Epson Perfection 3590 Photo Scanner

this company has one of the absolute best customer service departments I have ever experienced on the web...period!
They are in my top 5 retail web businesses. BUY FROM THEM WITH CONFIDENCE!

Purchased this to replace an HP Scanjet with which I was happy until it died. Reviews on CNET and Consumer Reports for this unit were solid. It installed with Windows XP SP2 without any hiccups. Scans of docs and photos are outstanding. The accompaning software is useful without being obnoxious. Holding my breath to see how it works with a Vista upgrade...

12 Dec 07 Follow-up: Scanner still working as advertised. Vista recognized it with no problems. I still recommend it.

This is the second Epson Perfection scanner I've purchased for myself and about the 15th one I've bought overall. I've never had a bad experience with Epson scanners and this one is no exception.

The scanner software (under OS X) is quite nice and there's even an Intel-native version for those of you with Intel Macs. The software includes a Photoshop plug-in that works with all OS X-native versions of Photoshop, as well as the venerable "Epson Scan" stand-alone software. The interface for both systems is identical; the only real difference is the Epson Scan app does a scan-and-save for each job, while the Photoshop plug-in gives you multiple new/untitled documents.

Color quality and consistency is very good for a scanner in this price range. The software-based descreen is actually quite excellent, allowing you to scan printed images without that nasty moire pattern. There's also a "color restoration" feature which works best on really old photographs (lightly-faded pictures don't turn out as well, but heavily faded ones turn out great). One particularly nice feature is the ability to gang up pictures on the scanner glass and scan them "all at once" into individual files.

This scanner comes with a built-in transparency scanner which makes scanning all sorts of film-based images (slides, chromes, etc) very easy. The slide adapter stores in the lid, which is a tidy little touch. I successfully scanned nearly 150 slides that were upwards of 50 years old and they came out quite good.

Unique to this scanner is an integrated motorized 35mm film scanner. A small spring-loaded trap door at the top of the lid opens up to reveal a slot where you feed your 35mm film. (According to Epson your film strip needs to be at least three frames long to correctly feed, but I've successfully gotten two frames without a problem.) Insert the film, run the scan software, and it will automatically scan each frame as its own file. The door closes again when you're finished to maintain the sleek outward appearance of the scanner.

I also purchased the photo feeder for this scanner which replaces the lid of this scanner, and gives you the ability to automatically batch scan up to about 25 photos or business cards. This is also entirely automated; insert the stack, run the scan software, and it will automatically scan each photo/card as its own file. One minor complaint: Occasionally, particularly when scanning a photograph where the top half is very light and the bottom half is very dark, the software will only scan the light part of the photo. Oddly enough, I found that if I rotate the photo 180 degrees and put it back in the feeder, the scanner seems to have no problem scanning it. Apparently the lighter half has to be fed first.

I have only two small complaints with this scanner but I'm not penalizing Epson for this as I've seen this same problem with virtually every other scanner on the market. Complaint #1 is, if you are scanning things that have dark backgrounds, the scanner will often not be able to detect the edges of the photo (or slide, or 35mm film frame, etc). This isn't horrible, really; it only means that you have to manually marquee the image area, a mild annoyance at best when you consider how much automation the scanner does otherwise. The second complaint has to do with the lid. It is not spring-loaded so you have to be very careful when lowering it so it doesn't accidentally slam into the base. Again, I haven't seen a scanner in this price range which has this feature (Epson's higher-end and more expensive scanners do) so I'm not particularly penalizing Epson over it.

Much like a previous reviewer, I am trying to put a lifetime of photos onto a DVD for an 80th birthday party (my grandmother). I have a Canon MP730 All In One, and thought that I could do the project with that. After about 30 photos taking me 3-4 hours, I gave up. I started looking for a professional place to do these, and they wanted between $1.50 and $4.00 a photo. I looked around and found the Epson 3490 scanner and Epson Photo Feeder. I bought both and have scanned in almost 700 pictures in the last 5 days with it- all while doing other things! I haven't even really needed to try all that hard.

With the feeder, I can stack about 25 like-sized photos in, and let it rip while I go do whatever. The photos that won't go through the feeder get put on the glass, 4 at a time, and it does the rest. I don't need to rotate pictures, crop, nothing. I just recognizes where the pictures are, lines it up, scans it, and you're done. It's an amazing little scanner. With the photo feeder, it's a LIFESAVER!

Anyway, when I bought this I was thinking a scanner for less than $150 was bottom-end. It may be, I don't know- since I'm not a professional photographer or anything, but I'm impressed. The resolution on this is so clear that the scanner even picked up textures in the paper that the photo was printed on, like dots in the background, that you can't see with your eyes. Not a problem though- it made all of the photos look great! Unless the photo was damaged beyond repair, it made quick and perfect work of everything. If this is bottom line though, I hate to see what mid-range or top-line is. I think this is a STEAL for the money.

If you need to scan in a ton of photos, or want decent quality and speed, buy this now!

This may be one of the best scanner bargains you will find. My 5 year old Canon scanner was getting a little flaky on me, so, based on other reviews I have read, I ordered up this Epson.

My mother-in-law was about to clebrate her 80th birthday and wanted "one of those fancy photo DVD's" of her life to show on a TV during her celebration party (what a cool lady). So, I needed a good scanner capable of scanning in 80 year old black and white prints as well as modern color prints. This scanner was more than up to the task! I was dazzled not only by the quality of the scanner, but the scanning software manager is something else! You can put in four prints, one in each corner of the scan bed and the software recognizes four different pictures, numbers them and drops them into your designated folder as four seperate pictures. Now that's way things should work! It will do the same for two or three photos. You can put several pictures in together, let them touch, and it will recognize it as a collage and scan it in as a single picture. This is a very awesome piece of equipment.

The film stip feature works very well although a bit slow, I think - but it's still great to have a scanner in this price range to be able to scan in film!! I haven't tried the slide feature as of yet, but I have no doubt it will work well. I still can't believe the software works so well as I am used to the really buggy useless stuff that came with my past scanners.

I am really glad I purchased this scanner and plan to use it a lot to archive old photos, slides and film. Oh, yeah - using Microsoft Photo Story 3, the DVD turned out great!