Customer Reviews

Epson Perfection 4490 Photo Scanner

5 star:		(79)
4 star:		(44)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(28)

 

 

I purchased this excellent scanner after much frustration with two previous purchases which failed to perform: Canon CanoScan 4200F and the HP Scanjet 4890.

The biggest problem with scanners is not the hardware, but the software.

In the case of the CanoScan 4200F (and similar 8400 and 9950 models, which use the same software), the driver utterly fails to crop slides correctly: in the default 'auto-crop' mode, it cuts off parts of the frame but when 'auto-crop' is disabled, it fails to scan slides separately, forcing you to crop each one manually. What is worse, is that the driver does not remember your settings so you have to reconfigure every detail again, every time you scan. There are many other bugs in this driver too.

The Epson 4490, in contrast, is very sensible about cropping - it allows you to manually adjust cropping, if you like, or to disable it and simply scan each slide as a separate file, capturing the entire frame. This would seem simple enough since both the Canon and Epson scanners employ plastic slide holders to fix the position of the slides in relation to the scanner so the Epson software always knows how to reliably split multiple slides without cropping, whereas the Canon software simply gives up.

Another area where scanner software often fails is in the installation. The Epson installation procedure worked perfectly and did not even require a reboot to begin scanning. The HP 4890 installation was a complete disaster: the giant 'easy install' poster included with the scanner contradicted the installer on when to plug in the scanner: instructions explicitly said to connect the scanner prior to installing the driver, but when I actually ran the installer, it failed to connect and Windows failed to ever recognize the new hardware, even though the installer reported that I could connect the scanner later - which was not true. Even after uninstalling and re-installing and rebooting the HP driver (which took about 40 minutes), although the the scanner appeared to be recognized by Windows and was 'connected', the driver would simply hang forever when attempting to scan.

I recount this detail about the HP scanner because it is positioned very close to the Epson 4490 in terms of price and features, yet is completely unusable. In this regard, another important consideration is technical support: in the case of HP, phone support is strongly discouraged and hard to find - even if you do manage to find the phone numbers, the quality of HP support staff is abysmal, in my experience. Epson, in contrast, publishes the tech support phone numbers prominently on the instructions included with the scanner. Perhaps, Epson can more easily afford to divulge these phone numbers since products that work well require very little tech support. This made me feel quite confident with the Epson product.

Now the big payoff - scanning!
The quality of images you get is directly related to the ease of use in configuring the scanning software. Although the Epson software is not perfect, it is quite usable and powerful. It does a reasonable job of retaining configuration settings and the advanced features of 'dust removal' and 'digital ICE' image correction is very impressive.

The flaws in the software include the following.
1. The ability to 'save' settings is spotty: you cannot assign a name to saved settings; saved settings only configure half of the parameters, prior to preview - you cannot configure use of 'dust removal', 'digital ICE' etc but must manually assign these options on each scan.
2. The prefix used in assigning filenames to scanned images does not allow the valid windows filename character, '.'
3. 'Target size' parameter cannot be saved. Workaround is to use the image 'Resolution' parameter instead (resolution=2400 can be saved and is equivalent to resolution=300, target size=800%, for example).

I have only tested this scanner in scanning color slides so far.

I bought a 4490 Photo Scanner from Best Buy in Abilene, Texas last month (November 2006) in order to transfer some of my 3,000 plus slides to my computers. I paid about $200 with tax included.

I read several reviews of this scanner before deciding what to buy, and I was nearly scared away. Please don't let the nay-sayers steer you away from this scanner!

As far as the people who say the scanner makes a " grinding noise..." well, these people have not read the instructions and they did not UNLOCK the scanner safety feature after taking it out of the box after their purchase. The scanner is shipped from the factory to the store LOCKED so the internal mechanisms won't be sliding back and forth during shipment. UNLOCK the scanner and it WON"T MAKE THE GRINDING NOISE!

