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LaserSoft Imaging announces SilverFast 8


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They could do that but I'm sure they won't. LaserSoft will not want to remove a useful incentive for existing users to pay to upgrade to 8.

 

Yes you are probably right, in which case I hope to be able to go down the Vuescan route. I wont miss Silverfast's hopeless workflow and ancient user interface.

 

Jeff

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Updated to Lion... thinking Apple "just works". BIG mistake. Now on its own forums, LaserSoft is saying no version 8 until towards the end of August. This is a shame given that OSX Lion beta has been provided to developers for months now so that they had plenty of time to get their software ready.

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I think Silverfast have (or had) no intention of getting ver6.6 to work on Lion, even though they appear to have made statements that ver 6.6 would work.

The problem would appear to be that you wont get a free upgrade to ver.8 unless you purchased your ver6.6 after June 2011. I bought mine on 26 April, so I would have to pay for an upgrade. That woudn't be too bad except that the upgrade price is rumoured to be €200!

I’m in the same boat – bought SF Ai IT8 in mid-May, mainly for the IT8 targets profiling. As for Lion compatibility; I re-read the statements in the LaserSoft forums and they only spoke of “SilverFast running on Lion”, as far as I could find never of SilverFast 6.x running on Lion.

 

I don’t enjoy the prospect of shelling out another $ 200 or something for an upgrade to a software I bought not even half a year ago, and almost a year after the first Lion previews were distributed to software developers. On the other hand, if all those upgrade fees make it possible for LaserSoft to finally get a decent PR dudette we all might profit.

 

Does Vuescan IT8 profiling?

 

Cheers,

-Sascha

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I’m in the same boat – bought SF Ai IT8 in mid-May, mainly for the IT8 targets profiling. As for Lion compatibility; I re-read the statements in the LaserSoft forums and they only spoke of “SilverFast running on Lion”, as far as I could find never of SilverFast 6.x running on Lion.

 

I don’t enjoy the prospect of shelling out another $ 200 or something for an upgrade to a software I bought not even half a year ago, and almost a year after the first Lion previews were distributed to software developers. On the other hand, if all those upgrade fees make it possible for LaserSoft to finally get a decent PR dudette we all might profit.

 

Does Vuescan IT8 profiling?

 

Cheers,

-Sascha

 

Yes it does.

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OUCH.. considering Lion have been a fact for a while now, it is hard to imagine that at least any purchase during the period Lion have been announced would qualify for the free upgrade. Guess the software must be interesting enough since people keep paying $400 a pop for these single scanner licenses.?

 

Bo

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Yes OUCH is the right word. My Plustek cost me £360 at the and of April. I now have to cough up about £85 for Silverfast to work in Lion. My advice to anyone buying a scanner today is get it from a bigger company than Plustek, such as Epson or Canon, that provides manufacturer's software and does not rely solely on scanning software from Silverfast.

 

I've had years of experience scanning for prepress. You simply need scanning software that produces a good basic scan, the rest can be done in PS or similar.

 

Jeff

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Guest srheker
Updated to Lion... thinking Apple "just works". BIG mistake. Now on its own forums, LaserSoft is saying no version 8 until towards the end of August. This is a shame given that OSX Lion beta has been provided to developers for months now so that they had plenty of time to get their software ready.

 

The problem is that they never really switched to Universal Binary for Intel based Macs, And those were introduced in 2006!

 

 

Interesting read: Free Upgrade for SilverFast Users

 

He links to a Silverfast Press release from 2007 titled:

 

„Outstanding Results With SilverFast! Now Running Universal“

 

 

If you read Silverfasts own support forum you'll find may post by users complaining that they were missing the switch to Universal Binary. On march 1st a Silverfast-Empoyee answered one of this request:

 

„We are aware of the future release of OS X Lion for Mac.

It is a pre-release version of the operating system with no support for Rossetta applications, this was also the case with the pre-release version of Snow Leopard, however they made work with such applications possible in the final release of the OS.

The point is, it is still too early to tell which features and functionalities will or will not work with the future OS.“

 

Did they gamble, that Apple would keep Rosetta?

 

 

And I think that most people understood this press release from march 2011 in a way, that the current Silverfast will run on Lion and not that you'll have to wait for weeks until you have to buy an update:

 

SilverFast Supports Mac OS X 10.7 Lion

 

LaserSoft Imaging announces support for Apple’s new operating system. The world’s most popular scanner software SilverFast will be fully available for Mac OS X 10.7.

With version 10.7 (Lion) Apple is going to release an updated version of its operating system Mac OS X in summer of 2011. As usual, SilverFast will be compatible with all current Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. As a new feature, SilverFast will offer native support for the Intel processors used by Apple and thus ensures exceptionally fast and efficient program operations also in the future – both on 32bit as well as on 64bit computers.

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I have spoken to Plustek in the UK who on the phone seemed to be saying that they would be providing a free update to Silverfast. However in a subsequent email this was not confirmed, just a link to the silverfast statements that I was already aware of.

 

I have asked Plustek will I or will I not have to pay for a new silverfast that works with Lion. No reponse yet.

 

I have been reading the silverfast forums so I know that they have made confusing statements. This really is a mess. They have had a long time to sort out the code and they certainly should not have been selling the product (along with Plustek) in April knowing that it was not going to work under Lion and also knowing that they were intending to charge extra. Perhaps as you suggest they just hoped Apple would relent and include Rosetta with Lion, but they did not.

 

Jeff

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  • 5 months later...

Tested a demo of the updated version, as there are some very rare occasions when Vuescan doesn't give the best results, and based on the prices being discussed here I decided to bite the bullet and buy the software.

 

Must say I was extremely surprised to find that the price isn't the same for all users, but rather increases with the quality (or simply price?) of the scanner on which you intend to use it. Incredible gouging attitude!

 

I doubt very much that Lasersoft's programming costs happen to coincide with the price of each individual scanner - they must simply assume that if you've paid out for a more expensive piece of hardware, then they're gonna gouge you for their software. For the Coolscan 9000ED the price for the base application was €449, climbing to €499 if the wide-gamut software is included ($637)

 

The whole application is a horrible shareware-type mess anyway - with the only redeeming factor being that on rare occasions it gives pretty good results.

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