The simply designed setup and interface of the Epson Perfection 1650 Photo will have you happily scanning away in just a few minutes. The scanner connects to your PC or Macintosh via a USB cable, and its slim design and small footprint show that it was designed with the home office in mind. For digital photographers, the 1650 Photo includes a 35mm film adapter along with Adobe Photoshop Elements for editing and enhancing your digital images.
A serious hobbyist couldn't ask for a better combination of precision and value. Despite the relatively low price, the scanner offers a 16-bit grayscale, 48-bit color, and a maximum resolution of 1,600 x 3,200 dpi--which is more than enough scanning power to glean every sharp detail from family photos.
One-touch buttons allow you to instantly copy, print, or e-mail photos. The built-in zoom feature provides a range of 50 to 200 percent, supplying plenty of options for enlarging or cropping your final prints. A cold cathode ray lamp is used as the light source, a powerful and economical choice that provides hours of efficient lighting. Maximum scan size is 8.5 x 11 inches, large enough for most office documents as well as your favorite vacation shots.
Included in the box is the scanner, film adapter, Adobe Photoshop Elements, and a USB cord, along with Epson Twain and a design software package. The manufacturer's warranty covers parts and labor for a full year.
Powerful, high-quality image and document scanning! This is precisely what's delivered by the Epson Perfection 1650 Photo scanner. A fast, hassle-free and incredibly flexible scanning solution, this new scanner in the highly acclaimed Epson Perfection range has been designed specifically for the demanding user. Whether it's scanning directly to the Web, documents for Optical Character Recognition (OCR), negatives or slides for color proofs, or direct to your Epson printer, the Perfection 1650 Photo has the technology and power that's needed. The new one touch scan to web button, allows you to scan your photos directly to Epson's Online Photo Album - Epson PhotoStation. You can enhance, personalize, store and share photos in your very own personal album. And it is even more fun with the unique image editing services online, printing templates and even greeting cards. You can also scan slides and film negatives with the transparency unit - the film adapter built into the lid of the scanner.
1 Does descreening on magazine pics as well as slides
A great scanner, but it took a little time for me to set it up with the software. Called service at Epson and was so impressed with them. Problem I had with setup was that I had not uninstalled my UMAX software (previous scanner) and there were conflicts. Once I took it off, no problem. Called Epson service later to find out how to use the descreen function in order to scan pics from magazines without getting a moire pattern, but the tech guy said he'd have another more knowledgeable guy call me. The new service tech was top notch and spent (his dime) more than an hour with me on the phone showing me how to set up the scanning for special effects, color adjustments, descreening, and so much more. I recommend you use the "manual" setup rather than the automatic scan setup, and if you have Photoshop you don't need to install their image editing software. Great service. Great scanner. They have a newer one now, model 1660, which I assume is even better.
2 great quality scans
Bought for scanning several family photo albums onto CDs for members of the family. 800+ pictures later, the 1650-Photo is still buzzing along without any gliches.
Installation was easy, done with clear printed directions (onto a Mac G4 running OS 9.2)
The scanner does a quick pre-scan to produce an image you can see to make whatever adjustments for framing, color, contrast, shadow & highlight levels you desire. If you use the Auto mode instead, the software is so "smart" that it will usually produce results as good as you can do using the adjustments mode.
Once you are satisfied with the pre-scan image, you click on "scan", which the 1650 does in about 4 seconds. Thumbnail images of each scanned photo are displayed, along with the option to type in a name for each.
The picture files can be saved into several file types. If you chose .jpg you can adjust the file size, going small for e-mail use, to large for making paper prints.
I have not yet made any scans of photo negatives, but have of jewelry and maps and they turn out great! An excellent product at a very reasonable price.
3 Not Compatible with Mac OS X
I purchased the Epson 1650 Photo Flatbed Scanner 6 months ago. The primary reason I was attracted to this particular model was it's ability to scan 35mm slides. NOT.... Although Epson claims it is Mac compatible, Epson neglects to inform the consumer that the scanner IS NOT COMPATIBLE with the Mac OS X operating system.
Epson has been promising me delivery of the necessary drivers (at an additional cost, accompanied by a sales receipt, UPC bar code, and required application form) for 6 months now. In my latest contact with Epson (Oct. 3,2002) I am told they "do not know when the driver will be available".
So in conclusion, you owners of Mac computers - don't consider buying this product if you expect to use it as a scanner ... for anything else? ... it's up to you!
