Epson Perfection V500 Photo Scanner

This photo scanner works well and makes digitizing photos easy, thanks to the built-in and bundled software. It has a big footprint, but if you have a lot of photos, slides, and negatives to digitize, and space is not an issue, this is a good value for the money.

This scanner brought with it the promise of me getting rid of the box of old photos (and photo negatives) that I’ve been dragging around for years. The first thing I did was to put two negatives into the included negative holder, load it into the scanner, and press the start button. The plastic holder is a little flimsy but easy to put in the proper location (the negatives have to be in the center of the scanner), but I got several error messages until I switched from Auto Mode to Professional Mode (there is a third mode, Home). The holder can also accept four slides.

Negatives and photos scanned nicely and the scanner software has some basic tweaks such as color restoration and Digital ICE technology that removes dust and scratches well enough for most prints. Epson has included Adobe Photoshop Elements as well, which promises to keep you busy if you have a lot of time and old photos to restore. Also bundled into the software package is ABBY Fine Reader, which does optical character recognition. The scanner can scan direct to PDF or e-mail with a single press of a button.

The scanner works quickly for most resolutions though it has to make multiple passes if you use Digital ICE. If you’re planning on really high resolutions, be prepared to wait a few minutes, but unless you’re a professional photographer there’s little need for scanning beyond 2400 dpi.

More paper instructions would be better than searching the online directions, which didn’t answer all my questions. The scanner is more than 18” long and almost 11” wide (t has almost the same footprint as my all-in-one) but can only scan images up to 8.5x11 and there’s no built-in stitching tool, so you’ll have to use Photoshop Elements if you need to stitch two scans together. The scanner has an optional automatic document feeder that would make it more useful as an office tool