The Epson Perfection 4990 Photo is a 4800dpi electronic scanner that features a built - in 8 - by-10 - inch transparency unit and musical accompaniment for film formats range from 35 mm to 4 - by-5 inch . Its speedy FireWire and USB 2.0 link make prompt piece of work of mellow - resolution CAT scan and , in our tests , we bump the scanner to be very sound at reproducing detail , though the coloration were a touch on the green side .
The Perfection 4990 includes tools for fixing exposure and transparencies . Digital ICE from Kodak / ASF practice a combination of built - in computer hardware and computer software to repair rips and bends in scans of photos . Epson ’s Easy Photo Fix software program is progress into the Epson Scan scanning software to restore faded color and transfer dust . The tools work well — specially for restoring colouration — helping us get an honest-to-goodness depiction from the sixties back into the correct color park , specially when it amount to cutis spirit . Flaws such as split were also less obvious after using the tools . But in one test , the shaft tried to remove elements of a foil scan that were not fault .
The digital scanner also ship with two different scanning computer software computer software : the aforementioned Epson Scan software and SilverFast SE , a “ sluttish ” rendering of LaserSoft Imaging ’s scan software . Since SilverFast SE does n’t output 48 - moment scans , we used the Epson Scan software . ( Another rendering of the scanner , the $ 599 Perfection 4990 Pro , uses the same hardware , but ships with more software , including the full interpretation of SilverFast Ai 6 , which can output 48 - bit CAT scan . )
Epson Scan has three mode to opt from : an Auto musical mode for beginners , an average grade with more scanning options , and an expert spirit level offering the most command over the scanning surgical operation .
To test the electronic scanner ’s speed , we get in touch it via FireWire and time a series of in high spirits - bit scans . compare to the other mid - level scanner we ’ve test , the Perfection 4990 was the fastest at scanning a 35 millimetre slide at 2,400dpi and with ruminative scan , it was just about as fast as others in its class .
To rank scan character , we scanned several dissimilar picture , mental test objective , slides and transparency , and print them to an Epson Stylus Color 2200 printing machine . We then compared them to scans from other scanners we tested the same mode .
Overall , the Epson Perfection 4990 perform well . The scans of our line - art figure captured a lot of detail , though they were not quite as clean as scan from Canon ’s CanoScan 9950F ( , February 2005 ) . In looking for the most accurate scans , we tried both sets of provide scanning software . We prefer SilverFast ’s contemplative CAT scan , but the Epson software did a better chore on our 35 millimeter colour slide . The colors it produced were a tad on the green side — the software was likely seek to punch up the colour a small too far . The slide scans made with SilverFast were even more oversaturated .
Macworld’s Buying Advice
The Epson Perfection 4990 Photo has lots of great included retouching software , as well as the ability to scan many sizes of transparency on its large , 8 - by-10 - in transparency unit . We detect the quality to be very good across the control panel , with colour just a touch on the green side .
Jury Tests
Scale = Excellent , Very secure , Good , Flawed , insufferable
Timed Trials
Times are in minute : bit .