4 Really great scanner.
It is pretty fast and quite quiet scanner. It is slow to scan negatives. VueScan seems to work very well with this scanner and scanned pictures without any color correction look very similar to originals, which gives you idea of quality of this scanner. Problem is slight dust underneath glass which is pain in the neck. Looks that Epson quality control is lacking. It should not happen. Made from Japanese components. If you want quality scanner then go for it but be prepaired for dust (yuck). I guess I will have to clean this glass myself because I don't want Epson to replace my scanner with refurbished one.
5 Not PERFECTION but close
I've been using this scanner for 9 months now and am extremely pleased with it. My only gripe might be that their is no on/off switch. Have to plug and unplug it all the time. I use the copy function on it all the time in my home office and it works great. I also use it as my fax machine and that works well also. Have had great luck with scanning photo's and good results. The only problems I've encountered was doing old slides. Had to go in and manually take control to get them to scan to my liking. Other than that I leave everything on auto and all has been good. Mine is hooked to a HP N5495 laptop with Win XP and has encountered no problems. Great scanner!!!!
6 Great Once You Learn to Use It!
I've been using this scanner for almost a month. At first, I was delighted enough to rate it a five. After a week, I wanted to rate it as low as possible, to get even with Epson. After another week, my opinion improved, and now I'm giving it a qualified rating of five. Not for everyone, but at least for users like me. Others might want to consider a different scanner. Beware, though, that my complaints may not be unique to Epson.
Bear with me as I explain this ratings roller coaster.
I would use a scanner rarely, except for two projects.
1) I'm archiving family photos, some close to a century old.
2) I've taken a lot of photos, beginning in 1970, that I want on CDs. Most are color slides. The others are color negatives. I also have three rolls of B&W negatives.
The Epson flatbed scanner was better than my earlier scanner. Epson and the intelligent software did a credible job with my photos. I didn't have to refer to the manual, which is just as well, because its most commendable trait is the honesty of the title: "Scanner Basics." It's mostly baby talk addressed to the lowest common denominator user.
My headaches, stomach aches and anger began when I started scanning negatives and slides. I won't bore you with the details. Let's just say that I discovered what is, for me, the most effective way to deal with most of the Epson provided software. I've deleted it from my computer, and now I'm delighted with it.
Epson provides Adobe Photoshop Elements with this hardware. It's a great package, and I now scan all of my images using the >FILE>IMPORT>EPSON TWAIN 5 sequence. I don't use Epson's Smart Panel or the ArcSoft software.
Some of my color negative film has deteriorated. In scanning color negative film, especially film that's deteriorated, there are occasionally vertical lines in the image. The lines are either magenta or cyan, and I thought it might be the emulsions. I rotated the images, scanned again, and the lines didn't rotate. They either changed or disappeared. I assume that the problem is in the software.
I've noticed those lines in slide scans as well, but they're rare. In one case, I had four slides in the holder, and noticed a cyan line through the first and third images. I rescanned, and the line was still there. I replaced the second and fourth slides with different slides, and rescanned; the cyan line disappeared, even though the first and third slides never moved!
My emulsions are 35 mm film. The earliest slides are half-frame, 0.9 inches wide and 0.6 inches high. Full frame are 1.35 inches wide and 0.9 inches high. They all have a 3x2 aspect ratio. I suspect this is true of any slides and negatives that you have, and quite possibly true of every 35 mm image out there.
The Epson Twain driver ends up with that 3x2 aspect ratio rarely, if at all. It's usually not too bad; it may be 2.8 x2, or 3x1.9, but it irritated me a lot. Some images have scanned as just a narrow strip through the emulsion.
The "intelligent" software has a hard time centering images. Slides and negatives are in predictable places when scanned, but the intelligent software doesn't know this.
I solved these problems by bypassing the software and not letting Epson Twain generate the thumbnails. I pre-scan the strip containing the emulsions, and then select smaller portions to pre-scan, until I get the region that I want.
I have to pay attention to each image to center it as I want it, and then scan only when I approve it. I don't mind, because it's a finite project, and the end gets nearer with each image that I scan.
