I'm new to digital photography. I have an HP photosmart scanner and a Visioneer One Touch 5300. With the HP the scanning of slides and negatives is a joy (much more fun than the darkroom). The scanning of photographs is causing me grief on both the flatbed and the photosmart. In all scanned photos I find green bands running through the image. These bands effectively destroy the image. To date I've been unable to print a black area without the bands.

What am I doing wrong? Is there any way to get rid of these bands? I've used both Photodeluxe and Paint Shop Pro and can not get rid of those bands. I'm an amatuer so Photoshop is way out of my price range. Had I known this I could have saved the money spent on a flatbed.

-- Charles Coulbourn (Chazz@pobox.com), May 10, 1999

Answers

Charles, I'm not familiar with eiher of your scanners, but do you have the latest drivers installed. If not then they can be downloaded from the respective websites for the manufacturers. I have experience with several different scanners and have never seen this problem. some questions: Do you see the banding on your screen? If you only see it in printing what type of printer are you using?

Provide some more info and we should be able to help you more.

You can download a trial version of Photoshop from: http://www.adobe.com You will not be able to print or save from this, but it may help you isolate your problem.

This site also hase a user-to-user forum which is great.

Save up and get Photoshop--it blows away everything else

Regards

fred NASA Imaging Services

-- fred deaton (fdeaton@airnet.net), May 12, 1999.

Charles:

The HP PhotoSmart scanner is vulnerable to dust inside the mechanisms and on the optics. It can be transported by the film itself, or it can just float in through the front door of the film feeder. If you are referring to an extremely thin green line, generally this is the result of dust particles attached to the optics. I sometimes get a blue and/or a red band along with it.

The solution is relatively simple. Use the little blue air compressor bulb on the inside of the scanner. Lift the scanner's top mechanism in accordance with the manual instructions, then use the bulb to GENTLY blow some air over the optics inside. This generally corrects the problem temporarily (until more dust particles find their way inside the scanner).

You might consider canned compressed air, but do so at your own risk. Make sure you are very very gentle and avoid blowing it directly on the mechanisms. The air is very cold and tends to freeze room moisture on the parts if you are not careful. It can also knock the mechanisms out of alignment, which would earn you a chance to speak with HP's technical support representatives to arrange a repair. I never blow compressed air directly on any optical equipment. Position the straw such that it is not directly aimed at the mechanisms, but such that some of the ambient air-flow will move the dust around. Use small, sporadic squirts, and that should do it for stubborn particles.

-- Jeffrey Sevier (jsevier@one.net), July 17, 1999.