Product Description

The Epson Perfection V500 Photo offers extraordinary quality and versatility with 6400 dpi resolution and an earth-friendly LED light source for greater productivity -- all at an amazing value. Remove dust and scratches from slides, negatives and film. Or, restore faded color photos with one touch. Then, take your photos further with the included Adobe® Photoshop® Elements. When it's time to archive important documents, you can scan multiple documents fast with the optional automatic document feeder. It's all at your fingertips with this powerful performer. Best of all, the energy-efficient LED means you can work smarter with faster scans and lower power consumption. Plus, with no warmup time, it's easier than ever to get started.

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Product Details

• Color: silver
• Brand: Epson
• Model: B11B189011
• Dimensions: 4.50" h x 18.80" w x 10.70" l, 14.55 pounds
• CPU: AMD Athlon 1 GHz
• Memory: 128000MB DRAM
• Hard Disk: 1GB
• Processors: 1
• Native resolution: 640x480
• Display size: 669.2913385827

Features

• Create crystal-clear photo enlargements and scan slides, negatives, and medium-format film
• Easy Photo Fix quickly restores faded photos with one touch
• Digital Ice technology removes dust particles and scratches from images
• Energy-efficient LED light eliminates warm-up time while allowing faster scans
• 1-year limited manufacturer's warranty

From the Manufacturer
From the Manufacturer The Epson Perfection V500 Photo offers extraordinary quality and versatility with 6400 dpi resolution and an earth-friendly LED light source for greater productivity - all at an amazing value. Remove dust and scratches from slides, negatives and film. Or, restore faded color photos with one touch. Then, take your photos further with the included Adobe® Photoshop® Elements. When it’s time to archive important documents, you can scan multiple documents fast with the optional automatic document feeder. It’s all at your fingertips with this powerful performer. Best of all, the energy-efficient LED means you can work smarter with faster scans and lower power consumption. Plus, with no warmup time, it’s easier than ever to get started.

The Epson Perfection V500 Photo uses the innovative ReadyScan™ LED technology

Create extraordinary enlargements (17x 22 or larger) from film with 6400 dpi

ReadyScan™ LED technology
This energy-efficient light source uses less power, while ensuring greater productivity. And, there's no warmup time required. Best of all, with no mercury included, this LED technology is better for the environment.

Amazing 6400 dpi resolution
Create extraordinary enlargements (13x19, 17x 22 or larger) from film with the Perfection V500 Photo’s 6400 dpi optical resolution and 3.4 Dmax. The Perfection V500 Photo’s built-in ReadyScan LED transparency adapter can accommodate four 35mm mounted slides, 12 frames of 35mm film and one frame of 6x12cm medium format film.

Added versatility with the optional document feeder
When it’s time to archive important documents, you can scan multiple documents with the optional 30-page, 3 ppm automatic document feeder.

One-touch and Full Automatic scanning
The Epson Perfection V500 Photo features four one-touch scanning buttons - Scan, E-Mail, Copy and PDF - while the Epson Scan driver features four scan modes to accommodate users from beginners to experts. Full Automatic Mode provides automatic scanning of photos, documents and film. Home Mode provides more control over scans with easy-to-follow settings menus. Professional Mode offers image correction tools for advanced users including histogram, tonal curves and a densitometer. When using the optional automatic document feeder, Office Mode provides document scanning functions such as threshold control and text enhancement.

A faded and scratched 35mm negative is brought back to life on the Perfection V500 Photo using Digital ICE and Epson Easy Photo Fix

One-stop photo restoration solution
The Epson Perfection V500 Photo offers a host of powerful tools for photo restoration. Digital ICE™ technology is a unique combination of hardware and software for correcting image defects. In the Perfection V500 Photo, Digital ICE for Film uses an infrared sensor to detect dust and scratches on the surface of the film. In a multi-pass process, the dust/scratch is mapped out and carefully removed from the scanned image, leaving the composition and quality intact.

Epson Easy Photo Fix®
Restore faded color photos, slides and negatives, back to their original brilliance with Easy Photo Fix scanning technology, exclusively from Epson. Take those old family photos out of that shoebox in the closet and share precious moments once again. Just scan your photos with the Epson Perfection V500 Photo color scanner and renew the color with one click. It’s just that easy. In seconds, you’re ready to print and display those memories for all to enjoy.

Along with color restoration, Easy Photo Fix also includes Grain Reduction and Backlight Correction.

Features/Benefits

• Create extraordinary enlargements (13x19, 17x 22 or larger) from film with 6400 dpi
• Remove dust and scratches with Digital ICE™ technology
• Scan slides, negatives and medium-format film with the built-in Transparency Unit
• Restore faded color photos with one touch, using Easy Photo Fix®
• Achieve greater productivity with the energy-efficient, earth-friendly LED light source - no warmup time, faster scans, lower power consumption
• Take your photos further with Adobe® Photoshop® Elements
• Get brilliant, true-to-life colors with amazing, 48-bit color depth
• Quickly scan multiple documents with the optional Automatic Document Feeder
• Do more with Hi-Speed USB 2.0

What’s in the Box
Epson Perfection V500 Photo scanner; Transparency Unit (built into lid); Film holder for 35mm film strips and mounted slides; Film holder for 6x12cm medium format film; CD-ROM software; Adobe® Photoshop® Elements software; Start Here poster; Hi-Speed USB 2.0 cable; AC adapter and power cord.