The driver allows you to specify the dpi. I assumed this referred to the source image, so if I scanned a 1.35x0.9 emulsion, at 1600 dpi, I'd get a 2,160x1,440 bitmap. Wrong, wrong, wrong! The target image was 9x6 inches, so the driver tried to create a 14,400x9,600 bitmap. Multiply 14,400 by 9,600 by 3, and you'll see that I created a 395 meg image. I cancelled it, but another time I created a 270 meg image by mistake. You don't want bitmaps this large on your computer, even if you have 384 meg of ram, as I do.
I decided eventually to do all of my scans at 300 dpi. I scan the emulsion image into a 6x4 inch target, and at 300 dpi, that gives a 6.16 meg image. If there's a smaller region in the emulsion that I especially like, I select it and scan it into a 6x4, 300 dpi, 6.16 meg bitmap.
A six meg target image takes almost four minutes to scan. You might want to do something else while waiting. Unfortunately, the Epson Twain driver displays a "Scan in Progress" box that can't be placed behind a window. So, if I get into Word, or on the internet, that "Scan in Progress" is in the center of whatever I'm doing. Very bothersome. I can't minimize the driver, although I have been able to hide it by minimizing Photoshop Elements. Took me a while to figure that out, though.
Should you buy it? Yes, if you want good results for a minimal outlay of dollars. You get Photoshop Elements, and most of my scans have been very good. Those that aren't can be corrected in Photoshop Elements.
If you have thousands of slides and negatives that you want to scan, and if you're a perfectionist, you're going to spend a lot of time with this, if only because the "intelligent" software isn't reliable. If you shoot a lot of emulsions and want each on your computer, you'd be happier with a faster scanner. If you select only the best images to scan, and ignore the rest, this scanner will work well for you.
7 It won't scan slides!
I bought recently (March, 15th 2002) an EPSON Perfection 1650 Photo scanner. It works Ok save a very annoying problem: when scanning slides mounted in a frame it will only capture about 80% of them: two horizontal rows at the top and the bottom are not "seen" by the scanner:
A 35 mm slide have as measurements 3.50 x 2.30 cm but the scanner will only capture 3.28 x 1.96cm. This means that a row of 0.22cm wide at the base of the slide is not captured and the same happens with a row of 0.34cm at the top.
Apart from that the output quality for slides is, frankly, dissapointing and I need to adjust manually each slide before scanning it.
8 Problems with XP
I've had to unplug this scanner and remove all of the Epson software because it was causing so many problems with my HP Pavilion 760n running Microsoft XP...the drivers did not work, downloaded drivers did not pass Microsoft's "logo test" and the software apparently messed with my soundcard drivers to the point where I had to run a system restore to put everything right...not worth the trouble!! I would love to know what scanners really work with XP...
9 Good Hardware, sorry software
The Epson Twain software that ships with this scanner is so bad that Epson should throw it away and ship someone else's drivers with it! This scanner accomplished my goal of an inexpensive way to I scan positive and negative films. But the software allows no way to limit the scan area of an individual image - you MUST scan the entire image. Further, it assumes your 35mm positives are mounted slides and your 35mm negatives are unmounted strips. I have hundreds of rolls of unmounted positives still in strips of six that I used to print straight to type R paper or to Cibachrome. And, my negatives come back from Kodak processing with clear protective plastic stuck on each side, and a numbered paper strip on one side - all must be removed to get into the Epson strip holder! Also, these 35mm holders keep the originals off the surface of the scanner - which begs the questions: where does this thing focus? AND DON'T GET ME STARTED ON THE SCAN SPEED OF NEGATIVES! Suffix it to say, don't plan on doing anything else for a while! Although it will batch scan a strip of up to 6 negatives in a strip. I have had faster luck scanning negatives as positives, then inverting and auto-balancing in Photoshop! But hey - I can effectively scan film to an acceptable level, and I spent less that 200 bucks - beggers can't be choosers!
10 the sweetest midrange scanner...
Before I purchased, I researched. First I read magazine reviews which I found online via my favorite Mac magazines websites...then came here, among other places to price the one I wanted. The Epson Perfection 1650 Photo Flatbed scanner. I read ALL the reviews here and though I found a few people who seemed to have problems (mostly Windows users) I found the rest to be fair to great. So I decided to take a chance and it was a chance worth taking. This scanner, scans in clean, clear and sweet. No shadows, no problems. And though I am a photoshop Queen, I also enjoyed the software which comes with the scanner. I haven't tried scanning in a strip of film yet, but I expect no problems from this dream machine.
11 Good scanning; weak software
Scans come out nicely, but the Epson software is VERY clunky.
