Scanners, please tell us about your scanner

[JVJ (RIP)]

Yeah, you'd think, bb, but you'd be wrong.
Just as wrong as to imagine that retailers would pay some attention to what they are selling. Sigh...

Add a GT after the 15000 and you'll lose most of the mislabeled items.

Still will cost over $900 and there are probably better deals and machines available. Old technology usually carries a steeper price for a while after being supplanted by the new.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[Geo (RIP)]

My old scanner was a Umax Astra 2200, an old work horse by the way from around 2000, but is to slow with only USB 1 compatibility (about 5 minutes per scan, so slo-o-w  since I don't have a SCSI card in my new computer to make it work faster.

Here's the one I'm using now, Microtek ScanMaker i800 and it was in my price range. I do have the SilverFast SE software I use with my current scanner which I like, so it wasn't a problem adjusting to this scanner's software (it comes with SilverFast Ai). I just want something faster then the old Astra 2200 I used and  to work with a Mac. I've used it for a year or so now and it does a fine scan job at 150/300 dpi and is much quicker then the old scanner (1.5 min pre-scan/final scan). Too bad they didn't have LED's as a light source at the time, the quick, no warm up time is a real plus with the new scanners coming out now.

Geo

[bminor]

Hello everybody,
I have been in desktop publishing since about 1983 and have seen a lot come and go over the years.
At my previous job we purchased a Epson just like JVJ's and it worked absolutely wonderfully.

But that is not what I want to talk about.

I stumbled across this really good scanner software a few years ago.
I really like it, but what makes it really unique and valuable is that it works with just about ANY SCANNER!!!

It is called VueScan, it is up to version 9 now. Developed by a guy named Hamrick.
Works with Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux! Costs you $39.95 for the standard edition license(free upgrades for a year) or $79.95 for the Professional version.
Stop by www.hamrick.com, you won't be sorry you did!
You can download and see if it works with your scanner at no cost or risk. Until you register and get a serial number all your scans have a few grey "$" signs across the scans. A neat form of copy protection that lets you see if the software works with your system.

Take a look at it, a very nice piece of software that fits a unique niche. Those of us who might have a scanner, inherited one, but no scanner software, or if it does have software not the best!

Yours,
Brian M.

I have copied some of the text from his sight and pasted it below:

VueScan 9 is a powerful, easy-to-use program that:

    * scans documents, photos and film
    * creates PDF, JPEG, TIFF and TXT files
    * supports 'File | Import' from Photoshop
    * supports more than 1600 scanners
    * has 32-bit and 64-bit versions
    * has been downloaded over 8 million times
    * you can try with your scanner for free

VueScan 9 guides you step-by-step and gives you lots of help. Just click the Download button and you'll be scanning in a few minutes.

If you've never used VueScan, you can get more information from the VueScan User's Guide (also available in PDF). There is also a list of supported scanners.

You can download other versions of VueScan for:

   Windows    Mac OS X    Linux
VueScan 9 x32    9.0.14    9.0.14    9.0.14
VueScan 9 x64    9.0.14    9.0.14    9.0.14
VueScan 8.6    8.6.66    8.6.66    8.6.66
VueScan 8.5    8.5.41    8.5.41    8.5.41

Some of the improvements in VueScan 9:

    * Adds 64-bit versions for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. This lets you use more scanners on 64-bit operating systems (and lets you use Canon transparency adapters on 64-bit Windows). Also lets you work easier with scans larger than 3 GBytes.
    * Generally faster and more responsive, faster starting up
    * Easier to install and use - VueScan 9 is only _one_ file on Windows and Linux, and a single icon on Mac OS X. You can copy it to anywhere on a hard drive or USB memory stick by copying this one file.
    * User interface is easier to use, and more screen space is used for scans and less space for options. You can also customize the font size if you want to change this (Prefs | Font size).
    * Automatically installs Photoshop plugin and TWAIN driver
    * Universal binary on Mac OS X - x32 is Intel/PowerPC and x64 is 64-bit Intel and 32-bit Intel
    * Improved internationalization - better non-English support

VueScan 9 x32 runs on Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000, Mac OS X 10.3.9+ and most Linux distributions.

VueScan 9 x64 runs on Windows 7 x64, Windows Vista x64, Windows XP x64, Mac OS X 10.5+ and 64-bit Linux.

