I am out of state and 400+ miles from home on a 6 mo contract job and
before leaving I burned onto CDs some raw scans I made with Vuescan on
my Linux system using my Minolta 5400 scanner. I was hoping I could
process those raw scans with the Minolta software that came with the
scanner on my Mac laptop and play around with them with photoshop and in
the process learn how to use the Minolta software.

Well my problem is that the darn Minolta software will not start without
the scanner being present. The DiMAGE Scan Launcher comes up but when I
try to select one of the buttons it complains that the scanner was not
detected and to check the connection.


With Vuescan the scanner does not have to be present. You can select a
file to process and wa-la your off an running.

Can you do a similar thing with the Minolta software? If so how?

Jack Frillman wrote:
I don't think the Minolta sw will work without the scanner connected and
powered up, or will be able to edit a previously scanned file. I scan
raw to prevent any Minolta sw corrections and do all the corrections in
PS. Why would you want to use the Minolta sw to correct your raw scans,
and what do you expect it to do that PS cannot?

JJackson@att.net wrote:
With Vuescan you can re-scan raw scans since they are the raw output of
the scanner. So you can play around with scan settings without having
to actually rescan the negative thus saving time. Am I brain dead here
or something?

Jack Frillman wrote:
Not sure what you meant by "re-scan raw scans". If you meant Vuescan can
edit raw scans without the presence of a scanner, so can PS. The
question remains "Why would you want to use the Minolta sw to correct
your raw scans, and what do you expect it to do that PS cannot?" Answer
that question first and someone may steer you in the right direction.

JJackson@att.net wrote:
is save into a file (tiff). My understanding from reading the Vuescan
documentation is that this file is the raw output of the scanner with no
processing or correction. The Vuescan documentation states that by
saving the raw scan and re-scanning from the file saves time and reduces
the chance that the film wil be scratched. The Vuescan documentatin
states as scanning for the raw file. I also have a faint memory of
people in the group discussing processing raw file with the Minolta
software. That is what I was trying to do so I did not have to bring the
scanner up here with me.

The Minolta software is designed for image processing only at the time of
scanning, it doesn't have the option to open a saved file. If you scan
directly (i.e. not within PS or another app) you have the option to save as
either TIFF, BMP or JPEG. All these formats are compatible with image
processing apps like Photoshop, Elements, PaintShop Pro, etc. although some
may not support 16 mode. The scanner is only required to digitize the image,
once it's saved to disk it can be used in any program in much the same way
as a photo from a digital camera, you don't need the scanner to process the
image anymore than you'd need the camera to process digital photos, however,
you do need an image editing application. The Minolta software is really
just an enhanced driver that lets you pre-process the image to be captured,
not a standalone program.