Each different option launches a new screen (and process) and they don't fit together very well. Software uses a lot of memory. Software has crashed on me a few times. Obviously, Epson is a hardware company and not a software company.
If you have slides that have been sitting around since the 70s, you will love the slide template and ability to scan them. Very cool.
I would recommend the scanner (for its scanning ability), but be patient with the software.
12 Top quality scan--Inflexible software
If you want a scanner to copy photographs with high quality, this is the one. If you want to use the copy utility to make a copy to print, it takes 1 minute 30 seconds. It automatically defaults to color which is slow. Defaults are impossible to change. Copy to Email only works with Office XP or Outlook Express but will not work with Outlook 2000. The inability to change defaults makes the software cumbersome. Try to find the Email support site, it is there but hidden and then the responses are canned because the support person didn't read the real problem. Just read comments about the HP scanners and they apparently have the same problems. They are making scanners for idiots, not thinking customers.
13 Not bad,...for the price.
I was suspect after reading all the reviews about the tech support and bad drivers. Despite common sense telling me 'don't buy this scanner,' I went ahead because of the rebate. I figure for under $200, I can't go wrong. I consider myself fairly tech saavy, so I'd tinker with it if any problems came up. No regrets. The drivers installed without a hitch on my PC running XP. The software really isn't the greatest, but generally easy to use. The important thing for me is that it scans very well. I'm pleased with the output. The downside is that it's noisier than a freight train! And it seems really flimsy, like one could crack the lid if one wasn't careful. The design is just big and ugly like a 10 year old PC. Too bad it doesn't look like the nice slim Canon flatbed scanners. Ooops! I guess I could have considered a Canon, huh?
14 Hard to beat for the price
I don't know about XP but it works great with Win98. Installation was a snap. I bought it for archiving my old photo negatives and slides. I debated getting their next higher model for increased resolution based on a techie review, but I'm glad I didn't. The resolution is very adequate for the average home user, and then some - if you use the max resolution you should have a relatively new computer to handle it. Anything more would be overkill unless you have a commercial graphics shop and a high-end computer.
I tested mine on negatives - color was OK but processing time was long - probably my 366 computer. I tested a color slide and was very impressed - color wasn't perfect but easily fixed in my graphics program - resolution was excellent. I tried a full-page scan and noticed no edge shadows as someone else had reported. The scanner is also much quieter than my previous Canon scanner.
The software interface is nice. It has a full-auto mode which is very effective and useful for most applications, but it is also flexible enough to do most anything you would want to manually. I can't talk about service -no problems yet.
Bottom line is this is a great scanner for the price!
15 Good experience with the Epson 1650 Photo Scanner
I just recently purchased the Epson 1650 Photo scanner and I'm very pleased with the performance. I have to admit that I was a bit nervous after reading some of the reviews on this product but decided to take a chance. I did a number of scans of photographs, magazine pictures, negatives and all of the scans came out looking just fine. I think that some of the folks who had trouble with this product purchased it before the drivers were fixed or available. It is clear that Epson released the product a before it was ready for consumers. I think that most of the issues have been worked out as I haven't experienced any problems under Windows XP.
16 Greats Scans, Lousy software
This machine makes great scans, but the software is buggy.
17 Missing CD. Bad support.
Instead of the CD with the required drivers, I received the scanner with two copies of the Adobe software, i.e. I had no way to get the scanner working without going to download files. Epson tech support is bad, burried deep in their website is a location to electronically submit problems. When I said that the software was missing, the response was that I should call their long distance tech support number to get one shipped. Rather than wait forever on a long distance number, I decided to ship it back. They don't seem to have much focus on customer support so I'd rather not own the product.
18 Don't buy using Windows XP
I bought this scanner after reading a review. However, at the time of purchase it was not XP compatible. After waiting months for a patch to be developed one finally arrived which did not work. After many frustating hours and dozens of phone calls to Epson and the software developer they referred me to only the copy function works.Despite Epson's claims that "it works with XP" I have no evidence that it does. I also found Epson to be very unhelpful in the process. Needless to say, Epson if off my list of companys to buy from.
19 Epson 1650 Photo
The ability of this scanner to produce a full scan of its bed is very poor. I have been used to an old Astra 1220U, which was able to provide a scan with very little shadow at the edges of the scanned area. My attempts with similar original images on the 1650 were extremely disappointing. I was left with about 4 picas of shadow all around the final image. The Techies told me that it couldn't be adjusted. Also, when scanning my illustrations in "illustration" mode, the results were dismal. The techies told me to set it in "Color Photo". I didn't even try the neg scanner, so I can't comment on that.
