Customer Reviews

HP Scanjet 4890 Photo Scanner (L1952A#B1H)

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

If you intend to use the scanner for digitizing 35mm slides, be aware that this scanner has some problems. If you load the slide holder with 16 slides, the preview scan may only recognize 8 or 10 of these, and you have to try to manually recover the others. This may or may not be successful. This is especially a problem with slides that are relatively dark, but the same slides were scanned without difficulty by my old Epson scanner.

A second major problem is that the preview scans present as tiny thumbnail images which are too small to properly evaluate or modify using image editing software. I could find no way of enlarging the thumbnails, and the online HP technician confirms that there is no way to enlarge them. I regard this as a serious problem. At least for me the scanner does not function satisfactorily as a slide scanner, (the principle reason for which I bought it), and I have returned the unit.

I really need an HP scanner because that is the only brand that does a good job on 3-D objects. My old HP 5300-C scanner was a wonderful device with great software. I finally wore it out after 5 years and 100,000 scans.

The 4890 was the only HP I could get my hands on. As far as I can tell, the scanner works great, but the software is a DISASTER! You can not set up this scanner to scan the same area over and over again without wasting a great deal of time doing a preview and setting your scan area each and every time. What this means is that there are now two stepst to scanning an item rather than one. This is not trivial as it more than doubles the amount of time needed to scan an object, a very serious flaw if you have a lot of scanning to do.

I went to HP's live chat to ask if I could use the old 5300c software to run this unit, but was told that would not work. If you only have to scan an item once in a blue moon this scanner will work fine for you as the time wasting software will not impact you very badly, but if you do a large amount of scanning, you must avoid this scanner due to the incredibly poorly written and inefficient software. Unfortunately, due to the amazingly bad software, this unit is going back for a refund.

On a side note, unlike other reviewers, I had no problem loading the software and getting the scanner up and running.

Another complaint about this scanner is that it is actually a bit slower than the five year old 5300c model. It hesitates briefly several times during the process of scanning. The difference in scan time is not great, maybe an extra 10 seconds per page, but combined with the disasterous software issue it all adds up to a lot of wasted time.

Again, the software is so bad that this has to go back for a refund I am sad to say. I had high expectations for a $200 scanner from HP after having such great success with my prevoious one.

Don't by this scanner if you expect anything close to 4800 dpi.

I bought this scanner with the intention to scan my slides.

I was not able to get the resolution I expected from a 4800 dpi scanners.

The result was only marginally better than the result I got

by projecting the slides and taking images using my 3 MPix digicam.

By using the "slanted edge" method I measured a resolution

that rather looked like a 1200 dpi scanner.

Also when using the slide adapter the result become even

worse since the slides become more out of focus.

Got no help from HP support. The reaction to my measurements

was basically "that's the way it is"

Also: The software user interface is kludgy and hard to work with.

This is not what I expected from HP, my previous experience of

HP-products is quite good.

I bought this scanner to digitise my old slides. The scanner however cannot do the job : the scanned slides are out of focus (even more with the slide adapter) and the colours are dreadfull (blacks). These cannot be corrected in Photoshop.

The software is also not userfriendly (selection and deselection of frames, frame selection not corresponding with final scan, settings that change in between scan...). I used a cheap Afga scanner before that had much better scanning software...

Scanning one slide with 4800 dpi resolution takes about half an hour...

My advise : do not buy this high resolution scanner if you intend to use it for scanning slides and films...

I just bought this scanner today to replace a 5 year old SUPER great HP6300C scanner that broke.

I had purchased an Epson 4490 and what a P.O.S. that was. It never did work...made a terrible racheting sound on my first scan and Best Buys told me it was defective. It was cheap - light and felt like it was made out of cardboard! Well, anyway I today bought this HP - which I should have to begin with, but I read bad reviews on it and good on the Epson. Well, just like you can't believe critics on movies (when they say bad - it is good, etc), you can't believe some of these reviews on the HP scanner since I found the scanner to be great with all the same features of my old one. My only complaint is that it takes more steps to complete now than the exact same scanning I used too make on my old 6300C, but not much. Why HP had to tinker with the Precision Scan Software of the old 6300C is beyond me! The 4890 is quiet, and fairly quick and makes good scans of photos - which is why I bought it.

