Customer Reviews

Epson Perfection V500 Photo Scanner

5 star:		(212)
4 star:		(109)
3 star:		(22)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(35)

 

 

After extensive research I had the good fortune of looking for a photo scanner at the same time the Epson Perfection V500 became available. After scanning the first batch of 60 slides, I can heartily recommend this unit. The most significant capability of this unit, especially for the price, is the built-in ICE technology for scratch and dust removal. It is, in a word, astonishing. And, it is saving me many hours of extra work manually doing the same job. There is software-based scratch and dust removal included in the Epson software, but it is ineffective and cannot compare to ICE. I am scanning at 2,400 dpi, more than enough resolution for any practical use other than heavy cropping and enlargement. I use compressed air to "clean" the slides before scanning. When scanning with ICE turned off, the amount of dust marks are amazing. Turn ICE on and 98% of the dust is gone. It does take longer to scan with ICE, but the offset is the time saved many times over not having to manually remove the dust post-scan. Photoshop Elements 4.0 is included. I use Elements 6.0.

So far, the unit has worked flawlessly. Software installed cleanly on first try. Front panel buttons can be reprogrammed for other than the default (e.g., I changed the button for email attachment to launch the OCR to text software included.)

A tip for those who buy this unit for slide and/or film scanning with ICE and scanning 2-4 slides at a time: Click the "All" button in the preview window after prescanning (previewing) the multiple slides to select all slides, then click the checkbox for ICE to insure that all slides are processed by ICE. You won't find this in the documentation or on Epson's website. I spent time figuring out why all 4 slides weren't being processed by ICE (I thought the unit was defective at first because only the first slide, which is selected by default, was being processed by ICE), so now you know without spending the time I did. I have used the scanner for photographs and documents, and have converted articles to editable text, all with no problems and excellent results. Still, slides/film is where it shines, thanks to ICE.

I just purchased this scanner - primarily to scan my 1000+ slides. At first, I was a bit reluctant because this model is brand new to the market and I was concerned about those inital bugs. But I know that Epson makes a good product so I took the chance. And am I glad that I did. It has some outstanding features:
1. Very simple to set-up and then operate. I scanned my first photo within 30 minutes of unwrapping the package. No problems with the software and the on-line User's Manual is really easy to follow.
2. Very fast scanning. The scan (including preview) of photos is unbelievably fast. But I was really surprised at the speed of scanning slides. A normal scan (without using Digital ICE correction) of 4 slides took less than 5 minutes. Compared to some of the other products, I've been reading about this is lightning speed.
3. Very quiet. When scanning photos, you can barely hear it. A little more noise when scanning slides, but certainly not bothersome.
4. Offers 3 modes to choose from - Auto, Home, and Professional. The Auto is the easiest and results in a very good photo. The Home and Professional offer a number of correcting features (more with the Professional mode). I am an intermediate Photoshop user and the Professional mode was as close to using an editing software as I've ever seen. The scan time slows down a bit when you use these correcting tools, but again - no big deal). Once I get the hang of it, I'm sure it will speed up the amount of time I will need with Photoshop.
5. Digital ICE is fantastic! This feature is used when only scanning film or slides. I first scanned slides without using it. The waulity was very good, but my slides are almost 30 years old so there was enough noise (mostly dust)and fade in them to be noticeable (something I was resigned to fix in Photoshop). I then scanned them using ICE and was amazed! The noise was completely gone and the colors were remarkably restored. The Photoshop work is going to be a piece of cake.
6. The price is unbelievable for what you get. I've seen scanners costing much, much more that aren't nearly as good as this one.
In summary, Epson has come up with a real winner. I really can't find anything negative to say. If you're looking for a quality scanner at a great price, look no further. This is the one!

Initially I was disappointed in this scanner. I was getting artifacts in my scans: posterizing, strange banding (like an old dot matrix scanner) and scans above 2400dpi didn't seem to have any additional detail. For a while I was convinced the optical resolution was 2400 instead of the advertised 6400.

Eventually I discovered that the Epson software sucks. I would recommend only using the Color Restoration (which seems to be first rate oddly) and Digital Ice options. Everything else seemed to ruin the photos upon close inspection. You will need to make any adjustments in photo shop.

In addition to this, the software is difficult to use. It has an option to save your scanning settings -- but it doesn't work (on OSX at least). I have to set the option manually for every scan. When you preview your scan, sometimes it only selects one photo when you mean to change the settings for them all. Between these two problems, I find myself scanning photos with the wrong settings on a regular basis. As a SW Engineer myself -- this is inexcusable.

Some people have complained the scanner is slow -- it is -- but if you compare specs it seemed to be in line with other scanners of this price.

Despite these problems I give the scanner 4 stars. I own a Canon scanner and the software is *far* worse *and* the image quality sucks, so Epson wins by default: Marginal Software and excellent image quality seem to be a winning combination.