20 Epson 1650 Photo
The ability of this scanner to produce a full scan of its bed is very poor. I have been used to an old Astra 1220U, which was able to provide a scan with very little shadow at the edges of the scanned area. My attempts with similar original images on the 1650 were extremely disappointing. I was left with about 4 picas of shadow all around the final image. The Techies told me that it couldn't be adjusted. Also, when scanning my illustrations in "illustration" mode, the results were dismal. The techies told me to set it in "Color Photo". Go figure...I didn't try the neg scanner, so I can't comment on that. I returned the unit the day after it was delivered.
21 A must for photo enthusiasts!
We have been buying Epson products for years and this scanner
has excellent quality. We are going through 30 years of fading
and faded photos to archive onto a CD. This scanner, together
with a simple photo editing program, has brought these pictures
back to life, and will be a great keepsake for our children.
For the unsatisfied people out there - "dust flecks & spots" are
common with any scanner and can easily be removed with photo
programs. AND some scanners sometimes are not compatible with
certain computer manufacturers.
22 Beware -- the software stinks; the scanner rarely works
The TWAIN driver stinks. Simple as that. Never worked for me and won't work for you. Don't waste your money.
23 Almost there
This is not a bad scanner at all. The quality of the scans is good (although I have seen better). I had no problem setting the scanner up to my laptop running win2000. Like the other reviewers, some of the photo scans are crocked even when the images were lined up correctly. Also, the color of the scans tends to be on the magenta side. I easily corrected it with Photoshop. The ArcSoft software that came with the scanner is poor. Running the scanner via Photoshop Elements is ideal. No problems so far. I spent five hours the day that I got the scanner and scanned at least two dozen pictures and half a dozen slides.
24 Works great with xp
This is one scanner that will work with xp, me, 98..
Works great, I had no problem installing it. Just make sure you install the driver BEFORE you plug the scanner into your computer. The included software isn't the greatest, that's why I only gave it a 4.. But I already have Microsoft picture it installed and that works a little better than some of the Epson's included software. I have a HP printer and it works fine with that. (I am using winXP drivers for the printer though.)
It is very nice scanner. But is noisy compared to the HP I had, but hey this works with XP and the HP wouldn't, so I'm happy.
25 Transparency Scanner
This is a very good scanner for transparencies. The breakdown between slides and photos is quick and easy to use. It is a very good flatbed scanner in the [price]range.
26 Works Great for 35mm Slides
I purchased the 1650 Photo to scan my 30year old collection of color 35mm slides; and I could not be more pleased. I can't believe the quality...you would never guess they were slides. The scanner does 4 slides at a time. I hooked it up and right out of the box to my Dell Computer/Windows 98 with no problems. The software is easy to use - no need to study the manual. I scanned a few 4x6 photos at first just to try it out and then switched to the slides. It also has a holder for black and white 35mm film strips. If the quality is as good as the color you could eliminate a B&W dark room and just scan the negatives and print from your computer. As I said, I have not spent much time looking at the instructions or doing other scanning, so I may not be as familiar with all the features as some. The one thing I don't understand is why no `off/on' switch. I would gladly paid a few dollars more for one. The bottom-line...it you want a reasonably priced scanner for 35mm slide the 1650 is what you want.
27 A mess!
If the TWAIN driver would have only installed. I spoke with Epson for a total of over two hours. They couldn't figure out why it wouldn't install either. Maybe just a freak occurance, but I never have had any trouble with installations of software or drivers. Epson of course wanted to blame the difficulty on the people who make InstallShield yet InstallShield wants to blame Epson's poor drivers. Either way a week later and it never was up and running. And I am not going to be buying any other Epson "award winning scanners" for awhile. (Running Windows ME/ Pentium III/933-Mhz and plenty of RAM)
28 Easy setup and easey to use
Epson has produced an excellent and fast imaging scanner that includes easy setup and easy utilization. The results are crisp and do not require PhotoShop enhancements (unless, of course, the original image was impoverished).
Makes me look at my old Umax SCSI scanner with absolute disgust.