I originally tried to purchase a Nikon V Coolscan because I have been using Nikon products since 1976 and I LOVE NIKON (I MEAN I AM A NIKON FANATIC) but the Nikon Coolscan V wasn't available anywhere. I had to get some slides scanned in the next 48 hours for a website I needed some slides on. I was very desperate and in a big hurry so I decided on trying the 4490 Epson. I figured if I had problems, Best Buy would take it back and give me a refund. I told the sales clerk about the "bad" reviews I had seen in regard to this scanner and he advised, a full refund could be made if I wasn't happy.

Well, long story made short, I have had no problems and I am totally blown away at what this scanner was able to do with my slides, some dating back to 1961, but most taken in the late 1970s and in the 1980s.

With the built-in software (dust removal, color correction and Digital ICE) the control I have is extraordinary. In fact, I have been able to make scans that look better than the original slides (for old slides needing "tweaking.")

I HIGHLY recommend this scanner if you need to preserve your slides like I do. I am a professional photographer and my old slides (from around the world) needed to be preserved and this scanner has done a WONDERFUL job of getting them into a high-quality digital format.

As far as all the people who have complained that this scanner is slow, GIVE ME A BREAK! Scanning a slide at high resolution on any scanner takes time. Go do something else while the machine is busy. NO SCANNER CAN COPY YOUR SLIDE IN A SPLIT-SECOND... be patient!

I've scanned about 300 slides so far with this scanner and I have a few hundred more to go and I am VERY HAPPY with the end results. In fact, I am glad I didn't buy the Nikon V Coolscan because I save a bundle by purchasing the Epson. I have every reason to believe the Epson 4490 makes as good of scans as the Nikon (and I am a Nikon Loyalist using only Nikon cameras in my aerial photography business...)

The Epson 4490 Photo Scanner allows you to scan up to 6 slides at time, and if you scan all 6 at ultra high resolution using the software enhancments, it can take an hour or so. But if you simply want a standard scan of a slide, it only takes a moment, and even in the "fast-mode" the scan looks good.

This scanner is durable, attractive and takes up no more room on a desk than a regular scanner. Is it noisy? Well, does your microwave oven drive you nuts? If so, then go get some ear plugs. This scanner is much quieter than my microwave and for those people who complain of noise, I suspect they are being a little too finiky.

I love this scanner and I bet you will too. I am VERY HAPPY with my purchase and I suspect this scanner will provide years of service.

(UPDATE... January 2008)

I used this scanner on an Apple Mac Powerbook running OSX... And I recently purchased a Pentax 645N camera. This scanner doesn't have a provision to accept the film for a Pentax 645. It can take a 2 inch by 2 inch as in a Hasselblad and the larger image size of a Mamiya RB67, but not the odd size of a Pentax 645...

I have not tried using this scanner with a Windows computer.

It scans documents as good as any I have ever seen, and I am still blown away at how good the scans are of my 35mm slides, both Ektachrome and Kodachrome... Software is great and this scanner MAKES NO NOISE like other complain about... If they would unlock it, the darned thing would be quiet, but if they don't unlock it upon taking it out of the box and prior to first use, it will most likely damage the plastic gears on the slide tray and damage the unit and it will ALWAYS be noisy...

Good luck

After using my previous Epson Perfection 1640SU for about 5 years, I finally upgraded to the 4490 Photo. The scans are beautiful, and I expected the same quality workmanship that kept the 1640SU working for many years.

However, as soon as I placed a larger book in the scanner and closed the lid, two plastic tabs broke inside. The scanner made a noisy ratcheting sound and the red light started flashing.

How can the plastic break so easily? When I took the scanner apart with the screwdriver I was amazed at how cheap and thin the plastic is in this model! Epson must be really cost-cutting in their manufacturing process these days.

I searched the web to find out how to fix the scanner. I came across a post by another customer who had the exact same problem. He also broke the plastic tabs, and replaced them with a custom piece of metal.

