Ed Hamrick (Hamrick Software) has released a new version of the powerful scanning application he develops, VueScan. Available immediately for download, VueScan 8.5.38 adds support for new HP scanners, as well as new language support, while fixing a couple of bugs found in previous versions of the software.

Newly added HP scanners include DeskJet F2400, DeskJet F4400, LaserJet CM1522, LaserJet CM1522n, LaserJet CM2727n, PhotoSmart B209a, and PhotoSmart C309g. As noted above, the new version addresses two bugs as well: a problem with some newer Canon scanners and a problem with UMAX PowerLook 3000. Ed Hamrick was also able to reduce the size of the download by 2 MBytes.

The release notes also reveal that German and French OCR support can now be downloaded separately. VueScan, as users should know, boasts Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for English, by default. However, there are 32 additional languages users can integrate with the software, by simply downloading the appropriate ocr_xx.bin files. These files contain data about the character set used in each of these languages. OCR results will be better if one uses them, according to Ed Hamrick.

Since the user needs to download a language-specific file, in order to add support for additional languages in the "Output | OCR text language" option, the resulted file must also be placed in a specific location, on the user’s hard drive. It’s the user’s job to grab the ocr_xx.bin file and place it in /Users/Shared on Mac OS X, and in C:\vuescan on Windows. Linux users need to paste the file in vuescan.dat.

Ed Hamrick’s VueScan includes a built-in color calibration of scanners, producing colors that look true-to-life. VueScan offers options for scanning faded slides and prints, batch scanning, IT8 color calibration and other advanced scanning features, as it supports more than 100 brands of negative films. VueScan requirements call for Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) or later, and a supported scanner. VueScan currently supports multiple different scanners on Windows. Almost 1,000 scanners are supported on Mac OS X alone.

Download VueScan for Mac (Update / Trial / Buy)