I primarily picked up this scanner because I want to digitize my photos via their negatives. I was also pleasantly surprised by some of the other things that I can do with this scanner as well. But first: putting it together.

It's fairly easy to set up the scanner. Simply take it out of the box, plug in the plug to power the top of the unit (if you're using this to scan negatives, you'll need this backlight, for everything else you can keep it unplugged), plug in the power cord and get the USB ready. Note: there is a lock that covers the USB, probably to help protect it if you were going to be traveling a lot with you scanner (who would do that, I don't know, it's too big for easy travel), so you will probably have to slide that over so you could access the USB port. Be sure to take off all the blue tape, both outside of the unit as well as on the inside cover of the top. Also note that the inside top cover has a lock as well; this is for the scanner head, and you may have to unlock it prior to actually scanning (I did).

Before plugging in the USB to my computer, I installed the various driver and application components on the CD. This actually took a lot longer than expected. I have a fairly fast PC with a 52X ROM, and it took close to five minutes to install the various applications (Creativity Suite, FineReader 6.0 Spirit (an OCR program), the scanning application and the User's Guide). There is also an accompanying CD with Adobe Photoshop Elements (4.0 for Windows, 3.0 for Mac), but as a Photoshop CS3 user, I didn't bother to install this.

Registering the product is fairly easy. The unit's ID can be found on the back left of the unit. Be warned that you will be taken to a Web page offering a discount on an unrelated product with a big download button; you don't actually need the product and don't need to download more stuff.

Since I picked this primarily for scanning negatives, this was what I first tried with the unit. The scanner comes with two holder plates, and you can do 35mm film negatives and slides on one plate, and medium film on the other. I was scanning 35mm color negatives, and so I placed them in the appropriate holder and snapped on the top of the holder. Scanning the negatives straight away is fairly straightforward. You simply press the scan button on the front of the unit. This will start the Epson Scan application, and you'll be able to set various things that will allow you to get the best scan possible (more on this below).

I'm going to take a break here and detail the error I made in my first attempt to scan negatives so that you, kind reader, do not make the same mistake. After putting the negative holder on the glass, I removed the reflective back from the top of the unit to expose the light area (fairly simple to remove it and put it back on, even has a handy little handle at the top, too). What I didn't notice was that each section of the holder has a letter corresponding to where you should place the tab on the corresponding indent on the unit. 35mm negatives use the "A" section, and I had placed the holder on the "C" section. I kept getting an error message saying that it couldn't see that there was a document to scan. This confused me for a bit, and I wound up using the Home and Professional modes to see if I could get my negatives to scan. When I had unchecked the thumbnails feature for preview, I saw that only the slides area was being scanned. I then realized my error, and adjusted the position of the holder on the tab indents accordingly. The top unit only has a small glass area for the top light, and so the scanner, obviously, will only scan that small area. You can actually see this in the photograph of the unit on the Amazon page. Once I corrected my error, I had no problem scanning my negatives.

Back to the Epson Scan application. There are three options for you to choose from: Auto, Home and Professional. Auto simply auto-detects the type of document you are trying to scan and uses default settings to produce the preview of the document. Home and Professional are for photos and negatives. The difference between the two is that Professional provides you with more options to choose from so that you can get the best scan you require for your needs. Unless you're into heavily working your photos, your best bet is to go with the Auto feature.

Scanning photos and documents is also quite easy. You need to make sure that the reflective piece is on the top of the unit. This will also ensure that your document does not move around on the glass. Scanning, again, is simple as pressing a button.

I wanted to try out FineReader with this unit, as well as the PDF button. For FineReader, I loaded up the program, and pressed a button within it (Scan), to get the document scanned and loaded into FineReader. I was easily able to get the OCR to work nicely with the document without problem.

For PDFs, I simply pressed the PDF button. This brought up a different PDF-specific application with a different dialog than the scanning application. Because the unit does not have a feeder, you will have to manually scan individual pages yourself. Creating the PDF then requires you to simply press the finish button; the document is then placed in your My Pictures directory if you are a Windows user. It would be nice to be able to state where you want the file to save, but that's a minor flaw.

I also attempted to import a scan within Photoshop. I've done this before with other scanners, and Photoshop had zero issues with the scanner application, and everything worked smoothly.

There is a third button for email, by the way, however, I don't have email set up on my machine and so I did not test this feature out.

I'm very pleased with this product. I found the scans to be quite sharp, and the scan process to be intuitive. I can see a novice with scanners not having too much of a problem with this unit, save for the holder issue I discussed earlier.

A few reviews mentioned a weakness of this scanner was that it was slow. I however had absolutely zero issues with how long it took to scan in fact it is extremely fast on my machine (under 8 seconds for a 4X6 on 600 Res)even when using the digital ice technology and other enhancement options (under 15 seconds). The scanner does a beautiful job and everything I have scanned so far has been great.