When I removed the plastic fragments from inside the scanner, it started working again. However I am not sure how long it will last. The glass is held on to the inside with self-adhesive tape, and the glass already started to separate when I placed a heavier object on top.

This is a great scanner for high-quality photos. But it's constructed like a disposable camera. It will do fine if your scan jobs consist of single photos or single sheets of paper. But if you scan a document/book with multiple sheets consider getting a different scanner made with sturdy materials.

I hope Epson will learn that they went a bit too far with the cost-cutting on materials. I am surprised because my experience has always been that Epson creates some of the best printers/scanners.

Excellent scanner -- fast and accurate.

Software has been damaged compared to earlier releases. Email function oddly does not work with Outlook and Epson Scan is strangely crippled. Your settings can no longer be descriptively named. They come up "Setting 1" "Setting 2" etc., which is not useful.

The hardware is without fault. While not quite the dynamic range of the pricey 4990, this scanner will be useful for people looking to scan 35mm or medium format film unless they demand very high quality. For most people digitizing the shoebox collection of slides, this scanner will be fine.

I have had excellent results on reflective originals in both color and black and white. Noticeably sharper than my previous Epson scanner.

I bought the Epson Perfection 4490 scanner for one reason: scanning some old slides into the digital realm. I also have a dedicated Minolta DiMage slide scanner and an HP flatbed scanner with a slide scanning attachment. I have always found the HP good for prints but very bad at slides, and the Minolta DiMage is very good at slides but very slow. The big problem for this project is that the old slides are 70mm square frames with a 50mm square image - neither the HP nor the DiMage would scan such odd/large/square slides. A search led me to the Epson as one of very few models that can scan a wide variety of sizes of transparency.

The 4490 has the normal scanning element below the glass, plus a separate moving light element in the lid. Apparently this moves along with the scanning element when scanning transparencies. This makes the lid much thicker than other scanners, and you need to detach the white pressure pad from the inside of the lid to use the separate light source.

The 4490 comes with two plastic slide holders, one of which can be flipped over and used two different ways, so it's like having a total of three slide holders. One holder is for 35mm slides, another is for un-mounted 35mm film, and the third is for 'medium format' film. None of the holders fit the 70mm slides.

It is possible to just lay transparencies on the glass without using any of the holders, but there is a problem - the scanning software apparently detects the holder and knows from that where to look for the images. If you don't use a holder, the software does a poor job of detecting the images on odd sized transparencies. The only recourse is to turn off the auto detection feature, in which case the scanner will not do a preview scan, but will instead do a slow high resolution scan of the entire scannable area. Somewhere in that area is the image, and you will have to open it in other software and crop it. This does work, but is VERY VERY time consuming.

I found that if I used the medium format holder and laid two of the 70mm slides on top of the aperture area of that holder, with the slides touching (i.e. no gap between them), then the software usually detected both images. Since the software always assumes that images are rectangular (i.e. a non-square aspect ratio), it always starts with incorrectly placed & sized crop lines in the image preview thumbnails, requiring laborious manual adjustment of every image. Still, this is much better than any other scanner I looked at, so I cannot complain too much about this limitation - at least it gets the job done.

I ran into more issues with other software features when scanning these old slides. Sometimes the software just flat out refused to recognize certain slides, forcing me to do the full area slow manual scan with cropping done by another program - inspection of the problem slides did not turn up any reason why the software would treat these any differently from other slides. Sometimes the software would suddenly change from color to grayscale scanning for no apparent reason.

The software has two very useful features for scanning old transparencies. One is automatic color correction, and I found this to work quite well - a professional might quibble but they looked good to me. The originals had faded and tended towards a reddish cast, but the software made the colors look pretty 'normal' to my eyes. The other feature is the 'ICE' that cleans up defects, removes dust specks, etc. In most cases the ICE did a good job, but on about a quarter of my slides the ICE caused a strange result - the images (scanned to be about 1200 pixels wide) came out looking like they were instead scanned at something like 100 pixels wide and perhaps only about 16 different colors. VERY crude and primitive looking. Repeated tries at scanning these slides had the same result, so it was something peculiar to these particular images that was screwing up the the ICE algorithm. I could not detect anything odd about the pictures, though. For these, I ended up rescanning with ICE turned off, and the images then came out looking fine. I should note that with ICE turned on, the total scanning time for an image is almost tripled. I was able to scan about 10 slides every half hour with ICE turned on!

