Epson Perfection 4490

You could argue that Epson might be trying to oversell with the name of this scanner – “perfection”, however for the lower end of mid-range priced scanners it does do a fantastic job. This scanner is really set up for people who wish to transform their photo and side collection into digital photos.

Epson have used ICE technology with the Perfection 4490. This technology improves the quality of the photos it scans, as it removes some of the common defects associated with older photo negatives. ICE technology will automatically remove grubby fingerprints along with any dust and dirt or scratches that are present on your negatives. Unfortunately, ICE technology won’t make photos of your 80s dress sense any better.

The Epson Perfection 4490 will scan photo negatives in at 2400 pdi in just 72 seconds, which isn’t long when you consider the high resolution it scans the photos in at, along with running the ICE technology to remove blemishes and that it scans a strip of photos in, rather than just one at a time.

As the Perfection 4490 is a flat bed scanner you can also use it to scan in other documents, such as books or important letters. This may make the Perfection 4490 more suitable for you than just a film scanner as you will still be able to benefit from it once you have digitised your photo collection.

Epson supply some useful photo editing and scanning software with the scanner, including Presto! PageManager, ArcSoft PhotoStudio and ScanSoft OmniPage SE. The Epson Perfection 4490 is Mac compatable, as well as working on all Windows operating systems from Windows 98. The scanned images will transfer quickly to your computer via a USB connection.

One of the things I really like about the Perfection is that you can use the buttons to automatically set it to scan, copy, send via email and even convert what you are scanning into a PDF file. Being able to automatically convert files (especially letters or scanned magazine articles) into PDF is really handy as the PDF format is a nice way to be able to read these sorts of files on a computer, rather than just receiving an image file.

Epson supply everything you need to start using the scanner, from all the cables as well as the film and slide holders so that you can scan your photo negatives. Even if you have all your negative photos developed, you will want to use the 35mm film scanner, rather than scanning the developed photo image. This is because you will get a much better quality digital photo when scanning the negative, rather than a developed photo.