| So far I have scanned over 700 out of the 2500 35mm slides my father took in the '70s . I scan at the highest 2400 DPI resolution, entire image. I have had no problems whatsoever with this scanner. For $... the HP Photosmart is an unbelievable steal -- almost an impulse buy in comparison to the $...+ scanners available. I was worried about these slides degrading and the fact that nobody uses the projector anymore. Now the slides cannot degrade and are easily burned to CD for sharing with family. Details: This scanner scans slides and negatives not at 1600 DPI, not at 1800 DPI, but at 2400 DPI. At this resolution you can easily blow up photographs, find hidden closeups. I was able to zoom in on a family member's watch at 25 feet and tell the time, or zoom in in on a 2mm object in a 5x7 photo and tell that it is a "no parking" sign. As it is, a 2400 DPI full size TIFF takes up 20Mb of disk space. More resolution and you will have outrageously large files, unless you want to use lossy JPEG compression. You will most likely need to purchase a big hard drive and extra RAM if you are archiving many slides or negatives, but with the low price tag of this scanner you can buy drive and memory with the money you save. Installation was a snap. Simply install the driver software, stick the scanner in the USB port and you're good to go. The scanning software is easy to use. It takes about one minute to preview, size, and scan a slide. The software allows you to save a size filter so you can don't have to adjust the preview borders for every image. The HP Photosmart software does not come with many bells and whistles. The multimedia organizer software from Broderbund is next to useless. The ArcSoft PhotoImpression software is also next to useless, unless you like running silly filters on photos. It does not have a good auto levels, auto contrast, or auto color, or dust correction, or anything. It allows you to crop and rotate images and remove redeye. I'd recommend checking out ACDSee or freeware image browsers. The scanning software does not include curve tools or ICE/GEM image enhancement. However, you can always purchase Photoshop and the correction plug-ins from Applied Science Fiction. You may also want to check out batch image processing applications like Debabelizer or RoboEnhancer for ACDSee. Some of these tools I have not yet purchased -- merely researched on the net. A few places for improvement: 1. The scanning software cannot save TIFFs using deflate/ZIP or LZW compression. Zip compression decreases image size on disk by about 20-25 percent.
2. It would be nice if it supported batch scanning of slides with a tray, but for $... I won't complain.
3. Negatives don't seem to scan as well as slides, but that could be because negatives deteriorate faster than slides.
4. It would be nice if the scanning software had auto edge detection for images and default to that so you wouldn't need to run a size filter on every slide. All in all, the HP Photosmart is a winner. Don't spend money on resolution and features you don't need. Save money for a system upgrade. Get this baby and you're ready to rock. |
