Umax Astra 3450 Scanner

by UMAX

Product Details

Product Manual [3.97mb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 11 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00004YMGY
• Item model number: 3450
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 4, 1999

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

The Umax Astra 3450 scanner offers 42-bit internal color density, 14 bitsper channel, and resolutions from 600 x 1,200 dpi to a maximuminterpolated 9,600 x 9,600 dpi. Single-button operation expedites scanning,copying, optical character recognition, and e-mailing of images. Engineered for Mac and PCs, the UmaxAstra 3450 is designed to appeal to Web designers and graphics artists.

The Astra 3450 has a built-in transparency cover, enabling you to scanslides and transparencies up to 4 by 5 inches in size. The 3450provides image scalability to scan and enlarge slides and other media, andit also has a batch scanning function. The Intelligent Image Process Engine(IIPE) evaluates the correct scanner settings for many types of images,providing fast, untroubled scanning at high speeds. All it takes to produce an 8.50-by-11-inch color image at 300 dpi is 24 seconds, withscaling from 1 to 1,000 percent in 5 percent increments. IIPE also auto-crops image areasand can correct the orientation if the source image is off center.

With 3450's hot swappability, you can connect or disconnect the scannerwithout restarting the system. The compact and lightweight unit includesAdobe Photoshop LE, OmniPage LE OCR, and Presto! PageManager software forenhancing, modifying, and organizing your images. Umax backs the Astra 3450with a year of technical support and extended support hours.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A huge disappointment, February 16, 2001

By 

DIpan "dipan" (Chennai, Tamil Nadu India) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Umax Astra 3450 Scanner (Office Product)

If you are looking for great quality transparency scans using this sleek flatbed, you will be hugely disappointed. All the scans that I did for my slides were lacking in contrast, and lost significant amount of colour depth. More over, because of the lack of high optical resolution (I scanned at 1200 - the max optical resolution offerred by this scanner) the images even look slightly unfocussed !

The preview and scan times are also too long. An average preview takes 3 minutes per slide (forget the 7 secs preview promised on the brochure - I never realised seven second even while scanning a colour photo at 300 res), and an average scan between 6-9 minutes.

Scanned colour photo images came out slightly better - but the cost - equivalent images can also be had out of scanners about half the cost of this one !

The scanner is well packaged with all the software I needed, the hardware did not give me any trouble while installing, the scanning software (vistascan) works well without crashing my PC.

My reco - look for a better product. And if you really want good transparency scans - I guess it is better to go in for a dedicated transparency scanner

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Versatile Scanner, April 1, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Umax Astra 3450 Scanner (Office Product)

I've had this scanner for about 8 months now, with good results. The only minor issue I had came as a result of upgrading from Mac OS9.0.4 to 9.1, but I simply needed the updated driver that was on the Umax website to fix that. I use this daily with Photoshop 6 and I'm able to produce consistent results without incident, which is a big plus. The transparency adapter is not suitable for scanning tons of slides, but it does very nicely for the occasional negative, slide or positive film (4"x5" max size). I have found that it is extremely versatile and produces excellent results considering its flexibility. It allows me to say "yes" when the client says "can you do this" since I can throw just about eveything at it.

If you need a versatile scanner to produce good quality without spending a fortune, this is a good choice.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Thumbs down, December 31, 2001

By 

David Lari (Charlotte, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Umax Astra 3450 Scanner (Office Product)

This scanner's flaws... hmm... where to begin. First, the driver GPF'd if I didn't have the scanner powered on during boot up. So, I always had it powered on when the computer was on. Then there developed a problem with the scans. I'd get bands of red hue in parts of the scan. Even when I rescanned, the bands appeared in the same spots.

As was stated by other reviewers, forget the transparency option. The quality of transparency should be higher since, first it is not a reflective scan and secondly, it is from a first generation source (a negative) rather than a second generation source (a print). But the transparency feature on this scanner is very, very, very bad.

All of this was rendered moot when the scanner failed completely. The power light was not even coming on. After investigation, I discovered a resistor on the main circuit board had begun to turn brownish black and melt. Don't know if this was a flaw in a component or a flaw in the design, but I didn't want to try to fix it and then have it burn my house down if it was a design flaw. So it's in the dumpster now.

I'll go back to Microtek or to HP for the replacement.