I am confused by all the available scanners out there. Umax (1220S, 1200S, 2400s) Epson Perfection and Agfa Snapscan all are intriquing. I want to scan photo prints and also documents. I have a mac 8600 and am familiar with the basic workings of photoshop. Output will be to a Epson Photo Stylus printer. Which scanner would you pick? Do you think it is necssary to spend more then this?

-- Robert Cohen (rcfilm@viconet.com), December 02, 1998

Answers

Robert, I bought a Umax Astra 1220S and I am very happy with itat $179.00 it is a great deal. I use an Epson 700EX for the printing and get very good results with any reflective media. I also bought the optional transparency adapter. Not surprisingly, it struggles with 35mm slides (artifacts in the dark areas, and has a dMax of around 2.7-2.8), but does a amazingly good job on medium (6x7) transparencies.

My only complaint is somewhat minor, in the scanning software. Once you have set the preview size you cant change it on the fly. If you zoom in to refine the original selection boundaries or make tonal adjustments, you just get magnified pixels from the original preview, not a new magnified image. This is at its most annoying when working with 35mm slides. If you will be working mainly from prints its not significant.

Other than that Umax has done a good job at giving you value for your dollar, and I would definitely recommend this scanner.

Jim Scott, Napa Valley, CA

-- Jim Scott (wgd@napanet.net), December 03, 1998.

I purchased and tested the UMAX Astra 1220U, which has the same mechanism as the 1220S. I also found it to produce very good color (but only when properly tweaked); very close to the original. My findings were contrary to PC Magazine's review, but they only reported results using default settings, which as I so readily agree with The Imaging Resource, is not very useful in determining what a scanner is really capable of. The TWAIN driver is dynamite, which was a major buying incentive for me.

However, I eventually returned the unit and bought an Epson Perfection 636. Why? Well, I had a few quips as a lower-income perfectionist. First, the color registration is rather poor, which is where my own tests concurred with the unit's reviews. While not terribly noticeable with same-size viewing, magnifications and/or tweaking with Photoshop aggravated me no end. Reds were shifted above the blues, and the greens hung below those. This was especially noticeable in B&W, of course, and I even tried converging the color channels in Photoshop, but the aberration did not seem linear enough to facilitate correction. I gave up thoughts of up-sizing and cropping. Second, the underside of the glass plate was quite filmy with exudate, presumably from the out-gassing of the plastics used in its construction. Even though I went through the trouble of thoroughly cleaning the underside of it with trichloroethane, the film reappeared. Of course, if the plastics are the culprit, then perhaps over time the out-gassing would subside as it does in new cars (which is why we lose that "new car smell" eventually).

I wanted to try the Agfa 1212, but no reviews of this line currently exist to my knowledge. Their TWAIN is purportedly hot, as is the speed and accuracy of their newer models. Furthermore, even though the Perfection 636 costs $280, its transparency adapter is only $80 (I really shop!) as opposed to most scanners' $180 transparency adapters. In the end, the Epson is not much more than the UMAX, Agfa, or any other inexpensive scanner I researched (assuming you wish to scan slides). Therefore, the Epson was my choice.

How's the Epson Perfection? HOT! I love everything about it: SCSI speed, crisp 600x2400 dpi rez, great color management, great TWAIN, etc. Even the price is good, even though I don't have the transparency adapter yet.

To sum up, if you only do minor graphics manipulation, then the UMAX might do you just fine, but if you like fine detail and strive for perfection (pun not intended), then I would recommend another scanner. The Agfa might be good, who knows? If you want quality, the Perfection will not disappoint, though I understand the BETTER HPs (6xxx series) are quite good too, for a price. Happy scanning.

-- Jeff Jacques (jjazzy7@rocketmail.com), December 09, 1998.