But once you’ve configured the Epson Scan software for scanning your slides or negatives you can save the settings as a new preset. By default, you will find Photograph, Magazine, Newspaper and Document but these only seem to relate to reflective scanning rather than film scanning. This contains a list of presets which you can select from to configure the software. Unfortunately, it doesn’t show everything a photographer might want to use when making high quality scans.Īt the top of the interface, you can select the scanner you want to use and below this is a “Scan Settings” dropdown. The default interface is quite basic but shows everything you need to perform a reasonable scan. Click the Preview button at the bottom of the frame and the scanner makes a full scan across its surface. The Epson Scan interface is quite simple and when first loaded only shows a dialog with scanner settings. Let’s start with the Epson Scan software.

I have the SilverFast Ai Studio which provides access to the most features, but you can achieve pretty much the same results with the basic SE version. There are various versions of SilverFast available, each with different levels of features. I’m testing with the latest version of the Epson Scan 2 software on a Mac running Big Sur and this with SilverFast v9 also on the Mac.

After all, what good is great scanning performance if you can never achieve it because the software is too difficult to use? As well as checking the quality of the scans, I’ll be sharing my thoughts about the usability of each. I’ll be using the packages with my Epson V700 scanner to scan slide, B&W, and colour negatives, all shot with a Hasselblad XPan. In SilverFast vs Epson Scan, I’ll be putting both to the test from a user perspective.

Given you’re reading this article I’m going to assume you own an Epson scanner and are wondering which software to use SilverFast or Epson Scan.

Epson scanner v700 for mac