Hewlet-Packard ScanJet IIc – scanner – Hardware Review – Evaluation
Steve Morgenstern
Hewlett-Packard has once again demonstrated its technological and marketing savvy with the ScanJet IIc. This scanner successfully incorporates sophisticated hardware features, including true 400-dpi resolution and 16.7-million-color capability, with inviting software and a street price that’s well under $2,000.
With older color scanners, you had to make three passes to scan a full-color image; this not only took forever but sometimes caused color-registration problems. The ScanJet does its work in a single pass, producing sharp, attractive images. Results were impressive in both gray-scale (256 levels) and color modes.
The unusually large unit (14 inches wide by 23 inches deep) handles originals up to legal size, and HP offers an optional automatic document feeder ($695).
In its PC-compatible configuration, the HP comes with two Windows-based programs for scanning and retouching your images (you’ll have to purchase Microsoft Windows separately). The DeskScan II scanning software produces a well-balanced image from most originals without your having to tweak the settings manually at all. If you do want to fine-tune your settings, the tools for adjusting color and manipulating high-light-and-shadow balance are powerful and easy to use. You can also tailor scanner results to your system by calibrating the software to match your screen (if you have a super VGA display) and your color-output devices.
Publisher’s Paintbrush, Z-Soft’s powerful image-editing program, is included with the scanner, you use it to retouch and enhance the image manually.
The major annoyance with the ScanJet is not performance, which is praiseworthy across the board, but documentation. The single product manual, meant to cover everything from hardware installation to complex software features, is inadequate. People are expected to rely more on the extensive on-line help system, which does provide reasonably complete details.
You will find everything you need to know after a little hunting; that’s a small price to pay for a scanner that gives you this much capability at a reasonable cost.
COPYRIGHT 1992 Freedom Technology Media Group
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