Epson Perfection v600 Photo Scanner – Quality, Versatility, Value

In today’s digital world of online social networking, email, and mobile internet access, having old photographs on slides and negatives can be very frustrating. Being able to digitize these sorts of photos can be so important for personal, and sometimes even professional reasons.

With the many options available in slide scanner, photo scanner, or film scanner, it is sometimes difficult for a consumer to choose the right machine for them. For the user looking for energy efficiency, ease of use, and great digital resolution, the Epson Perfection v600 Photo Scanner might be the best choice.

The Epson v600 offers consumers a low energy consumption choice, making this Energy Star compliant model easy on the environment and on your wallet. It also has zero warm-up time, so less time is spent waiting and more time is spent scanning. See your important photos immediately rather than wait for an outdated machine to ready itself. This feature alone would make it more energy efficient, but there’s more! This model also allows the user to scan three 6×7 or four 645 negatives at once, saving more time, and saving even more energy.

In terms of ease of use, consumers have found the Epson v600 to be incredibly intuitive. It’s easy to install, and easy to use. The new scanner is packaged with everything you’ll need, including a USB cable, so you can be uploading your photos in no time. Scanned photos are automatically converted to jpeg or tiff format in whatever size the user chooses, and deposits them safely into the My Pictures folder. No fuss, no muss. From photos to negatives, from full page copies to slides, the Epson v600 handles them all with ease.

In addition to its technological ease of use, the Epson v600 offers some very handy, one-touch use buttons right on its front. Select the PDF button and the scanner will automatically convert your document to a .pdf document, perfect for sharing form data via email. Which brings us to the second available button: e-mail. Press the email button and the Epson v600 automatically scans your item directly to email to be sent wherever you please. You can also choose to copy or simply scan the item and edit it as you see fit.

Of course, an easy to use, energy efficient scanner isn’t worth much if it can’t produce good digital quality electronic images. This is where the Epson v600 really shines. Offering a 6400 x 9600 dpi optical resolution, you’ll easily be able to print crisp, clear 8″ x 10″ photos, and sometimes up to 17″ x 22″ depending on the photo quality. Featuring DIGITAL ICE, the scanner will provide the home user with a full range of photo restoration technology. Need to remove the appearance of tears and creases from old photographs? How about dust and scratches from negatives and slides? Or maybe you’d like to restore color faded photos back to their original luster. Don’t worry – the Epson v600 can do it all!

On top of all this, your Epson v600 will also include Adobe Photoshop Elements for even greater control of your images, a built-in transparency unit, film holders for 35mm film and mounted slides, as well as 6×22 cm medium format film. The fact that documents scanned are converted to editable text is itself a reason to invest in this machine! And weighing in at only 9 lbs with outer dimensions of 11″ x 19″ x 4.6″, this scanner is a lot smaller than some you may be used to, making it an even better choice for the at-home user with little space to spare.

The only downsides that users could identify while reviewing their new machine were relatively minor. Some potential compatibility issues with some operating systems could be a concern, but these complaints were so inconsistent that it is difficult to make an overall judgment on the machine based on those users. The included photo editing software could be a bit cumbersome as well, but with Photoshop Elements included, the concerns with this were negligible. Therefore, on the whole, any user of the Epson Perfection v600 Photo Scanner has been extremely pleased with their purchase and would gladly recommend this product to any fellow photographer or individual looking to digitally preserve their precious memories and important documents.

Next slide scanner review: CanoScan 8800F