Nikon Scan 4.02 and Mac OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard

When I upgraded my machine to a MacBook Pro running 10.5.x Nikon Scan wouldn't run on the new machine. I finally

got it running again after alot of whining, crying and cajoling. I've been able to scan with NS 4.02 under Mac

OSX 10.5.x since then uneventfully.

 

Has anyone tried running NS4.02 (or 4.0) after upgrading to Snow Leopard? 10.6 does not appear to be a

particularly significant upgrade over 10.5 so I'm not in any rush to upgrade just to satisfy an itch but I will,

ultimately, and am curious if anyone has any experience so far.

 

Thanks.

<p>Interesting. I've never been able to get Nikon Scan to run on any of my Intel based Macs. I kept an old G4 around just to use Nikon Scan with my Coolscan 9000, but it recently died. I've been stuck using Vuescan, which I hate with film scanners. What did you do to get Nikon Scan running on an Intel Mac?</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Personally, I wouldn't bet on Nikon 4.0x running under OS-X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). Nikon made it clear it stopped at OS-X 10.50 and only luck kept it running under upgrades. I long switched to Silverfast and will not even load Nikon software for my new G5 (yes, I'm one of those pre-Intel G5 owners, like can you say, "Sh..." several times?). I have no doubt Silverfast has or will have an update to Snow Leopard for alll the scanners they support.</p>

<p>After installing Vuescan I was able to install Nikon Scan, which works fine on my MacPro 10.5.8. I have read somewhere it definetly does not work on 10.6. Let us wait an see. Shame on Nikon to leave customers alone. I will never again buy any Nikon product if they stay on with such poor customer service.</p>

I also have an older G4 Powerbook I keep 10.4.x on just in case for NS. Normally I keep good records of any twiddling I do, however, the outlook appeared so bleak and I tried so many things to get NS running with 10.5.x that I can't tell you waht i did, exactly. I think what kept me experimenting were sporadic reports from other people who were running Nikon Scan just fine.

 

As I recall after every failure I removed all NS associated software, including any Nikon Scan associated .plist files. I would then empty the trash and redownload a fresh copy of Nikon Scan and try again.

 

I should also mention that although I run NS 4.02 under 10.4.x I was incorrect in stating I run NS 4.02 under Leopard. I am actually running NS 4.0. I am at the point of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" in terms of trying upgrading to NS 4.02.

 

For all I know it is a problem with 4.02 and just a matter of simply running NS 4.0.

 

Iwould suggest that you simply delete all Nikon Scan files including any .plist files, empty the trash and install NS 4.0 and see what happens. Let us know if you try it.

<p>Get a big cheap XP machine and dedicate it to scanning. fwiw I've read that all desktop scanners were designed around Microsoft. Or get a hot Windows 7-compatible machine (Vista, not equal to XP otherwise, works beautifully with Nikonscan). Why would Nikon assume serious film shooters would chase Mac's jolting upgrades? A big PC doesn't take up much space and they're cheap.</p>

<p>Silverfast's alleged advantages cost literally as much as a new PC...far more than a good used XP PC...lots of bait and switch. The only justification I've heard of has to do with some batches of Kodachrome and allegations about multi pass for poorly exposed Velvia.</p>

<p>I did a clean install of OS 10.6 (on a 17" white iMac) and made sure to install Rosetta from the get-go; downloaded a fresh copy of Nikon Scan 4.0 which I then updated to 4.02, and then a fresh install of Photoshop CS2 (yep CS2), and all seems well after scanning a few slides and negatives- ICE & DEE seem to work fine, film strips are previewed and ejected just fine, saved some settings, etc. I actually used the plugin from Photoshop too, and it seems to work like a charm so far. Did a few simple adjustments, layers, etc. and saved from PS, no problems yet. Actually it seems to scan a little faster, believe it or not. I'll post again if I run into any problems as I do some more scanning in the next few weeks- otherwise no news is good news,</p>

Another take on this issue is at:

 

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1017&message=32948203

 

This person seems to have jump thru a few more hoops than you do.

<p>John:Why would Nikon assume serious film shooters would chase Mac's jolting upgrades?</p>

<p>because a great deal of designers/artists/photographers use Macs that's why. You can get it to run under 10.6 by installing rosetta. (or you can install a windows virtual machine)</p>

<p>Agree with Peter about Nikon's rubbish customer service. The Nikon coolscan (bought 5 years ago) was the last of their products I will ever buy. Poor product, terrible software, and even worse customer service.</p>

<p>Oddly, <br>

Panicked by Nikon's decision to abandon film scanners, I recently bought a new 9000 LS from H-K and sold my trusty LS4000. Because I have Snow Leopard 10.6.3 I was running the LS4000 on XP in bootcamp. Part of the reason for the changeover was that I had hoped to run the 9000 with a USB cable in parallels. Woe was me, the 9000 is only firewire.<br>

So of course I installed the Mac version of the Nikonscan 4 software on 10.6 just in case. The 4.0 installer choked on the last section and I cancelled it. I then went directly to the NX 4.02 upgrade from the CD.<br>

And guess what. It just worked. Sure there are the normal crashes you expect of Nikon software, but it will still runs 90% of the time for days at a stretch, scanning 12 16bit images at a time. It's better on 10.6 than it was on 10.4 and XP.<br>

Don't ask me why this works and using the downloaded software from the Nikon site did not work for me on the LS4000 but so far so good.<br>

I've been a supporter of Nikon for years and years and spent tens of thousands of dollars on Nikon gear. I simply don't understand their attitude to their current products unless they have realised that they can't write software at all and have abandoned the scanners as something they can't do.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Whew<br>

Mac came back from the workshop with an upgraded system to 10.6.3<br>

Re-installed the Nikon Coolscan9000ED from original discs to 4.0.2<br>

Juiced up from re-boot, unable to see the Scan Console and thus the scans.<br>

Solution/Problem - REMOVED the FIREWIRE connection on my external hard disk - deemed this to be the issue -<br>

Et voila! Now I am able to see the Scan Console and scans... <br>

Thanks to all the brothers in here I was able to work through your methods, solve it & get back to work<br>

Cheers.<br>

Noel</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Been interested in many of the comments on various forums about the incompatibility of Nikonscan and Apple's Snow Leopard! I recently upgraded to the new 21.5 inch iMac with OSX.6.4, but kept my eMac running tiger to run my Coolscan 4000. Finally decided to migrate Nikonscan 4.02 over to the iMac. Turned on the scanner, found NKS 4.02 in the iMac's apps folder, clicked it and it popped right on! Got all the pallets, set prefs, and went scanning away! Only clitch so far after several scans, the auto preview doesn't want to work. I have to manually start the preview scan by clicking the preview button. Everything else just works great! I've been trying the silverfast demo, but I'm staying with Nikonscan, for now anyway. Should mention I use the nikonscan in stand alone mode.</p>