadows, blown out tones, and dull images. Based on the unremarkable results of the original scans, I decided to switch scanning software.

My choice for scanning software was SilverFast Ai IT8; and the results are extraordinary. Highlights and shadows exhibit more subtle details; and the accurate profiles from IT8 calibration result in crisp images with accurate color. In addition, batch mode and automatic frame detection are great time savers.

In sum, SilverFast Ai IT8 is a great piece of software. Excellent scans and productivity enhancing features coupled with great technical and customer support make it the standard for CanoScan 9950F scanning software. It has enabled the potential of my CanoScan 9950F and has turned a mediocre scanner into a great scanner.

Larry Welliver - The SilverFast software is a must have for all Canon owners. It is easy to use, is loaded with features that significantly improve the quality of your scanned images and you can get the scan right the first time which can save a significant amount of time. The SilverFast software allows you to select eleven different image types and has eight filters, which produce results that the Canon software cannot match.

I purchased the SilverFast software in April, 2006 for a Canon 9950F scanner that is hooked up to a MacBook Pro running OSX 10.4. The software was easy to install, bug free and I have been using it ever since. I scan photos of all types from travel, events and family. These photos are used for brochures, albums, scrapbooks, presentations and videos. I am an extremely satisfied customer.

Gregory Knipp - I've been an amateur photographer most of my life, but in January decided it was time to go digital. I bought my first flatbed scanner, a Canon CanoScan 9950F, to begin digitalizing a large family collection of old black & white prints, black & white 4x5 negatives, 35MM color slides, and 35MM color film. I began using the included scanning software, ScanGear, and initially thought it worked pretty well.

Then I heard about SilverFast. There was a lot of positive dialogue about the product across the internet, so I downloaded a trial copy of SilverFast SE Plus and began testing it. I had already done a number of scans of 35mm slides and some black & white 4x5 negatives with the ScanGear, so I rescanned some of those images and in side-by-side comparisons quickly discovered that the SilverFast was definitely the best product. I also tried out a copy of VueScan, but I thought it was a bit lacking. I ended up purchasing SilverFast Ai which has full color management and can handle 48-bit color, including RAW, amidst it's growing list of features. Currently SilverFast doesn't support FARE (dust and scratch correction tool, Canon's version of ICE), but SilverFast technical support folks tell me that they will be able to adapt their own dust and scratch removal function (SRD) to the infrared channel of this scanner in the very near future.

For me, one of the more notable advantages of SilverFast over ScanGear is that that SilverFast does a better job of pulling out details in shadowy areas when scanning 35MM color slides and my 4x5 B&W negs. You absolutely do have greater control over your scans, as advertised.

The Canon 9950F is an awesome scanner, and SilverFast really allows the scanner to make the most of it's capabilities. I think it would be a bit of real brilliance for Canon to start bundling SilverFast with it's scanners. Until that time, I feel it is definitely worth spending the money to replace the provided ScanGear software with SilverFast.

Roy Sprague - As a newcomer to color negative scanning, I was surprised to find that a technically sophisticated product like SilverFast AI has made digitizing my archive of landscape/nature film images much easier than the basic Windows XP software included with my CanoScan 8600F scanner. The time and effort spent in Photoshop editing and adjusting images produced by the Canon software far exceeds that required to produce superior results with the tools available in SilverFast. Automatic functions like auto-adjust, Color Cast Removal, and Adaptive Color Restoration have greatly simplified processing, and I have found that scans are significantly faster with SilverFast, even when comparing 48-bit SilverFast scans with 24-bit Canon scans. Since I have several hundred images to scan, I am looking forward to automating the process as much as possible with JobManager, which offers professional levels of flexibility and control not available in the Canon software.

SilverFast QuickTime movies and documentation have really helped me to get my project underway with minimum delay. The documentation supplied with the Canon software is very basic as well as brief, and the user can spend a great deal of time experimenting with the package attempting to determine the exact effect of each function and control. This activity is very counterproductive, and it really highlights another strength of SilverFast products: solid support provided by extensive documentation.

To get the best results with Canon (or any other mid-range) scanners, I would recommend use of SilverFast software.

Anthony Peperone - I recently purchased SilverFast Ai Studio and used it to scan a 28-year-old Tri-X 400 negative with a Canon 9550F scanner using Windows XP on my PC.

