Watch the Video to Understand Why I Gave It 5 Stars…, April 16, 2010

The ScanSnap S1300 rocks and this page doesn’t do it justice.

BTW, the difference between the ScanSnap S300 and S1300 is simple.

S1300 works with PC and MAC. S300 only works with PC. Get the S1300.

It scans FAST and PDFs pop up on my PC immediately. It does OCR in the background while the PC is idle.

Great, great quality. My old Epson Perfection 1240 never scanned docs with such clarity.

One drawback…you can’t use TWAIN with the ScanSnap series. So no “import from scanner” in Photoshop.

But this things will scan a JPG that can you later open in Photoshop. No worries.

As a designer, I’m not impacted since I rarely scan anything in color these days.

(It does scan in full color, btw…really nice quality).

I’ll let the video show you real-world usage.

Personal stuff has been blurred.

You can watch it at you of the tube

and search for the following kB7268TGEng.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comments (33)

Why get the bigger versions when this works on Mac and Microsoft, May 29, 2010

By 

Raymond A. Aragon “Ray Aragon” (Earth) – See all my reviews

  

I was thinking about the 1500M but then realized that the software was for Mac only and that making it work with a PC using the great software that is bundled would not be possible. Sure you can get the scanner to work but not all of ease of use features with profiles etc.

I like the Scan Snap software, it is easy to use. I did not use the manual to figure it out(beyond checking what needed to be installed).

You simply select active Profile for your scanning task and then it is a one-click affair.

Scan to a file

Scan to Evernote (I had to configure, very easy to-do)

Scan to email

Scan to Card-Iris

Scan to Word

Scan to Excel

etc.

Could this get any easier?

Page Per Minute:

8 supposedly but if you turn on the special PDF feature to make the document SEARCH-ABLE then the PPM goes down or at least the post-scan processing takes slightly longer.

Small size benefits:

* I like the ability to take it with me to a meeting where I know I will want to share notes

* small footprint on my desk (I like this)

* when you fold up the trays the 1300 is just a tiny little box

Small size issues:

* the paper tray cannot hold as many sheets as the larger models

* guide rails are small and papers can sometimes get fed in at an angle if your paper is curling up a little, I have to assume that with bigger guide rails that would help keep the paper straight

* if you have the space and you want to be able to do large batches of scans I have to assume the larger SCAN SNAPS would be a better choice (they can process more PPM too).

power from USB:

* the option to power form two USB ports is pretty nifty

* this feature is useful for people that travel and do some serious word warrior computing

Lastly, my use case (so that you can determine if my advice applies):

* I am a GTD user and scansnap is part of my process of processing my inbox (getting to zero).

* I scan a lot of stuff to evernote (magazine articles/notes/project related documents)

* I scan all my bills and tax related documents to an encrypted folder

* I scan business cards and use card iris to send to entourage

* My goal of FILING less stuff is a success thanks to the EASE of use of the Scan SNAP

* my goal of shredding old files after scanning is a success

I own other scanners, and they are PERFECT for scanning a few important documents for a task but not for BULK SCANNING jobs. WAY too many steps and too slow! I strongly recommend SCANSNAP scanners.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comments (5)

Imperfect, but still the best, September 11, 2010

Update 7/8/11: It’s been working quite well. Software is poor, but I’m more or less used to it. To their credit Fujitsu has provided 10.7 driver updates, so I bumped the review from 3 to 4 stars.

I’ve been looking for this scanner for 15 years. It’s good enough. It could be better, but it’s good enough. If it lasts for two years I’ll happily buy it again at the same price.

The hardware is essentially perfect. It’s a bit annoying that you need two USB cables if you want to avoid the generic (mediocre) power brick, but blame that on USB. We should all be using either old style firewire or never coming USB 3, but we’re stuck with USB 2. It scans both sides of paper at once. Yes, DUPLEX.

Although it’s primarily a document scanner, I’ve used it scan color prints. The results were not professional quality, but they were darned good and fast.

The documentation is excellent.

The software is mediocre. Some of the bundled OS X software is so old it’s non-native on Intel machines, fortunately you can omit that. Unlike the higher end machines you don’t get Adobe’s superb PDF/OCR combination (yes, once Adobe was competent), you get a much less efficient product called ABBY FineReader. Even so, it does produce PDF images with searchable OCRd text indices.

