- #2015 top rated photo scanners for negatives pdf#
- #2015 top rated photo scanners for negatives software#
- #2015 top rated photo scanners for negatives plus#
- #2015 top rated photo scanners for negatives mac#
#2015 top rated photo scanners for negatives software#
Depending on where exactly the scanner software determines the edges of the photo are, the size of the scan ends up being around 3300 x 2100 pixels, or 7 megapixels.īack in the 1990s, Kodak had a system called PhotoCD where they would scan your negatives and put them on a CD. The scanner goes as high as 12800 DPI, but as far as I can tell, you don't get any additional detail beyond 2400, while 1200 DPI is clearly too low, and there are no choices between 24. At 2400 DPI, it took me a little over an hour to scan one set of 36 negatives.
The photos are automatically detected and then you have the opportunity to do some pre-scan cropping and rotating and then you hit "scan".ĭepending on the selected resolution, this can take a few minutes. After selecting the appropriate options, you tell the software to generate a preview. The transparency light is only about as wide as a strip of 35 mm film, so scanning larger negatives or transparencies probably won't work. You then have to remove the white surface from the inside of the lid, exposing the light that illuminates negatives and slides. The scanner has an attachment that holds a single strip of up to six negatives or slide film, or four framed slides.
#2015 top rated photo scanners for negatives pdf#
The PDF files are also less than half the size than the ones created by Image Capture. However, using the EPSON Scan program, the result is much improved: The V370 with Image Capture looks much the same, but a little less sharp than the Canon: This is a scan of the leaflet that comes with the V370 at 300 DPI, first with the Canon LiDE 100 using Image Capture: Same for slides, black-and-white negatives and even color negatives: it automatically flips the colors and corrects for the brownish tint of color negatives. The Epson V370 not only produces scans where, for all intents and purposes, black text is black and white paper is white, but it also makes photos come out looking like the originals.
As I mentioned, my Canon scanner produces muddy scans that require manually adjusting the brightness, contrast and color to get scans that look like the original. One important thing that the V370 and its software get right is the autoexposure. However, the software is rather clunky, with settings hidden away in strange places and options are forgotten and remembered in ways that don't make sense. From the way it looks you'd think it has no business running on a current Mac, but it runs without trouble.
However, after searching for a bit, I found software on the Epson website and that installed without a hitch.
#2015 top rated photo scanners for negatives mac#
The scanner comes with a software CD, but I had no luck installing the software on my Mac running MacOS 10.9. The Epson V370 on the other hand, is much bigger, has its own power brick and the hinge is rather inconveniently placed on the right side, with the USB and power cables on the right side of the scanner all the way at the front.
#2015 top rated photo scanners for negatives plus#
On the plus side, it's compact and runs on USB bus power, so no power brick. You also have to wait for the lamp to warm up before scanning can happen. That one gets the job done, but using the MacOS Image Capture tool I got rather muddy scans out of it. Until now, I used a Canon CanoScan LiDE 100 for that. First, let me talk about scanning regular documents. Using the word "perfection" in the product name sets a high bar, and although it's not perfect, it's pretty good. It gets pretty good reviews and only costs about € 80 or $100. The Epson Perfection V370 Photo scanner has a transparency mode built in.
Turns out that some flatbed scanners have a transparency attachment so you can scan negatives and slides. The number of photos isn't huge, maybe a few hundred, but having a service do it at 50 cents or so quickly adds up. The past years, I've been looking for a way to digitize all of these. In addition to that, I have color photos with their negatives and slides. I still have a bunch of black-and-white negatives that I developed myself, but never got them printed.