The result exceeded anything I thought possible. After using other software, I was disappointed and never thought I could match my original darkroom print (lost in Katrina) of the Natchez on the Mississippi River in New Orleans. Then I tried SilverFast. It was like magic. It actually exceeded the quality of my original print. SilverFast is easily superior to any other software on the market today in its ability to bring out the details in reflective and transparent media that others literally leave behind. It's there, but only SilverFast can capture the subtle details. I didn't know what I was actually missing until I started using SilverFast. I am very impressed by the subtle shades in black and white that SilverFast is able to capture and reproduce. After using other software, I didn't think it was possible with my Canon 9950F scanner.

If you want the best quality possible from your Canon scanner, then SilverFast is an absolute MUST.

I am using it on B/W and color transparencies and prints, and getting the superior image quality couldn't be easier. It has all of the advanced professional features that you would want, but the program is designed to "fly" on autopilot. Just go through the prearranged simple steps one by one, and a superior result is guarantied. The prearranged steps also allow for individual preferences, and you can deviate at any time to suit your individual needs. It can be as easy or advanced to suit your needs; but either way, the results achieved with SilverFast will be superior to any other software. Having to spend less time scanning by getting it right the first time while using simple, quicker steps enables you to be much more productive in your work while maintaining the highest quality possible.
Thanks, SilverFast!

Richard Jacobs - I started a project recently, scanning several hundred 25-year old slides of our treking trip to Africa. The old Kodachromes and Ecktachromes show their age. I was not satisfied with the results I was getting on my Canon Scanner, a CanaScan 8600f, and was introduced to SilverFast at George DeWolfe's "Digital Photography Fine Print Workshop." Silverfast provides a vast range of controls that were not previously available to me, allowing solid control over every element of the scanning workflow. The results are dramatically improved. Color cast removal, color balance, sharpness, dust and scratches, batch scans, and similar issues are now easily under my control. And Silverfast is fast, very fast. It's now the only scanning software I use.

I wish I had discovered it sooner!

PBase Forum, Plustek 7200/7200i - ... Hi, I've seen some stunning pictures here scanned with Plustek 7200, but seen very rarely positive comments about this scanner on the net. Consumer dedicated film scanner is dominated by famous brand name (Nikon, Canon, Kminolta etc), but it looks out of my budget. Its brothers, Plustek 7200i comes with iSRD infrared dust removal from Silverfast in reasonable price compare with others maker.

I would like to here from you all about this product, especially its iSRD feature. ...

Chris Bourne (Design Alliance) - The one thing I simply cannot understand, and this is just a comment, is why Canon produce such a competent scanner and give it such a limited driver. The results from Silver Scan are so vastly superior to anything I could get from the native driver it is like having a different machine!

You can count on another SilverFast convert here!

John Harvey, 16.10.2006 - "I've been using Leaf 45 scanners for about the last 5 years. When Silverfast AI became available I was an early user. Since it's start the program has been slowly improving and growing. Nils Heidorn and the head of Lasersoft Imaging, Karl-Heinz Zahorsky, have made this a labor of love since the Leaf 45 and now the 35 are not the hot ticket owned by tens of thousands of photographers. They recognized that these scanners are really exceptional pieces of equipment. Yes, they are slow, but the results are worth the time if you are not in a production situation. We should be thankful that they took this project on.

I just finished scanning a set of old 6x6 black and white negatives for a show. They were so dusty I could not believe I'd ever be able to make prints. I fired up my Leaf45 and used their SRD option which is a software based scratch and dust removal program within the Ai software. It was a bit difficult at first getting the hang of applying the program but I must say the results justified the work. I'm more than ever convinced that if you have a Leaf scanner you should give this software a try. They have reduced the price and I think it is well worth it. Let me ad that I am not in any way involved with Lasersoft Imaging. I'm just glad that they have extended the life of my scanner"

Cliff Perrin, 11.10.2006 - "I have been using scanners in both a professional, and private environment since "affordable" high quality equipment came to the market during the early 1990's. One of the greatest problems has always been the limitations of OEM scanner drivers in delivering results that truly, visually represent what you are scanning.
Silverfast has certainly come to the rescue with fully-featured, custom produced drivers that give you total mastery over the image at every level of the workflow. They are the yardstick by which all scanner manufacturers' should strive to equal. These products really do work! Don't take my word for it! Download a free trial - and see the difference!"

haydnseek on flickr - I can say that I run the Epson 4490 with Silverfast SE and am blown away by its' capabilities......

