First, this unit does a superb job of scanning both slides and film, so that part worked out very well. At first, I scanned at 4800 dpi, but after a bit, realized that 3600 dpi was more than enough resolution for most pictures. People have said that the carrier is flimsy, but it wasn’t a problem. Tip — when scanning a lot of slides, tape the left and bottom sides of the carrier to the scanner chassis (not the glass). You can quickly drop slides into the slots and later remove them, without the carrier shifting.

A lot of people were put off by the Epson software, and suggested Vuescan. I demoed Vuescan, and wasn’t impressed. Why spend a bunch of time modifying the image before the scan, when it is so much easier to make adjustments later in Photoshop 7 (supplied with the scanner)? All I really want to do when scanning is to get a decent version of the image, minimizing clipping, etc., without investing a lot of time. I also like the way Epson auto-cropped the pictures for me.

After some frustration, I hit on method for using the Epson software effectively:

1) Don’t use “Unsharp mask” when scanning. Use Photoshop’s version later.
2) Select all the pictures and apply “Auto Exposure”. This fixes the colors, but does a lot of high and low clipping.
3) The images will now look much more like real pictures, but need a bit of work.
4) Select a pic and zoom it. Select “Histogram Adjustment”. See the top graph? Note that the left and right sliders are too far in toward the middle, so information is being clipped.
5) Before making any changes to the sliders, look at the middle graph. It will usually have a bit of a dip (tending toward the bottom right). Remember what it looks like.
6) Now, go to the top graph, and move the top and bottom sliders out, until they are just outside the black area. You have now eliminated the clipping, but your now picture looks terrible. Note that the curve in the middle graph has dipped way to the bottom-right.
7) Move the center slider to the left, while looking at the curve in the middle graph. Remember how it used to look? Try to make the curve look like it used to, with the same little dip toward the bottom-right.

That’s it! Go to the next image and do the same thing. Once you get the hang of it, each picture takes about 5 seconds.

The nice thing about this technique is that you don’t even have to look at the picture while you’re doing it. Guard against a tendency to make a dark picture too bright by overdoing the correction. Remember, you’re better off fixing the image in Photoshop. Meanwhile, you’ve got an picture that’s viewable now, and that still has all the information you’ll need to make it a great picture later.

Once I figured this out, and unleashed the V600 to do its thing, the rest is history….