Somewhere back in the latter part of the last century, back when scanners were a necessity to digitize photos, I had two or three scanners. Today I have one scanner but I’m still using the same scanner app from the 20th century.
Why not use the scanner app that comes with the scanner? I could, but those apps don’t get updated as often as Hamrick’s VueScan (which runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux). As scanner apps for the Mac go, VueScan has a friendly learning curve, just enough options to get decent scans of almost anything, and it works with every scanner I’ve ever used.
In fact, that’s probably the claim to fame for VueScan. Yes, it uses ICC profiles, and IT8 calibration, and it’s fast. But the most valuable aspect is twofold. The scans are good (but not necessarily the best), and it works with over 2,500 different scanner models (who knew there were than many models?).
The interface sits between the triangulated position of simple, spartan, and utilitarian. Some features are really useful in a busy workflow, though, including the option to scan while you’re editing the previous scan. I like that.
You’ll be able to preview scan a photo or document before the actual scan. Added tools include options to crop, filter, adjust the color and output. And, of course, you can scan and have the scan saved to a file immediately.
VueScan also comes with Optical Character (OCR) recognition so you can scan documents and save them as PDFs. VueScan is updated very frequently, probably more so than any app on my Mac, but the updates are not new features but usually a quick bug fix or another scanner option (the list is huge).