Ed Richards, 01.06.2006 - I have been playing with the Silverfast demo for a few days to see if the multi-scanning really works. I have used multi-scanning on Vuescan with a Canon 9950 and the registration is not quite good enough. With the new Silverfast, the registration is usually perfect, even at 16 scans. It is very impressive. One possible bug is that when you start Silverfast it comes up with the last preview. If you are scanning the same negative in more than one session, it is easy to just start the second scan without a new preview. I think if you do the registration does not always work - I have noticed that every few multi-scans I get one with doubled images and I think this is why, but I have not kept notes so I am not sure yet. The cheapest way in is Silverfast SE, then scan to the HDR choice and do the corrections in your editor. Otherwise I think you need to go to AI to get 16/48 bit and corrections in Silverfast.

John Hennessy, 16.05.2005 - I have to agree with Kirk that the new multiscan capability of Siverfast AI is a great improvement over the multipass method. I just downloaded it and tried it on a 4x5 Astia image of mine with dewy grass and gossamers in the foreground. With the old multipass, I had to try several times before the blades of grass and gossamers were evidently as sharp as the film. One failed attempt even produced two blades for every one in the film! But multiscaning, with only one try, produced a file much much better than the best multipass. Ironically, it was so much better that I regret having to pay extra for it---it should have been there all along. Maybe AI "Studio" (which is what one needs to upgrade to in order to get the multiscan capability) does other things I have not noticed yet. On the other hand, if multiscan software is a programming breakthrough, then Lasersoft deserves whatever the market will bear. Why upgrading the SE version costs so little is a mystery but no serious photographer should be without the AI version anyway just for the scanner profiling aspect if nothing else. I volunteered for the scan-around testing at http://largeformatphotography.info/scan-comparison/ (and in View Camera) and it will be interesting to see how the Epsons stack up with Silverfast. I believe the Epson 3200 used in tests was used with its own software--which is useless.

Kirk Gittings, 17.05.2005 - The new multisampling feature in SF Studio appears in my testing to be a real breakthrough......It would be hard to surpass the noise reduction of SF Studio. My tests also reveal that with SF Studio you get the most noise reduction in RGB files (noise is virtually eliminated completely) even if you are looking for a grayscale image as the final product. So I am scanning 4x5 b&w negs as 48bit RGB files with 16 sampling passes and then converting them to 16 bit grayscale. The exact opposite was true with SFAI 6. You would get much less noise with grayscale scans with SFAI 6.

Domenico Pescosolido - Hi all, I would like to know if there are any important differences between Nikon Scan and SilverFast with scanner Nikon V LS-50, in other words if with SilverFast it's possible to reach better works compared with Nikon Scan software and if it's simply to use compared with Nikon software.

In particular I have some slides FujiChrome Velvia 50 undexposed of 1/3 with a lot of green and blue tones that I didn't have good succeess with Nikon Scan (too light or too dark and with coulours without the right contrast and lights).
Thanks

- Hey Vicki, speak for yourself. I'm still happily using my ancient Epson Expression 636 scanner with a SCSI card in my PowerMac dual1Ghz G4, using the Silverfast SE driver. I don't have any problems with SCSI at all, other than that to have the OS recognize the scanner, I have to have the scanner powered on at boot time (not a problem since I reboot about once every month or so).

If your scanner software sucks, you really should check out SilverFast SE, it's really cheap, $50, and supports a wide variety of scanners, even old discontinued ones without any current drivers, like my Epson. You can download trial versions from silverfast.com and if it works OK, you can buy a serial number online to unlock it.

I've been considering upgrading to SilverFast AI, which is their top end software at about $500 IIRC, it has all the pro tools like ICC profiling, I haven't seen such an advanced scanner driver since I used to work on a $250k drum scanner. But I haven't found a scanner I like that is good enough for the software. No, all scanner drivers don't suck, it should be obvious in this case that I've found a driver I like so much that I need to find a good scanner to go with the driver! And I am especially fond of the Silverfast guys because they support legacy hardware so I don't have to buy new equipment.