Overall, the scanner and its software worked for me and I got the job done. I recognize that the software was a bit glitchy in terms of recognizing the images because I was using a non-standard slide. Still, I think Epson would do well if it came out with an improved version of the software that handled odd sizes better.

Other reviewers mentioned that scanned slides come out looking a bit soft in focus on this scanner. I noticed the same thing, but by HP scanner does the same - only my Minolta DiMage does really crisp slide scans. So, this might be inherent in flat bed scanners used for slides. I found that it made no difference whether I placed the slides on top of the holder, placed them directly on the glass, or removed the film from the slide's cardboard frame and placed it directly on the glass - same slight fuzziness regardless. I don't think there are any optics involved when scanning with the 4490 - no lens! If I had to guess, the problem has to do with the whole nature of how flat bed scanners have to work to scan transparencies.

Others complained about noise with this scanner, but I found it to be so quiet that only the blinking LED on the front told me that anything was happening during a scan. The construction is all plastic except for the glass plate, so I guess that if you put any pressure on the plate, you might distort the plastic or break the glass. The scanning element moves just below the glass surface, so if there is any distortion of the case, I would expect mechanical scraping/grinding noises to result. I don't know if this is what happened to other people.

Overall, I would give this fairly inexpensive scanner 4 out of 5 for the machine, and 3 out of 5 for the software. I give it the benefit of being one of only a few scanners capable of doing odd sizes in the first place, so I give the whole package a 4 out of 5.

Background History:

I am an avid photographer, but don't really consider myself to be a "Professional". Over the years I have managed to accumulate several 35 mm film albums and have been waiting for a scanner that could scan them at a reasonable price. And this scanner seemed to have fit the bill. Product line scanners I looked at were HP, EPSON, Canon, and dedicated 35 mm Film Scanners ($1000+).

Evaluation on a Panoramic 35 mm (Same Photo used in all):
* Developed at a Photo Lab (Print Film Straight From Canister) - Noticeable Artifact / Flaw = 1
* 35 mm Scanned at a Dept. Store / Burned to CD - Noticeable Artifact / Flaw = 12
* 35 mm Scanned at a Photo Development Chain / Burned to CD - Noticeable Artifact / Flaw = 12
* 35 mm Scanned through EPSON Scanner - Noticeable Artifact / Flaw = Approx. 10 (w / Ice)

Dept. Store / Photo Develop Chain:
Image at 3072x2048 ($1.50 / image at their highest development setting [35mm to digital format])

EPSON Scanner Setting Breakdown:
Professional Mode / 35mm / Colour Negative Film / Batch of 8 Negatives / To JPEG Image / Unsharp Mask / Colour Restoration / Digital Ice

48 Bit / Res 4800 (6656x2495) / Digital Ice (Quality) / Time = 66 Minutes / 10 Artifacts
48 Bit / Res 4800 (6656x2495) / Digital Ice (Speed) / Time = 22 Minutes / 60+ Artifacts!!!
48 Bit / Res 3200 (4437x1674) / Digital Ice (Quality) / Time = 45 Minutes / 10 Artifacts
48 Bit / Res 3200 (4437x1674) / Digital Ice (Speed) / Time = 18 Minutes / 3 Artifacts
48 Bit / Res 2400 (1664x623) / Digital Ice (Quality) / Time = 16 Minutes / 10 Artifacts
48 Bit / Res 2400 (1664x623) / Digital Ice (Speed) / Time = 8 Minutes / 60+ Artifacts!!!
(I have no clue or reason to why the Artifacts are the numbers they are, but that's what I counted?! YES THOSE ARE the correct numbers!)

