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EPSON Perfection 4870 PHOTO Scanner Review: There Is No Limit to Perfection! (page 10)

Category: Other

by Sergey Samarin

[ 05/25/2004 | 12:17 PM ]

Image Adjustment

The last icon serves for adjusting the color balance of the image, if it is somehow shifted.

The Adjustment section contains the following functions:

• The Unsharp Mask filter has with three levels (Low, Medium and High). Its activation makes the final scan blurry.
• The Descreening filter offers four presets. This filter is intended for a high-quality scanning of magazine sheets and allows scanning with definite parameters of the raster linage of the original. There are four modes available: Newspaper (85lpi), Magazine (133lpi), Fine Prints (175lpi) and General. The last parameter is default and chooses the optimal parameters for the selected resolution. For example, take a look at the following two scans:

A scan of a magazine sheet without application
of the Descreening filter

A scan of a magazine sheet with the Descreening filter
and a linage of 175lpi

• The Grain Reduction function with three levels (Low, Medium and High) appears in the Adjustment section only after you choose the mode of scanning transparent originals.
• The Color Restoration function may help in application to faded snapshots that have lost their original color. You should be aware though that this function sometimes results in unreal, unnatural coloring.
• The Dust Removal function with three levels (Low, Medium and High).
• Digital ICE is a system of hardware and software tools for retouching the image during the scanning process.

Besides the scanning program, the CD you receive with the Perfection 4870 contains several exclusive utilities for making your interaction with the device easier. You can launch the programs as you do any other software, but you can also do it with the programmable Start button on the face panel of the scanner. By the way, the designers chose the right place for the button as it is on the level with the case – you can’t press it accidentally. This button starts the EPSON Smart Panel by default, but you can reprogram it to launch any of your favorite programs. I guess this button is better assigned copying of documents and sending them to the printer without launching any applications.

The Smart Panel helps you make up your mind as to
what you want from the scanner

The Smart Panel is a nice place for doing all scanning tasks like copying, scanning for the Web or into a file, or into an application or whenever you wish.

Copy utility

There are many exclusive utilities with a user-friendly interface that EPSON has parceled for the user – I just can’t describe them all in a single article. Just take a look at the interface of the Copy Utility which copies the look of the LCD display of a copier machine.