But Wait! There’s Loads More!
How absolutely frustrating it is to install new hardware, only to find it doesn’t work. Apple Mavericks (OS X 10.9) for Mac desktops reaked havoc with my old scanner and there’s still no new driver for it. I bought the Epson Perfection V370 Photo Scanner desktop scanner since I could scan slides and films on both my Mac and PC. My previous, before last scanner also went to heaven because of compatability issues as PC upgrades left it behind. Fortunately, technology continually improves and although it’s still a chore, let’s hope it’s a worthwhile and manageable one!
The drivers I needed after my initial installation were found on the Epson website and include Windows 8, Mac OS X 10.9.x and earlier versions. Scanning prints was fine in ‘Professional Mode’ as I frequently change the name or settings. After working out the slide holder and the placement of the slides in the frame I was all set and ready to go. Nothing happened………After going in circles round the online manual for a while I found some fine print which mentioned using ‘Full Auto Mode’ which is in top right hand corner. Ah hah! Success at last!
Somewhat relieved, I set to work scanning the slides to include in my photo book. Later, I also discovered that while in ‘Full Auto Mode’ you can click on customize to change the naming & file settings, where you want to save to and what type of file you want to save as. After working diligently for a few hours I scanned some scenery and wasn’t happy with the colour, marks or dust on the sky. I experimented with the colour restoration and dust removal settings and they improved markedly even though these slides are nearly 40 years old. The dust removal made a big difference and the colour restoration made me query the actual sky colour in some of my other scans too. Forgive me, but for the sake of scientific research the slide was reluctantly wiped with a lens cloth but as expected, it simply made more marks. Using ‘Dust Removal’ is a much better option. I vaguely remember slides do tend to come up bluer. This was a problem with my previous scanners as the scans didn’t look right no matter how much you fiddled with the colour settings. Now, I can see some of today’s earlier efforts are too blue and might need redoing but at least you can change colour problems in your editing programme, depending on your preferences. Overall, I am very happy with this scanner and will probably troll my way through our family slides so they are all finally digitised . I have included the gallery below to show any fellow scan enthusiasts the different results.
Explorers Tree 