You can of course have lower resolution / smaller images, but I chose more quality like images.


Product Evaluation:

Pros: Great Dollar Value, Digital Ice, Dust Removal Option, Relatively Quiet

Cons: Cheap Flimsy Film Holder (Has no Teeth Threads which make it difficult to put in 35mm film strips that are "curled");
therefore prone to Finger prints on Negatives. Raw scanned in images are not true to the colour of the image.
Scanned in images are darker than originals.

Undecided: "Relatively" solid, Plastic Hinges / glass could be thicker (good enough for film / paper, bad idea for large books / objects)


Final Thoughts:
Since I purchased this scanner for the sole purpose of scanning my film into a digital medium, this works for me.
I don't have a problem using a photo editor such as Paint Shop Pro or Adobe Photoshop to touch up the images. Brighten them up and remove the remaining artifacts. Digital Ice is a miracle worker on scratched up negatives. You of course can use the EPSON scan software to adjust the colors / saturation / histogram / etc... but I prefer a real photo editor. It will definitely take me a while to scan all my negatives in, but once they've been scanned, that's it, Done!

For those on a budget, I recommend this as a good 35 mm Scanner. It may be slow, and you will need to use software for final touch ups, but that's what you get for a budget scanner.

Recommendation (35mm): Yes

I was debating between two Epson scanners, the 3200 and the 4800 dpi models. I was still undecided after reading the reviews amd comments. So i decided to opt for the more expensive, by comparison, 4490 model. And boy, am i glad i did. We are using it with a Mac OSX system and are very happy with the results.
My wife is a graphic designer and i am a photographer so we have discerning eyes. The quality of the scans on automatic mode (through the Photoshop plug-in) come out just fine- generally equal to the original, and often better with some tweaking.
It is one-touch simple to use in auto, yet when necessary you can use the pro mode which gives you the options you need for professional use. e.g screening, percentage and quality choices. The scanner is not slow, we scanned nearly 800 photos in a few days. The photos look great on the computer and even print out beautifully. I tried some old 35mm color negatives at the highest resolution and they printed beautifully on 8x10's. They are sharper than slides i had previously scanned on an older c. 2300 dpi Minolta film/slide scanner.l
I found the Epson software included to be perfect for our use. Tried Silverfast AI, but went back to the Epson for its ease of use. If your needs are for high quality and simplicity and you don't need or already have the high end software, then I highly recommend this 4490 scanner. It is probably as good as the more expensive 4800 dpi models, but at a much more reasonable price. I hope this helps you decide.

December 2008 update: The most recent release of the driver/utility software now works with current versions of Outlook (and Microsoft Mail for Vista users). Still no Thunderbird support, but they made progress...


Good points:
-Easy install and set-up.
-The software applications authored by other companies (Photoshop Elements, BBYY Sprint OCR and Presto BizCard) are decent to excellent.
-Very high quality TIFF scanning of photos.
-Quieter than any other scanner I've owned (this is #4).
-Fast direct to PDF scanning from a front panel button.
-Decent old/scratched/dusty photo repair capability.
-Relatively speedy processing.

Bad points:
-The EPSON-provided software is generally functional enough, but has some goofy quirks.
--MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR flaw: Under Windows XP, the front panel email button (and its associated "Attach to Email comonent of the "Epson Creativity Suite") supports ONLY Outlook Express, Outlook 2000 and Outlook 2002. If you use Outlook 2003, Mozilla or Thunderbird, this button and the application are simply non-functional. There is simply no excuse for such a limited set of supported email applications. Epson should be ashamed of itself. Worse still, this limitation is buried in the program's "read me" text file, and not addressed anyhwere in the HTML help files. Front panel buttons should be widely supported!
--The file saving location settings are not persistent and the "Full Automatic", "Professional" and "Home" modes have some very non-intuitive options for many features and for saving multiple configurations.
-Documentation issues. There is a printed setup poster. Everything else is in HTML files.