Most importantly, OS X Spotlight WILL index the text associated with these PDF image files.

The mediocrity extends to the ScanSnap Manager UI and workflow. Clearly this was a low bid contract. Don’t expect much in the way of upgrades or future products. The scans, however, can be sent to products like DevonThink Pro (0) for processing.

The scanner uses proprietary drives. This is perhaps the most lethal problem. If they’re not upgraded we can be sure that within 3 years they won’t work on OS X. Fujitsu, notoriously, does not provide new versions of ScanSnap Manager without a hardware purchase.

There are other problems with the software, but so far it hasn’t been unstable.

In summary, 2 star software, 5 star hardware, gives a 3 star review. Surprisingly, I still love the product. If Apple were ever to produce a scanner, it would be a lot like this, though with a better power adapter and infinitely better software.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comments (11)

Epson V600 works for me!, January 8, 2010

I did quite a bit of research before buying this unit, so I had a pretty good idea what I was getting into. Of course, there were some concerns about software, etc., but I went in with an open mind.

First, this unit does a superb job of scanning both slides and film, so that part worked out very well. At first, I scanned at 4800 dpi, but after a bit, realized that 3600 dpi was more than enough resolution for most pictures. People have said that the carrier is flimsy, but it wasn’t a problem. Tip — when scanning a lot of slides, tape the left and bottom sides of the carrier to the scanner chassis (not the glass). You can quickly drop slides into the slots and later remove them, without the carrier shifting.

A lot of people were put off by the Epson software, and suggested Vuescan. I demo’d Vuescan, and wasn’t impressed. Why spend a bunch of time modifying the image before the scan, when it is so much easier to make adjustments later in Photoshop 7 (supplied with the scanner)? All I really want to do when scanning is to get a decent version of the image, minimizing clipping, etc., without investing a lot of time. I also like the way Epson auto-cropped the pictures for me.

After some frustration, I hit on method for using the Epson software effectively:

1) Don’t use “Unsharp mask” when scanning. Use Photoshop’s version later.

2) Select all the pictures and apply “Auto Exposure”. This fixes the colors, but does a lot of high and low clipping.

3) The images will now look much more like real pictures, but need a bit of work.

4) Select a pic and zoom it. Select “Histogram Adjustment”. See the top graph? Note that the left and right sliders are too far in toward the middle, so information is being clipped.

5) Before making any changes to the sliders, look at the middle graph. It will usually have a bit of a dip (tending toward the bottom right). Remember what it looks like.

6) Now, go to the top graph, and move the top and bottom sliders out, until they are just outside the black area. You have now eliminated the clipping, but your now picture looks terrible. Note that the curve in the middle graph has dipped way to the bottom-right.

7) Move the center slider to the left, while looking at the curve in the middle graph. Remember how it used to look? Try to make the curve look like it used to, with the same little dip toward the bottom-right.

That’s it! Go to the next image and do the same thing. Once you get the hang of it, each picture takes about 5 seconds.

The nice thing about this technique is that you don’t even have to look at the picture while you’re doing it. Guard against a tendency to make a dark picture too bright by overdoing the correction. Remember, you’re better off fixing the image in Photoshop. Meanwhile, you’ve got an picture that’s viewable now, and that still has all the information you’ll need to make it a great picture later.

Once I figured this out, and unleashed the V600 to do its thing, the rest is history….

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comments (23)

Great scanners, great software, March 12, 2010

Don’t get too worked up by the negative reviews calling the Epson Scan software “junk.” It isn’t. I read enough of the other reviews to convince me to download a copy of Vuescan and try it out right away. True, Vuescan has a lot of film profiles that should be more accurate than the limited number Epson uses, but the trouble with Vuescan and this V600 scanner–in my experience–is that the frames for batch scanning a group of negatives were not accurate, and it was more than a little confusing, if not impossible, to change the frames around. This feature of Vuescan is very confusing your first couple of times around, and I lost patience and shut the program down.

