[sane-devel] Help with deciding which frontend to use please

[cl at isbd.net]

I now seem to have my Epson V700 working correctly on my Slackware
system so I'm left with the decision of which front-end to use as my
main user interface to the scanner.

I'd prefer to standardise on one program simply because it's a fairly
complex area and the fewer different interfaces I have to learn the
better.

So my choices are:-
    vuescan - not using sane but it is well rcommended
    xsane
    xscanimage
    iscan

My main use (at least the one where I need to know the interface well)
is scanning quite a number of old slides, a mix of 35mm and 4.5 x 4.5.
Some of these are quite badly faded and have colour casts so tools to
deal with this are required.

I've played with all the above programs a little and my reactions so
far are:-

    iscan and xscanimage seem not to have all the tools I need to
    manipulate the faded slides. So, unless I'm missing something, I
    think I can ignore these two.

    xsane seems to offer a lot of control but doesn't seem to be quite
    as clever as vuescan at 'guessing' right to give you a reasonable
    start. On the other hand vuescan has a rather unconventional
    interface and I found it diffcult to apply the scanning tips from
    the http://www.scantips.com/ site which were quite easy with
    xsane.

Also would I find it easier to use (say) the Gimp for the corrections
using the scanner front end purely for getting as much information as
possible from the slides?  I'd prefer not to do this as it adds
another 'layer' of learning but if it's the right way to go then it's
the right way to go.

So can anyone offer any comments (particularly any experience of this
type of work) on the best way of handling this?

-- 
Chris Green (chris at halon.org.uk)