29 Installation is a nightmare
Installing this device is a giant challenge. I purchased this scanner for my wife for Christmas. After she opened it we immediately hooked it up to our Dell computer which is running Window's ME. We followed the direction for installation and the driver kept hanging the computer. After 5 attempts I installed the scanner via my own method, which eventually worked. After the installation the scanner appears to work as advertised.
30 Good Quality Scans vs. MOST EVERYTHING ELSE STINKS
After researching flatbed scanners for several weeks, I determined that, based on specifications and reviews, the Epson Perfection 1650 Photo Flatbed Scanner was the best on the market. After purchasing the product on the web, I eagerly set it up, expecting an amazing product that I would love. I scanned several pictures, finding the quality amazing, but there were many problems. It cut of parts of each picture, sometimes the scanned picture would look cockeyed even if it had been placed on the surface perfectly, and scratches and dust were seen everywhere. I tried to call technical support, but I did not get anywhere, and I was annoyed at the fact that Epson doesn't have a 1-800 number to call. Epson Smartpanel is decent, and Adobe Elements is a wonderful program, but the others included are poorly designed, and, in my opionion, are not satisfactory enough to use.
The bottom line about this scanner is that despite the fact that the images it scans are of optimal quality, the problems with it that I've had have not made the scanner worth it. I would suggest looking at products in the Canon Canoscan series, which are very small and are loved by most that use them. Although most people have not had the same problems with me, you should still think twice about getting this scanner: if you end up NOT getting it, you will save yourself from having several headaches.
31 The Best Scanner Available
I wish I had more time to put into a more lengthy review of this product. Suffice it to say that I am extremely happy with my purchase of this scanner and it has served well scanning documents, photo prints, magazine pages, and much, much more. The software bundle is excellent and the setup is quite easy. I have a number of Epson products, including more than one printer and find their products to be of the highest standards. Enjoy your purchase!
32 Software Problems
While the scanner itself is excellent and I really wanted to like it given its design and feature set, I had fatal problems with the photoprint application after I upgraded to XP (even after downloading and installing the XP drivers). I also had some difficulties before the XP upgrade. Epson has diddle for tech support (there is a mailing address and a hard to reach phone support & zero e-mail support.)
33 Do Not Buy Products from Epson
Epson may have a reputable name, but as a technology company,
they leave much to be desired. I can only speak of the
poor quality of their drivers under Windows 2000 and the
utter lack of drivers for Windows XP (which went into BETA
over a year ago, was released in October and for which they
still have no WinXP certified drivers for the majority of
their scanners including the 1640SU predecessor to this 1650
that I purchased here just 4 months ago).
Further, their tech support is laughable. If you go to their
website, you will find that nowhere does it list an e-mail
address for tech support. Further, while it does list a
non toll-free telephone number, the 4 times I have called it,
I was unable to talk to a human being to even inquire when
and if driver support for Windows XP would be available.
Several friends tried to convince me to buy the Visioneer
scanners instead. I just checked their website, and nearly
all their models are already Windows XP certified. I personally
will never buy anything from Epson again, but your own mileage
may vary of course.
34 Good for slides and negs, excellent for prints!
I haven't printed anything out with the images I've scanned (yet) so I can't comment on that. All I know is that I needed a decent slide scanner, for an inexpensive price. This one satisfies that need.
I find that all scans are on the "warm" side - there's a slight yellowish cast to the pictures. This is easy to get out quickly, using the bundled Photoshop Elements (or in my case, I used Photoshop 6). By the way, do you realize that Photoshop Elements is just thrown in with this scanner? And that it is a well-reviewed graphics software program that retails on its own for a respectable price? And that there is also a coupon (limited time offer - until 6/02) that allows you to buy the FULL version of Photoshop at a fantastic discount? (Half off, or thereabouts.) WHAT a deal! Something to think about if you want to get into Photoshop!
Anyway, I found my slide scans to be of decent quality. Bear in mind, I am not exceedingly picky, because I have gone through several "consumer level" scanners with a slide attachment, and they all were pretty bad. So the fact that this one wasn't awful like all the others delighted me. But to be brutally honest, the slide scans are not all that sharp at higher resolutions (I scanned at 720 PPI). And sometimes the color needs extra tweaking. But I have been able to fix up and size down (and sharpen) my slide scans just fine. They look great for web images (even large wallpaper-sized web pictures), and I am guessing, are fine for printing on an ink-jet printer. (However, I found that my some of my darker and more underexposed slide scans didn't look that great, and required more Photoshop adjustments. But I need to expect limits to this scanner's abilities, I guess.) All-in-all, slide scans are perfectly adequate, and I am sure, quite good considering that this is NOT a "professional" level slide scanner. My own guess is that you will be hard-pressed to find another scanner (at this price range) that will make better slide scans.
