PhotoScore Ultimate for Mac

User Reviews

• Great - almost

  Doug MinerApril 12, 2010

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  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />I am a high school music teacher and I use this all the time. It rocks. Very accurate. Just a few edits usually cleans it up enough to send to Sibelius for final layout. The biggest issue is that it fails to recognize TWAIN drivers for Epson scanners. If the native scanner driver doesn't work (which causes the application to unexpectedly quit), you are forced to scan in another application and import. This can be time consuming especially with the multi-page documents which most jobs entail. I have called their attention to this and it still is not fixed even in this new version. Dissapointing.

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• Mixed Feelings, among them... disappointment.

  sonicraftDecember 5, 2009

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  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />I was torn about what to say about Photoscore. On one hand, it is obviously designed to do a very difficult thing and up to a certain point, it does much of it very well. I have followed the directions and have been impressed that it is able to produce some usable results. I have two major complaints. First, when you scan a piece of music, it will interpret much of the notation correctly, but there will be LOTS of mistakes and glitches all over it. Even with these mistakes, it is quite impressive. But is it worth it? You will spend quite a few tedious hour cleaning up your scores, correcting them, and making them into something useful-- which in some cases may still save you time over writing it by hand. The interface for making those corrections is based on Sibelius's model. The main window is a split screen showing the actual scan in the top pane and photoscore's interpretation in the lower pane. The tools and commands are not very intuitive to me, and the documentation could be more clear. I suppose like any major piece of software, there will be a learning curve involved, but those curves are more bearable when the documentation can get you unstuck. My second gripe is that I had version 5 (with the above mentioned issues) and decided to stick my neck out and get version 6-- in the hopes that their claims of improved processing would be noticeable, but for me they were not. I have no way of knowing how seriously this company takes it's mission to provide a quality product that evolves in an appropriately paced way. But in my experience, the development still seems immature and I have not yet gotten the results that would warrant the amount of my initial investment or the $90 upgrade. BOTTOMLINE: If you have plenty of time on your hands, and want a very readable result, you can try it out. But if you need something to work quickly with a user-friendly interface-- sharpen up your pencil.

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• PhotoScore Professional Review

  eatout1September 30, 2005

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  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />I have used various versions of PhotoScore over the years and am amazed by this latest one (v4). Neuratron have really pulled out all the stops and this release is incredibly accurate (saves a lot of time over keying in manually!) and is much easier to use. It also allows me to open music PDF files, transpose them and print them back out which is great for adapting pieces for different voices. A must for musicians everywhere!

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