[Ami_GFX]

I went through several Umax Astra scanners. They worked great with SCSI but they weren't so great with USB and they stopped upgrading the software around 2001. I had both a PC and Mac laptops a few years ago and I didn't like having to boot into OS9 to use the Umax scanner and picked up an HP Scanjet 3670 at a yard sale that supported both Windows Xp and OSX Panther. The hardware is good, nothing special but it shines in it's software. I do volunteer work that periodically has me scan legal documents and I can scan them directly into a multi page PDF file and it has OCR software that really works well and sends any text I scan directly to MS Word when I need to do document revisions. When I did my first comic book, I was pleasently surprised by both the image options and that the software can scan a sequence of images and number them sequentially which is perfect for magazines and comic books. It isn't that fast but the speed is adequate for my needs. It is currently set up with a Thinkpad laptop running Xp.

[Yoc]

Thanks for all the posts guys.  Please keep them coming!

[Ami_GFX]

A bit of an update.

After reading this thread, I checked ebay to see what replacing my scanner would cost if it failed and it was quite a bit more than the yard sale price I got it for. Then I took a look at the manual which covers 4 related HP scanners as I was scanning a comic yesterday and found mine had a USB 1 connection and not a USB 2 as I had assumed. The higher end 3970 model did have USB 2 as well as 2400dpi resolution and I did an ebay search for it and one popped up right away for $15 buy it now and I bought it on impulse and paid more for the shipping than the scanner. It takes me about an hour to scan a 36 page comic at 200 dpi with my current scanner and I'm not losing too much time due to the slower USB speed which takes about 10 seconds to transfer the image to my laptop after the scan is finished. This should happen almost instaneously with my new scanner. If the mechanical part of the scan isn't any faster it won't make that much difference. It might be. My experience with HP printers is that the more you pay for the printer, the faster they print and it might be the same for their scanners. In any case, I seem to be spending more time straigtening the comic book in the scanner bed than anything else. There is an auto alignment option in the scanner software but it doesn't seem to work too well.

[Yoc]

Good luck with the HP AG.
I have to say I'm far from impressed with the HP Scanjet 4370 that I have.
'If it was any slower it would go in reverse' 

[narfstar]

Ami straightening has always been the thorn in my scanning side.

[Snard]

Ami straightening has always been the thorn in my scanning side.

Just tossing my 2 cents in here, regarding straightening.

I've had the best luck doing straightening in my editing software. I generally straighten based on the printed material on the page, not the paper or spine edge. I use Paintshop Pro, which has a Straighten function in which you position a "rubber band" line along a horizontal or vertical feature on the page. Then you click the "Apply" button and it rotates the page fractionally so that the line you positioned is now vertical or horizontal (whichever is closer). It works pretty well. I'm told that Photoshop has a similar tool, but I don't use that software so I can't tell you how it works.

[Ami_GFX]

I'm using an old version of Image Ready to do image size reduction. I'll check and see if there's an image alignment function. I was looking at my Blue Beetle 5 last night and--good old Charlton print quality--the pages aren't straight in the book and it will scan skewed even if the pages are straight in the scanner.

The seller just sent me friendly message and said the scanner has very little use. I'm hoping this parallels an experience I've had with HP printers. I had a Deskjet 722c and it was good quality for the price and the ink cartriges were huge and it was fairly inexpensive in per page costs but it was slow as mud. It gave up the ghost and I'd just bought cartridges so I got a more expensive 882c which on the outside and inside hardware was absolutely identical and used the same cartridges and this printer just churned out pages. The difference in the 2 printers was mostly firmware and it looked like a marketing trick to me--if a salesman let a prospective customer try both, they would more than likely pop a few more dollars for the fast printer. These days I use an Officejet business printer which is huge and has separete ink cartriges and printheads and can print up to small poster size and it just rocks in the speed department.

[narfstar]

I use Infranview and straighten manually according to the panels. I will see if paint.net has that "rubber band" it would really make things easier and done better for me. Spunky the Jr Cowboy 4 is uploading as I type. I had to straighten it by hand.

[Geo (RIP)]

Narf, it might be under "Rotate", mine was, with/under "Rotate with line".

Geo

[narfstar]

Can't find anything like that in Infranview or paint.net

[Snard]

Can't find anything like that in Infranview or paint.net

I did a few searches, and assuming you have the IrfanPaint plugin installed, there is a Straighten function available. This web site includes a description of how to use it:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/pesala/Irfan%20View/Help/Tutorials/Editing/editing.html#Straighten

[narfstar]

Thank you sir Snard. It works wish I would have known about this a long time ago it makes it soooooo  much easier and better