"John Rumm" wrote in message
o.uk...
On 26/06/2011 11:37, Dave Baker wrote:
Well I got the thing set up and tried most of the functions. It prints
fine,
scans documents ok but when it comes to photos the scans are absolutely
crap. Dull and full of artifacts, i.e. speckles everywhere. I rescanned a
couple of photos I'd first done with my old 1998 Plustek Win 95 scanner
which sadly won't work with XP and the difference was staggering. So I
took
it back to Tesco and got another. Exactly the same. So what does it take
to
get a decent photo scanner built in to a printer?

Here's the original 1998 scan already converted to a jpg.

http://www.pumaracing.co.uk/TBs%20Plustek.jpg

Here'e the Canon scan as a full quality bmp file.

http://www.pumaracing.co.uk/TBs%20Canon.bmp

Does anyone think the Canon scan is even remotely acceptable?

Yup, its actually vastly better than the plustek IMHO. However you may
need to adjust your methods for working with a scanner that is actually
more revealing than the plustek.

If you want a plustek look to your scan, here is how I did it:

A dust'n'scratches filter to loose some picture detail and have the specs
away. I then leveled the image to have away any colour bias from the
canon, before boosting the brightness to overexpose the image and solarise
(i.e. lose) detail in the light areas permanently. I tweaked the contrast
to lighten the darker areas a bit and create the slightly washed out look
of the plustek. Next I altered the colour balance and stuck in a large
shift to the magenta in the midtones, and small one in the highlights.
Finally reduced it to the same size as the plustek scan and saved it as a
medium quality jpg to get that nice jpeg artifact thing going.

Here is the canon image that I have altered to make it more plustek like:

http://www.internode.co.uk/temp/TBs-...ustek-trea.jpg

Oh damn. So I took a perfectly good scanner back to Tesco then it seems.
Drat. I'm sure they'll cope though and I'll have to practice my scanning
technique.
--
Dave Baker