Bit depth. Speed. Ease of use. Image quality. Photoshop LE

Software.

After reading reviews of the ScanSpeed on this and other forums it is obvious that the default scans leave something to be desired in terms of colour accuracy. Here are some tips to help in getting very satifactory results from this excellent piece of hardware. 1st. Choose 16 bit and turn off auto exposure in the preferences section. 2nd. Perform any cropping and complete the scan. ( do not colour correct in the ScanSpeed software ). If you have run the software outside of Photoshop save the file as a Tiff. 3rd. Open the file in Photoshop. Bring up the curves dialog box (control + M). The fastest way to remove any colour cast is to use the ''grey point'' eye dropper. Find a middle value in the image and click with the eye dropper. You can keep doing this until you get what appears to be the correct colour. Adjust the diagonal line by dragging it into an ''S'' shape until you get the brightness and contrast you like. Once you have the image to your liking click on the save settings button and save to a folder someplace. Click OK to commit the adjustment. I can assure you that once you have the hang of using the curves in Photoshop you''ll never go back. By saving each sucessful setting you can build up a library of quick and easy fixes. A little time spent will save a lot of time down the road. By contrast using the levels command quickly degrades and clips the image quality and is a far less flexible tool. Just run some tests on an image to see the difference. The ScanSpeed in a great scanner giving very deep, smooth and noise free images. I hope this helps some of the frustrated users out there.

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None

Relatively inexpensive for high dpi. The software does an acceptable job ensuring quality scans. Fairly quick.

No major weaknesses. You have to spend significantly more to get better results.

A solid, capable scanner for the price.

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None

Sharpness and level of detail, lack of noise (especially when using VueScan, which makes one-pass multiscanning possible with this scanner), speed, 36-bit color depth (largely compensates for the driver's bad color correction capabilities)

Color correction and driver software. The Mac version of the software comes with a ColorSync profile, though, which gives reasonable results (slides only), but it clips some of the highlights and the shadows - epecially in the blue and green channel. The profile can be used in Windows as well, provided it is given the .icc extension.
Ed Hamrick's VueScan sometimes gives better results, especially with negatives.
All problems with colors can easily be corrected in Photoshop. Always use the 36 bit scanning mode and never try to correct colors with the scanner software (it causes combing in the hsitograms, and the colors will look different in Photoshop anyway). I generated a Photoshop curves setting that eliminates the flaws of the ColorSync profile -it handles most of the color correction work usually needed.

Good value for money, but if you want to do pre-scanning WYSIWYG color correction, I guess you should buy a Silverfast supported scanner (with Silverfast, obviously), for more money.

Customer Service

Never needed it so far.

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None yet, but I've seen a lot of results from other film scanners and don't I think the Scan Speed does deserv

Good value scanner that has a high specification,
Used with care and Photoshop can deliver excellent scans from transparencies. Low noise in shadow areas and high retention of detail, further improved by un-sharp masking.

Greens are undersaturated, but easy to correct in photoshop

For £600 in the UK the best spec scanner around at this price level.

Customer Service

None needed

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A great improvement on my Nikon Coolscan LS20 that produced loads of noise in shadow areas

36 bit color depth with reasonable dynamic range gives good detail and color gradations.

I began scanning several years ago using the original PhotoSmart scanner. I ran into problems with a faint cross-hatch pattern in shadow areas of my slides. I decided to try the new PhotoSmart S20 and found it did not solve the problem. However, the output it produced at default settings (color, saturation) was supurb. But, because of problems with shadow details, I decided to return the S20 and splurge on the ScanSpeed. I now feel I may have made a HUGE mistake. The default settings consistantly produce an underexposed, sometimes oversaturated output. Dense slides and almost all of my Provia 100 slides seem to be particularly troublesome. Colors seem to be off, and deep shadow areas have a distinct magenta cast to them. With most slides - including Ektachromes, I would spend considerable time tweaking either the Minolta software or the color controls in PhotoShop 5.0 (levels, curves, saturation) to get passable results. This compared to my original PhotoSmart scanner which usually gave me great colors on first pass and which I have now hooked up in the same SCSI chain as the Scan Speed for instant color correlation. I also tried the ScanSpeed with Ed Hamrick's VueScan. The results were USUALLY better than with the Minolta software, but not always.

I am torn about my decision to go with the ScanSpeed. While it does give higher resolution output than the PhotoSmart (SCSI), it almost always forces me to spend a great deal of time with color correction. I would expect better from a scanner at this price level. My recommendation is to either 1: spend less and get the PhotoSmart S20 for quick scans, or 2: spend more and buy the Nikon L2000 for more professional results - an opinion based on numerous user reviews.

Customer Service

I received a promt e-mail response from Minolta on a question conerning inital scanner setup.

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PhotoSmart (SCSI)
PhotoSmart S20

Good resolution.
Very good Dmax.
Excellent price.

Software. Scanning with default or automated values does not give satisfactory results.

Software is not very capable. Other choice is Vuescan especially for negatives. But with little twiddling and manipulation you get fine results for little money.

Customer Service

Not needed.

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Microtek 4000t, Polaroid SS4000.

It scans very fast.
Good resolution.
Clean colors

The software, but that is the problem for a lot of photoscanners.

The software of Minolta is very bad. I hope somethimes they wil make an update.With the test version off Vuescan the results are a lot better.

Customer Service

Not needed.

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Nikon LS 20

fast enough !
good resolution for the price !

no usb interface
included software is not great !

It gives very good scans in colour and resolution first time using Vuescan that I prefer to the Minolta soft.
Very good value for money compared with Nikon Scanners !

Customer Service

Very good in Portugal !

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Minolta Scan Dual