Best photo scanner recommendations

Hello!

Can you recommend the best photo scanner to buy? I have a lot of photos to scan and store digitally. What features should I look for to ensure high-quality images? Thanks a lot for your help!

Thanks!

Are you talking about photographic prints (what size?), photographic negatives, photographic slides? Just asking 'cos the answer is probably going to be different.

It depends on your budget and if you need to do negatives also.

If you don't need negatives and want to go lower budget - the Epson V39 II is absolutely great and is a scanner that I recommend all day long. I own one myself and use it very frequently.

On the other end is the Epson V850 - quite a bit more but allows you to do things like wet-mount negatives and is pretty much top-of-the-line in terms scanners for digital archiving. I know several museums using this scanner.

In the middle is the Epson V600 - scan quality is about the same as the V39 II but it can also do negatives (though not wet-mount I don't think) and slides

The free Epson Scan software is sufficient for most people's needs ( for the best settings with a somewhat reasonable, though large, file size: set it to TIFF output, 1200dpi, and be sure to turn on "embed ICC profile").

It is also possible to use Silverfast with all three of those models if you want to eek out a bit more color info, or have some specialized needs.

Hope that helps and looking forward to seeing others' responses!

Mirawalsh said:

Can you recommend the best photo scanner to buy? I have a lot of photos to scan and store digitally. What features should I look for to ensure high-quality images? Thanks a lot for your help!

Click to expand...

There are two basic divisions that determine the answer, and your post does not address either, so we need some additional information. Depending on the answers to those two, there may be an important third division.

(1) Are you trying to scan photographic film (negatives, slides, that sort of thing) or only photo prints (the final images on a paper-like material)? Generally, if you have the film, you can get better results by scanning it instead of the prints, but the equipment required is more specialized.

(2) How many scans are you trying to make, and how much time are you willing to spend on scanning? If by "a lot" you mean 200, and you just want to finish scanning in the next six months, then the answer will differ greatly from if you mean 20,000, and you want to finish in six weeks.

(3) The size of what you want to scan can make a major difference. If you want to scan film, but the only film you want to scan is 35mm, then there are far more choices at lower prices than if you want to scan larger film and/or oddball sizes. If you want to scan prints, if any are larger than 8.5x11.7", then your options will be far fewer and more expensive.

Last but not least, have you considered using a service? I haven't followed that market, but at one time, services like ScanCafe were a good choice for many people.

Katrina-Red River Paper Support said:

In the middle is the Epson V600 - scan quality is about the same as the V39 II but it can also do negatives (though not wet-mount I don't think) and slides

The free Epson Scan software is sufficient for most people's needs ( for the best settings with a somewhat reasonable, though large, file size: set it to TIFF output, 1200dpi, and be sure to turn on "embed ICC profile").

It is also possible to use Silverfast with all three of those models if you want to eek out a bit more color info, or have some specialized needs.

Click to expand...

Agree 100% here. The Epson V600 meets all my needs from scanning prints, documents and film. I like that it can scan 35mm and 120/220 size film. With the help of photoshop I am also able to scan my 4x5 transparencies and negatives.

I have found that using Topaz Photo AI really improves the quality of the scan.

Mirawalsh said:

Hello!

Can you recommend the best photo scanner to buy? I have a lot of photos to scan and store digitally. What features should I look for to ensure high-quality images? Thanks a lot for your help!

Thanks!

Click to expand...

The "best" is hard to define. People may recommend things they only heard about but never used. Also, what is "best" depends on the money your are ready to spend and the quality you expect, plus depends on the quality of images you want to scan. Remember, shait in = shait out, even from the best. Also, if you only plan to scan paper images or if you plan to scan negatives of different formats and sizes... So basically, you have to define all those parmeters before anyone can say what may be the "best" for you. For me, the "best" are the scanners I have. I have a dedicated 35mm slide and negative scanner, a flat bed scanner which can scan slides and negatives as well, and a flatbed scanner built into my ET-8550, which can scan printed images and documents. I also have a flatbed built into a HP laser printer. So of all of these, the film scanner is the best for 35 mm film. If I could only have one scanner it would be the Canon CanoScan 9000F Mark II. It is reasonably good and very fast, but of course, the quality of negative/slide scanning is not the same as the dedicated film scanner. The scanner in the ET-8550 is very good for paper photo scanning and is also fast. The one built into the laser printer is OK, but nothing to write home about. It is only used for quick document copying today. All of them are obsolete, so I don't think you can find them new on the market today.

Note that even the recommended Epson V600 is obsolete, but you can find it in some stores if you are lucky. I can't say much about that, except that the specs look fine, except on one part.

BTW, I am using VueScan from Hamrick Software. Supports all scanners and is affordable with lifetime support and updates. It has many excellent features, well worth paying for.

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