Scanning negatives is pretty good (though, once again, a bit soft at higher resolutions). Some of my negative scans have been a bit "washed out", and needed some extra Photoshop adjusting. Scanning prints is excellent. Almost all image scans needed the quick Photoshop tweak to take out a bit of yellow, though. But that doesn't take much time, and I got used to it quickly. (EVERY image needs to be tweaked, after all, no matter how good the scanner is!)
I am using an iMac running OS 9.2.1, and the scanner's software is very stable. I don't use any of the bundled software, just Epson's TWAIN, in Photoshop. Works wonderfully. There is supposed to be an OS X update CD coming out in January 2002 (a coupon is with the scanner's paperwork, so you can order the CD).
If you are scanning more than one file at a time into Photoshop (scanning 4 negs at one time, or whatever) you need to give Photoshop plenty of RAM. (Always good advice anyway!)
35 Bad Luck with This One and Bad Service
I purchased this product from amazon.com. I expected that Epson could provide a good product when it comes to scanner. The scanner arrived, and I was excited about it. After installing the software and seeting up the scanner, I scanned my first picture. The scanned result looks like it had specks of dust and scratches in the image. I scanned the same picture in a diferent position in the scanner, and I got diferrent results. It still had spots and scratches in different places. Called Epson and their answer was that the picture was deffective. They sent me to an Epson Service center, and the scanner spent a week in repairs. At the end nothing was acomplished. I had to return the scanner to amazon.com. I am looking for a new scanner. I hope Epson improves it's customer service department; it is worth nothing when it comes to trying to help a customer. The Epson service rep was always blaming the end user. He never considered the possibility that the scanner could be deffective. I will be browsing thru amazon.com trying to find a good scanner again.
36 Great Scanner--photos or slides/negs
I have used scanners going back to the 16-bit color HP scanners of 15 years ago--I have never found one that is as color-accurate, fast and easy to use as this one. I use Photoshop to scan photos at 600 dpi, edit and then print on my HP Deskjet, or to use at 72 dpi for web apps--from old photos to slides to negs, the performance is flawless and fast.
The slide/neg holder is easy to use and integrates automatically with the XP twain software, making these easy to use in any graphic application. The backlighter is built into the lid, and is exposed by removing the white foam backed insert that is used for photos. The scans are perfect.
This is a terrific scanner at a great price.
37 Best model out there in-between home and business use.
I haven't had this scanner for very long, but I have already made more than 500 scans with it, and it's is awesome. The preview scan is ridiculously quick: I can get a good idea of what my scan will look like in less than a couple of seconds. The software bundle is very nice for a beginner, wherein you can make automatic scans for email, web, file outputs with the push of the respective button on the scanner body. I tried the software out a few times and I was impressed with the results, but if you're using Photoshop you don't need to install the whole package. It only took a few minutes to set the thing up and do my first scan, which was pretty cool.
Once you gain more confidence with the different elements in a scan (namely the relationship image size and resolution have with file size) you can use TWAIN for a more manual approach. This allows you to adjust your settings based on what your requirements for your final project are. For example, I could scan a postage stamp-sized picture at a high resolution and enlarge it into an 8" x 10" photo or larger and the quality would still look pretty good. Your final scan speed will depend on the resolution you've selected , but it's still fast at higher resolutions. The lower the resolution, the faster the scan time.
I love using TWAIN, especially since it only took a few trial runs to figure it out. It's calculations for file size, resolution, and image size are all right there, so there's no guess work needed from you. Epson also provides pretty good documentation for doing things manually for your first time (like a reference table for your final output on projects for web, negatives, photos, text, etc.). The color has been consistently sharp and the resolution very crisp, on both the flatbed and the transparency unit.
Notice, however, that this is not a portable scanner. It's bigger than some on the market and it is powered by an external power supply. But it is perhaps the best model on the market for projects that require excellent quality whether your project is personal or semi-profesional.
38 A 5 Plus Rating
Its got it all! One package at a great price with incredible scans.
I have been waiting for this baby and I am glad I did.
It's rock solid with a great and solid design. Epson really out-did themseves with this model.
It's flows beautifully on my Mac G4.