Software is easy to use, but not as quick in the preview mode as the old 6300C. A little clunky there, but still works well. I like being able to alter the scanned image with all the color - sharpness - contrast tools BEFORE saving it. Plus, I have it saved to Adobe Photoshop just in case there is more tweaking.

All I wanted to say is this is a nice scanner! I even got on line and had a live chat with a woman from HP and she helped answer some questions. Good Job HP with the tech support. Don't buy that crappy Epson...go with HP. This makes my 3rd HP scanner in a little over 10 years. I use the scanner ALOT. Sure got moneys worth out of the other 2. I scan thousands of photos each year - sell them on eBay.

i mainly bought it to scan slides. i wondered why the other reviewers said it was slow, now i know: it scans it once for preview and you get 20 dime size photos and you can select all or deselect certain ones or ones that are too dark, you must indivdually select to include in the final scan. then you hit scan and it scans 20 times, one pass for each slide, if your lucky. half the time it stops and you get a message that something is wrong with the template that holds the 20 slides, well there is nothing wrong with the template! so you start all over again but you must go to preview and deselect the ones you have already scaned or else you will get duplicates. it's cheap and the results are good but it's frustrating to use.

This scanner is a major disappointment. Scanned color slides are out of focus and too soft to enlarge beyond 4X6 prints. 35mm and 2.25X2.25 Scanned negatives contain distracting/ugly halos around the edges of ALL highlights that turn enlargements into waste paper. Only 4X5 negatives seem to live up to this scanner's reputation. Smaller B&W negatives invariable show what looks like disturbing pre-exposure in the shadows. This turns prints into more waste paper.

I have an extensive collection of 1970s professional sports negatives I planned to scan and print. Thus far, I've succeeded in getting nothing near the quality of straight prints from the orginal negatives. I permanently dismantled my darkroom some years ago and switched entirely to digital. My scans are so inferior I'll need to turn over any negatives I finally decide to enlarge to a professional lab.

I bought this scanner primarily for use in digitizing artwork- I paint and draw a lot and also self-publish books, postcards, and posters. Although this scanner works well for scanning medium scale artwork at high resolutions, with excellent color capture, and crisp detail, the real surprise came when I decided to scan some old papers I'd written in college. The 4890's software program offers a text setting, and the option of scanning directly into MS Word, or Adobe Acrobat, or TextEdit with OCR applied- when I selected each of the three options mentioned, the results were the same. Fast, accurate scanning, with nearly perfect word recognition, and opened automatically in the target application! With a minimal amount of text correction, all my thesis papers, and research projects from my college days are now digital, fully editable, and printable! I've dealt with some clunky OCR software in the past, and the simplicity of the Iris software bundled with this scanner is a dream come true!

This scanner is a disappointment. Scanned color slides (mostly fuji sensia 100) are out of focus, too soft and far too blue. It certainly doesn't live up to my expectations. Scanned documents and pictures are of a better quality.

After a failed attempt at replacing my workhorse 5370C with the 4070 Photosmart HP (which gets the colors too birght and has low-featured software), I am finally able to move forward with the 4890 for my very specific application (scanning stamps from the front and the back-latter for watermarks and placing them on a web site: somestamps dot com). The 2400 dpi in the 4070 is a little blurry; not here, the 4800 dpi is great. The great improvements here are several:

1. Accurate colors (just like the 5370C, but not the 4070)

2. Clean scans at high resolution

3. A backscan that is part of the scanner (no more playing around with the backscan device over the stamps and missing an edge of a stamp)

4. Select each stamp individually and let the scanner scan a dozen stamps each to its own file from a single load on the scanning glass (anyone who has scanned thousands of stamps knows why this one is such a great improvement).

5. write to a directory of your choice

6. fast, really fast