|
You can easily put your mitts on a decent scanner for a song (and maybe a dance) at most big-box megastores. For $100, you can be in, out and back at your Mac with a USB scanner almost as fast as you can download Osmondmania! from the iTunes Music Store. Chances are you'll have enough change left to grab at least half the tracks from Donny Osmond's celebrity playlist, too.
If Donny's tunes and digitizing a few snapshots for your blog is all you desire, then you should look no further than a budget scanner. However, if you're serious about photography and find yourself saddled with a copious collection of photo prints, negatives and slides--which haven't been kept in archival conditions--you may want to check out Epson's Perfection 4990 Photo.
Its price may scare away casual users, and its cost isn't the only think that is hefty, either. The 4990 Photo is, for all intents and purposes, a beast. It sizes up at 18.7"x12"x5.3" and tips the scales at a whopping 15 lbs.
Fortunately, girth isn't all you get with the 4990 Photo. It's loaded up with more bells and whistles than a kegger at a clown college. Within this imposing ogre resides a substantial set of features that many a photo buff will find of tremendous value in their pursuits. When you factor its benefits against its price, the $500 range doesn't seem so steep.
At its core is a hardy color CCD line sensor capable of pulling down scans with up to 4,800 dpi resolution. Through interpolation it will produce images up to 12,800 dpi, with 48-bit color depth. With scans that big, you'll be glad the 4990 Photo offers a FireWire (400) connection. In its lid is a full 8"x10" transparency unit, equipped with a moving carriage and lamp, which makes it equally adept at digitizing reflective images, like printed photos and documents, as well as transparency media, like film and slides. Bundled with the 4990 Photo are four different film holders that will house as many as eight 35mm mounted slides, four 35mm film strips (24 frames in all), three to six medium format and two 4"x5". Epson went so far as to equip the 4990 Photo with an 8"x10" film guide, which we found handy for scanning large transparencies and creating proof sheets without using negative carriers.
For attaining the most from your scanning efforts, Epson throws in a host of powerful image editing tools. Built into its hardware is Digital ICE, an image-correction and restoration technology developed by Kodak and Applied Science Fiction. ICE identifies, singles out and effectively removes wrinkles, scratches, creases and tears from timeworn and gnarled photos. In some cases you can produce an image that is actually better than the original. To test the ICE feature, we purposely crumpled up a series of photos and picked at them with a thumbtack, to simulate years of neglect and abuse. It should be noted that once you activate ICE, the time it takes to scan an image increases significantly. To create an 8.5"x11" image of an equally sized print at 300 dpi, it took roughly eight minutes as opposed to the 30 to 40 seconds without ICE. Nonetheless, ICE does the trick. Once the scans were completed, our mangled photos looked as good as new.
Similarly and equally advantageous for working with old, beat up pictures is Epson's Easy Photo Fix. The proprietary technology incorporated into the 4990's driver application automatically removes dust and assorted blemishes from old photos and film, and corrects and restores faded color with surprising accuracy. Following our ICE tests, we took the 4990 Photo to task with a sampling of photos with colors faded to varying degrees. To scan with Easy Photo Fix, you simply select it from a checkbox in the Epson Scan driver application. Scans made from our most faded photos looked better than their originals, but still appeared washed out. Scans of remaining photos, however, beamed with exquisite color.
-COLLIN KEEFE
Perfection 4990 Photo: 
Epson | www.epson.com | 800-463-7766 | $500
Pros: 4,800 dpi hardware and 12,800 dpi output resolution, Digital ICE, Epson Easy Photo Fix, USB 2.0 and FireWire 400 connection, nice software bundle, three user modes—Full Auto, Home and Professional, scans photos, documents and four different sizes of film.
Cons: Big footprint, even bigger price, no preset scan function buttons.
Requires: G3 or better; USB or FireWire port; OS 10.2 or higher
macHOME recommends: FireWire port
|
