

Shades of Silver LaserSoft Imaging sells an assortment of SilverFast versions, including some variations on its older version 6, and three levels of SilverFast 8, which is what I review here. What makes it worth paying for is that it delivers on its promise. What makes SilverFast worth considering is that it promises to give you better-quality scans from the same scanners.

However, for both programs, the real competition is the proprietary scan utilities and drivers that manufacturers supply with their scanners for no extra cost. SilverFast's main competitor is the VueScan 9 Professional Edition, another utility with lots of sophisticated features and the ability to work with any number of scanners. SilverFast lets you wring the best possible photo scan quality out of whatever photo scanner you use it with. The good part is that it's among the best known, most widely used, and most capable programs in its category for a good reason: Once you learn how to use it, it will give you excellent results.

The bad part is that although it's not hard to muddle through with SilverFast without knowing how to use it well, it's hard to master. I mean that in both a good and a bad way. In many ways, LaserSoft Imaging's SilverFast Ai Studio 8 ($299 to $449, depending on the scanner model) is the Photoshop of scan utilities.
