Plustek 7200 or 7200i & Vuescan

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garryb59

Hi,

I'm looking to buy a scanner for my father who has a stack of old
family slides that he anta to convert to digital. We did talk about
getting them done professionally, but he's decided to have a crack
himself. He doesn't want massive blow-ups, 10"x8" would be the very
largest.

I've been looking at the Plustek 7200 and think this will probably fit
the bill, althopugh I have a question that I can't seem to find the
answer to. The 7200i is the latest version of the Plustek, with
improved features like the the dust and scratch removal features, but
would it be possible to buy the cheaper 7200 and use something like
Vuescan? Does Vuescan have a scratch clean up facility, or is this
dependent upon the hardware of the scanner?

Any input is appreciated

cheers
Garry
 
garryb59 said:
Hi,

I'm looking to buy a scanner for my father who has a stack of old
family slides that he anta to convert to digital. We did talk about
getting them done professionally, but he's decided to have a crack
himself. He doesn't want massive blow-ups, 10"x8" would be the very
largest.

I've been looking at the Plustek 7200 and think this will probably fit
the bill, althopugh I have a question that I can't seem to find the
answer to. The 7200i is the latest version of the Plustek, with
improved features like the the dust and scratch removal features, but
would it be possible to buy the cheaper 7200 and use something like
Vuescan? Does Vuescan have a scratch clean up facility, or is this
dependent upon the hardware of the scanner?

Any input is appreciated

cheers
Garry
Click to expand...
There are two kinds of scratch and dust removal.

There is the software only with works by blurring the image somewhat.

Then there is the hardware based method, the scanner has a infrared light
source which sees the dust and scratches as opaque to infrared. The software
can then identify the parts of the image that may be dust or scratches.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_cleaning

The hardware method is far better.
 
garryb59 said:
answer to. The 7200i is the latest version of the Plustek, with
improved features like the the dust and scratch removal features, but
would it be possible to buy the cheaper 7200 and use something like
Vuescan? Does Vuescan have a scratch clean up facility, or is this
dependent upon the hardware of the scanner?
Click to expand...

You're much better off with the hardware cleanup (infra-red based,
normally)
than with the software one. I have yet to see a sw cleanup that works
fine.
Nothing to do with vuescan or silverfast's abilities, just a fact of
life.

Having said that, I'd suggest you look at the 7200iSE: it has the SE
edition of silverfast - cheaper - and supposed to work with the IR
hardware cleanup. If later on you find it's not good enough, you can
always add-on vuescan: it's not THAT expensive and the reviews
I've seen seem to indicate it does a better and much faster job with
IR than Silverfast.

But take this with a grain of salt, software is a fickle thing: all you
need
is a release upgrade and bang!, there is your problem solved!

Don't buy the 7200 base model: it comes with no software and has
no IR: bad idea, no matter how much cheaper it is!
 
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