P3D RE: Scanners and archive

["randlov" <randlov@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,
I have had a HP PhotoSmart scanner for one year now, and have been quite
happy with the scan quality. It scans 35 mm mounted colour slides, 35 mm
negatives (colour and b/w) up to 2400 DPI, 30 bit and prints (127 x 179 mm)
300 DPI.
At 2400 DPI a slide gives files at 30 Mb (tif) or 1-2 Mb (jpg), so for most
uses a reduced resolution is preferred.
It comes with a SCSI card and user-friendly intuitive software and
unproblematic installation. However, there are serious drawbacks. Chaining
another scanner to the SCSI card gave me lots of problems (I couldnít even
install a HP flat bed scanner with the PhotoSmart).
More serious, the HP software does not allow batch scanning or scans strips
of unmounted slides.
Few weeks ago I finally found some third party software, which does the job.
from http://www.hamrick.com you can download some software ñ VueSmart ñ
which allows both batch scanning and scanning of unmounted slides. VueSmart
has to be installed with a registered version of VuePrint (40$, also from
Hamrick) in order to work without a watermark in the picture.
Now about 3D photos and PhotoSmart: Photos in Realist mounts can be scanned
in the slide mode, scanning R and L separately. However, the mount must not
be more than 2 mm thick.  Most cardboard mounts work fine, but RBT mounts
are out of the question. Scanning strips of unmounted 3D slides is not a
problem either. I did run some tested trying to scan both R and L in the
slide mode without success, but I donít think this is problem, because you
donít want a scan with two pictures separated with lots of black space. More
likely you want to joint the R an L picture next to each other for viewing
on the screen or to transform them into a anaglyptic picture. I use Paint
Shop Pro 5 for this job.
You can see examples of these scans on
http://hjem.get2net.dk/stereoskopklubben/eindex.htm the home page for the
Danish Stereoscopic Club.
Peter



------------------------------