Customer Reviews

Epson Expression 1640XL Special Edition Scanner

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I think this is a fabulous scanner. I'm the curator for a photographic website ...and I've run over 4000 11"x14" photographs through mine with no problems. I use ULead's PhotoImpact 6 for image processing (TIF to JPG) - it's the only program that allows macros - when you're doing 4000 scans with several manual steps the macros are indispensible. I can't say I'm looking forward to scanning the next 4000 photos, but I sure know this scanner can do the job.

At 400 dpi it is fast (40 seconds for 14-bit greyscale 11"x14" scan) and very quiet. I added a SCSI hard drive to get the 50 MB TIF files to save to disk on my NT system in 2 seconds.

The sample size (14-bit B&W or 42-bit Color), resolution and Dmax are unmatched until you spend over $10,000.

Add the Epson 1280 printer for the best photo output.

This scanner is an excellent purchase for an ad agency or design house looking to improve their color. Right out of the box, this scanner has excellent color reproduction, and the 3.6 DMax grabs excellent detail in the shadows. Our agency... has a client roster of many large agribusiness firms, and this scanner grabs onto individual hairs in even the blackest Black Angus cattle.

The Epson TWAIN software handles USM and de-screening like some of the higher-end scanners, but it lacks precise controls for those features.

Batch scanning is one of the strengths of this scanner, with multiple marquee selection as easy as click and drag, and one-button batch scanning.

This scanner offers one-button capture(Windows only), network scanning and an Automatic Document Feeder option, but we have not explored those options in our workflow.

I wasted no time returning this scanner. I have eventually settled on a Microtek 4600. The Epson is sleek appearing, lightweight, fast. But fast is no good when the results are unuseable. The Epson software doesn't permit you to preset what you want to scan and whether or not to push more light to it, or less. It defaults to amateur settings and the results might thrill someone who's never used a scanner before, but anyone who has used one for graphics work of any kind, will find it unworthy. The factory is impossible to get hold of either through email, or telephone. In essence the software is lousy and the support is nil. Back it went.