Overall: A fine piece of harwdare with excellent output. Strong affiliate/second party software. Not so strong Epson software.

Up until a few days ago, I had a six-year-old HP all-in-one printer/scanner/copier/fax. I had recently decided to scan all of our older photographs so we could find them and share them as we do the pictures taken with our digital camera, but that scanner made it a very tedious process, with fairly poor quality results. Fortunately, that printer died a couple of weeks ago. Rather than replace it with another all-in-one that might also produce less-than-stellar results, I replaced it with an Epson photo printer and the Epson Perfection 4400 scanner.

Installation was simple and easy. As a test, I printed a picture taken with our digital camera on the new printer. Then I scanned it with the new scanner, using fully automatic mode. It recognized that there was a color picture, cropped it, and sent the results to Photoshop. I didn't have to make any option selections at all. And my husband can't tell the difference between the original digital file and the resulting digital one.

Scanning three or four pictures at a time is also a breeze. Before, I had to use Photoshop's feature to separate the scanned pictures into multiple files. This scanner recognizes that there are multiple color photos and automatically sends a separate file to Photoshop for each of them. The only time this didn't work was when we didn't leave any whitespace between the photos.

Negatives were also easy to scan, even though I'd never done that before. Loading them into the negative holder was a little tricky the first time. This is primarily because of the way the film processor I used in 1997 packaged negatives, but it was still a little frustrating. Two strips of negatives can be scanned at a time, up to 12 pictures at a time. The scanner sends individual files to Photoshop for each negative. At least half the time, the quality of the copy produced from the scan was better than the lab-printed picture.

PROS:
* Quality of photo scans
* Scan negatives / slides
* Ease of use
* Integration with industry-leading apps (Photoshop)

CONS:
* Footprint is quite a bit bigger than I'm used to
* Negative holder is a little tricky

This is marketed as a photo scanner, and that's how I use it. The only text scanning I do is copies of invoices / receipts to attach in Quicken. Since these are actually pictures, I can't comment on any suitability for or compatibility with OCR applications.

I also can't comment on the manual, since I haven't read it yet.

First off I'll qualify my review by stating that I bought this scanner primarily to scan 35mm and Medium Format film. I'm also using this on a Mac (OS X Tiger) platform. I have not yet used the ABBY nor OCR software. I've scanned 35mm Slides, Color & B&W negatives, the same in medium format film, and prints and magazines.
The first one I bought worked fine for a day or two, and then made an awful ratcheting sound. It scanned negatives and prints fine, but 35mm slides had a distinct, sick color band running down the center. it went back to "Worst Buy" electronics store. After a week, "Worst Buy" finally got another one in. I lost my return receipt, and they made me feel like a criminal when I asked them to look up the receipt online which I'd bought with their store charge. "Worst Buy", nevermore. Order from Amazon!
At any rate, the second scanner seems to work beautifully with anything I throw at it. I cannot tell the difference between the 35mm scans from the Epson and my dedicated Konica Minolta Scan Dual IV. Be careful which way you put the film holders in, so that the sensor is not obscured. The Epson Mac Software could use a bit of tweaking, but it's 10x better than the crummy drivers Minolta threw away on the Scan Dual IV. Tech Heads should note that the latest version of Ed Hamrick's excellent VueScan software supports the Epson 4490, so you'lll never be without some sort of driver.
Digital ICE works as advertised, and has saved me countless hours retouching scratched and dirty negatives. I've made 13x19 prints from 35mm negs scanned on this thing and the quality holds up. You won't find a better budget scanner for film. Forget Konica Minolta which is out of business. Primefilm stinks, and Nikon CoolScan is better, but 3x more expensive and only scans 35mm.
The only downside is the spotty Epson quality control on this scanner. Mine is fine, but expect to return at least one before getting a good sample. Such is the consumer's plight in the new world economy....