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Customer Reviews

A winner for slide scanning
After extensive research I had the good fortune of looking for a photo scanner at the same time the Epson Perfection V500 became available. After scanning the first batch of 60 slides, I can heartily recommend this unit. The most significant capability of this unit, especially for the price, is the built-in ICE technology for scratch and dust removal. It is, in a word, astonishing. And, it is saving me many hours of extra work manually doing the same job. There is software-based scratch and dust removal included in the Epson software, but it is ineffective and cannot compare to ICE. I am scanning at 2,400 dpi, more than enough resolution for any practical use other than heavy cropping and enlargement. I use compressed air to "clean" the slides before scanning. When scanning with ICE turned off, the amount of dust marks are amazing. Turn ICE on and 98% of the dust is gone. It does take longer to scan with ICE, but the offset is the time saved many times over not having to manually remove the dust post-scan. Photoshop Elements 4.0 is included. I use Elements 6.0.

So far, the unit has worked flawlessly. Software installed cleanly on first try. Front panel buttons can be reprogrammed for other than the default (e.g., I changed the button for email attachment to launch the OCR to text software included.)

A tip for those who buy this unit for slide and/or film scanning with ICE and scanning 2-4 slides at a time: Click the "All" button in the preview window after prescanning (previewing) the multiple slides to select all slides, then click the checkbox for ICE to insure that all slides are processed by ICE. You won't find this in the documentation or on Epson's website. I spent time figuring out why all 4 slides weren't being processed by ICE (I thought the unit was defective at first because only the first slide, which is selected by default, was being processed by ICE), so now you know without spending the time I did. I have used the scanner for photographs and documents, and have converted articles to editable text, all with no problems and excellent results. Still, slides/film is where it shines, thanks to ICE.

What a GREAT scanner!!!!!!
I just purchased this scanner - primarily to scan my 1000+ slides. At first, I was a bit reluctant because this model is brand new to the market and I was concerned about those inital bugs. But I know that Epson makes a good product so I took the chance. And am I glad that I did. It has some outstanding features:
1. Very simple to set-up and then operate. I scanned my first photo within 30 minutes of unwrapping the package. No problems with the software and the on-line User's Manual is really easy to follow.
2. Very fast scanning. The scan (including preview) of photos is unbelievably fast. But I was really surprised at the speed of scanning slides. A normal scan (without using Digital ICE correction) of 4 slides took less than 5 minutes. Compared to some of the other products, I've been reading about this is lightning speed.
3. Very quiet. When scanning photos, you can barely hear it. A little more noise when scanning slides, but certainly not bothersome.
4. Offers 3 modes to choose from - Auto, Home, and Professional. The Auto is the easiest and results in a very good photo. The Home and Professional offer a number of correcting features (more with the Professional mode). I am an intermediate Photoshop user and the Professional mode was as close to using an editing software as I've ever seen. The scan time slows down a bit when you use these correcting tools, but again - no big deal). Once I get the hang of it, I'm sure it will speed up the amount of time I will need with Photoshop.
5. Digital ICE is fantastic! This feature is used when only scanning film or slides. I first scanned slides without using it. The waulity was very good, but my slides are almost 30 years old so there was enough noise (mostly dust)and fade in them to be noticeable (something I was resigned to fix in Photoshop). I then scanned them using ICE and was amazed! The noise was completely gone and the colors were remarkably restored. The Photoshop work is going to be a piece of cake.
6. The price is unbelievable for what you get. I've seen scanners costing much, much more that aren't nearly as good as this one.
In summary, Epson has come up with a real winner. I really can't find anything negative to say. If you're looking for a quality scanner at a great price, look no further. This is the one!

Great scanner, *HORRIBLE* software
Initially I was disappointed in this scanner. I was getting artifacts in my scans: posterizing, strange banding (like an old dot matrix scanner) and scans above 2400dpi didn't seem to have any additional detail. For a while I was convinced the optical resolution was 2400 instead of the advertised 6400.

Eventually I discovered that the Epson software sucks. I would recommend only using the Color Restoration (which seems to be first rate oddly) and Digital Ice options. Everything else seemed to ruin the photos upon close inspection. You will need to make any adjustments in photo shop.

In addition to this, the software is difficult to use. It has an option to save your scanning settings -- but it doesn't work (on OSX at least). I have to set the option manually for every scan. When you preview your scan, sometimes it only selects one photo when you mean to change the settings for them all. Between these two problems, I find myself scanning photos with the wrong settings on a regular basis. As a SW Engineer myself -- this is inexcusable.

Some people have complained the scanner is slow -- it is -- but if you compare specs it seemed to be in line with other scanners of this price.

Despite these problems I give the scanner 4 stars. I own a Canon scanner and the software is *far* worse *and* the image quality sucks, so Epson wins by default: Marginal Software and excellent image quality seem to be a winning combination.