Umax Astra 3450 Scanner Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)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

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The Umax Astra 3450 scanner offers 42-bit internal color density, 14 bitsper channel, andresolutions 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.Allit 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.

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