OT: Scanner for production
mhollis55 Feb 16, 2010 5:53 PMBased on a series of conversations I had here and a well-timed receipt of Macworld Magazine, I decided to purchase an Epson V30 scanner, based on my needs.
The V30's best feature is that it is an LED scanner and, as such, requires no warmup. With my old scanner, an Epson Perfection 3170, I'd get everything all set up and then would have to wait for a warmup cycle. The V30 is a flat, black scanner that opens sideways and, if you place it with the text right-side up and the four buttons facing you on your desk, will scan upside down. Thing is, that's the way I place paper into my printer to have it print, so that's not a big deal.
Scans are accurate. There are no colors in grey objects scanned at any resolution in color. It does not do transparencies but I'm not expecting any in my business -- I tend to have more photographs and documents to scan than anything else.
This scanner is on the slow side, but for $80 MSRP, one would expect that. It is large enough to scan just over an 8.5"x11" sheet of paper, so it is a little smaller than my previous scanner but the number of times I needed something larger I can count on the fingers of one hand. And I can always stitch materials together if I need a large scan.
Both color and gray scale scanning are accurate and without any apparent artifacts. I suppose I could have paid more for something faster, but the Epson V30 suits well.
To scan, I am using Photoshop once again, because the scanner's application is an Intel-Native or Universal Binary. I am using Photoshop CS3 and it works very well with the scanner software, which uses TWAIN to drive it. Please be advised that Adobe stopped allowing TWAIN plugins in Photoshop CS4 and one wonders if they will bring it back in CS5 (as it seems an error very similar to Microsoft ending support for VBA scripts in Excel and Word in Microsoft Office 2008 for Macintosh).
I would rate this scanner an eight out of ten, grading it down slightly for slowness and for the fact that it cannot scan transparencies. This was a good buy for me and I am very happy with it.
The scanner comes with software to install on your Mac or a PC running Windows, a power cord (with a "brick") and an USB2 cable, instructions in several languages and a quick start guide.
-Mark Hollis