Can also be used to scan directly into Photoshop CS2 which is a huge benefit when doing lots of older pictures that need restoration work. Film scans looked good, not great, but it does offer high quality film scans considering this is not an independent film scanner.

I personally liked the software that came with the Epson, very easy to use. Some people mentioned that settings did not remain in place when scanning multiple photos which is incorrect. If you set the scanner options the way you want, there is a check box that says reset settings after each scan. Uncheck that and your ready to go!

The Epson V500 can scan multiple images at once and separate them into their own files, another huge advantage when using CS2. I did not use the supplied copy of Adobe Elements and I strongly recomend not using it because it is very limited in what enhancements you can do to your photos.

All in all, this is a great scanner. Very powerful and fantastic results. Works wonderful in Vista and is extremely fast depending on your setup.

With thousands of B/W film negatives (2-1/4" square, 35mm and half-frame 35mm) and an equal number of 35mm color slides, I was mainly interested in how well this scanner would handle such transparent media. The answer is: very well! Scanning is still tedious, of course, as only 4 slides or 2 medium format negatives can be scanned with each pass, but the results are excellent. I've got many hours of work ahead of me, but it's great to know that I'm not compromising on the quality of the output.

The color quality and speed of this scanner is amazing. The actual scan speed is about double that of Epson's previous Perfection scanners.

This is an amazing scanner. It adapts its light for the best color rendition on almost any surface. In my experiments it handled matt, glossy, and highly reflective surfaces without any problems.

The one problem I have had is installing the drivers on my twenty inch intel Mac. I've been unable as yet to get the front panel buttons to work. I'm sure that Epson will come out with the new install software soon.

I have been using scanners now for twenty years, the color rendition of this scanner matches some of the best I've ever seen.

I researched slide and film scanners for quite a while. This came out to be the best product for money on the market in terms of features, specs and other reviewers on a lot of web sites. The install went without a problem. Software installed with no glitches. Scanned in a bunch of slides, even the old poorly maintained ones came out great ( I'm talking 50 year old slides!). With my Canon, these old ones were so covered in dust as to be almost unusable. ICE did a great job cleaning these up. Loved how it took the 4 slides and automatically created 4 seperate files. NO CROPPING!

If I have any knocks, it would be the included Photoshop Elements version 4 software. Other scanners are shipping with version 5. Epson went a little cheap here. A hard copy manual would be really nice addition. Instead, you have an "online help system". I really prefer a book.

Final recomendation.... Look no futher unless you have a lot more money to burn, this is the product. Buy it.

Installing the V500 is a snap, and the scans it generates are excellent. So why am I returning it after just a day? It's too slow by a longshot, for me at least. You might have better luck or more patience.

Plain scans (no dust removal, no ICE) of 35mm negatives (24-bit color, 3200dpi) took 15 minutes each, not 2-3 minutes, like many people report from similar scanners.

The V500 scans paper or photos faster, but still not as fast, and with no better results, than my 1999-vintage HP6100C, including warm-up time for the HP lamp.

From reports on the web, it looks like other Epson scanners have similar problems - they work well for some users but are horribly slow for others. I'm apparently one of the others. Because I didn't find any happy endings for the unlucky owners, I'm not tempted to spend more time troubleshooting. My scanner is going back.

Here are some more details: a preview alone of film took anywhere from 30 seconds to more than 2 minutes. During that time, like during a full scan, Windows Task Manager shows the Epson Scan program using 99% of the CPU and loads of I/O, but not too much memory (over 2GB of RAM remained available).

There could a fix, but I checked for software and driver updates, and all the Epson support site suggested was that I scan with lower resolution. The computer has good specs: XPSP2 Pro, 3GHz Pentium 4 (HT disabled), 3GB RAM, unfragmented SATA drive with lots of space, 256MB GeForce 6800 video, and nothing else on the USB 2.0 hub with the scanner. Epson technical support is only open during regular business hours M-F.

When I read the poor reviews here on Amazon, I was hesitant to purchase this scanner. I have had the scanner for 2 days now and I have done about 15 scans -- all of which have been medium format negative film (color and b/w). I am importing directly into Photoshop CS, scanning 6"x6" at 300 dpi.

So far, I have been happy w/the speed of the scans and scan quality, especially considering the price of the scanner. 6x6 at 300 dpi w/no ICE takes about 1 to 1.5 min to scan. If I turn on the ICE feature, it seems like the scans take about 2.5-3.5 min. My first attempt w/ICE came out poorly b/c I was scanning a black and white negative, I later found out that ICE does not work for black and white negs on the Epson site. I tried ICE again today with color negatives and it worked well -- no banding, mystery marks, etc.

Only complaint so far - as noted by another reviewer - is that the negative carriers are flimsy and feel very cheap.

From my experience, I give the V500 a thumbs up.