Then, thinking I’d better try the Epson software before considering returning the scanner, I opened Epson Scan. I went straight to “Professional” mode, checked out all the parameters they allow adjustment to, selected what I wanted, and clicked “Preview.” This is scanning two strips of negatives, mind you. When the preview came up, it had all twelve frames boxed in their own boxes, all basically color-corrected and ready for action. You select a check-box to pick which frames you want to scan, and click on each separate frame to diddle with it–like rotate it to the proper orientation, or change the exposure, whatever. Then just hit “Scan” and walk away. When it finishes you have all your selected scans in your “My Pictures” folder or wherever you want them, named whatever you want with “001″, “002″ and so-on appended to the name. It is easy as pie, and the quality is on par with any scanner I’ve used so far. Speed? For a 2400 dpi neg scan much less than a minute per scan.

Now some caveats. I’m not running Digital ICE, not doing any kind of sharpening, nothing. All I want is a raw scan; all the fiddling you want to do is better done afterwards in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, it does a much better job. If your negatives need all kinds of cleaning, or if they’re all scratched up and require a lot of correcting in the scan, you screwed up. Take care of your negs and slides, keep them clean, and you won’t have problems scanning them. You can clean them with a quick wipe with a lint-free cloth with a little rubber cement thinner on it–just don’t use anything water-based on negs and slides.

Secondly, just for grins I loaded a magazine page into the scanner and tried out the OCR software, ABBYY. They claim that it can scan and convert printed text into type. If you’ve had any experience with OCR software, you probably take that claim with a large grain of salt, like I did. But one quick scan–greyscale, 400 dpi–and the page was up on the screen. Pull it into Microsoft Word and it was 100 percent accurate, every word spelled correctly, even the closest font was selected for the text. An incredible job, in my opinion.

What’s my qualifications? I’ve been working with images my whole professional life. 40 years of photography or more, working with digital images since they first came out. I’ve owned a dozen different flatbed scanners and a couple of film scanners. You might be able to get better results from a more expensive scanner, but for the money this Epson V600 is tough to beat. Highly recommended. And give the included software a chance, you’ll probably like it just fine.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comments (4)

Excellent Film Scanner on a Budget, December 2, 2009

By 

E. J Tastad “ejt” (Marion, IA United States) – See all my reviews

  

  

  

Pros:

Easy to use

Great results with film, 6×7, 645, and 135 (35mm)

Cons:

Software is a bit clunky

Digital ICE can do bizarre things

Largest Improvements Over V500:

Can now scan four 645 or three 6×7 negatives at a time (spec is 6x22cm).

Bottom Line:

Great deal for a flatbed scanner that is designed primarily for film and graphic arts use. I don’t think I would upgrade from the V500 unless you scan a lot of medium format film, and even then it might be worth checking to see if the new medium format insert would work in the V500 (I don’t know if it would or not). The software is the same as the V500.

One of the large bottlenecks of the V500 is that it will only scan two 645 negatives at a time. Since I usually cut in strips of 3, this is a problem. It means I had to scan each strip twice, once to get two of the images, and a second time to get the third. This means I had to 10 scans to get through a roll of 15 images. The V600 allows me to do this in 5 scans instead of 10. This is a nice time savings.

Sometimes the Digital ICE produces some bizarre artifacts, like halos around sharp edges and in shadows. It also at least doubles or triples the scan time. The somewhat random nature of the results and slow scan times makes me avoid Digital ICE entirely. The dust reduction does help, but do plan on spending 5 or 10 minutes in Lightroom removing dust spots from critical images. Dusting your negatives and keeping them clean will help a lot. Keep an antistatic brush and cotton gloves handy when scanning negatives.

This is a great scanner for film shooters, and will quickly pay for itself over just 10 or 20 rolls of film. Expect to get results comparable to a decent DSLR camera, if I had to wager a guess a 135 (35mm) negative might be comparable to a 6 MP SLR where the medium format might be more like a 12 MP equivalent, but these comparisons are dangerous and don’t really mean a whole lot and I haven’t done resolution testing. This scanner is ideal for a hobbyist medium format film shooter that doesn’t want to pay a fortune for scans, or someone looking to restore a few dozen rolls of film or slides. Expect to spend 1 or 2 hours per roll processing though.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

>Report abuse
| Permalink

 Comments (5)