Canon 9950F scanner

ScanGear CS - Advanced mode

Although simple mode has its uses, copying documents, quick scanning for the web etc. The Advanced mode is the one I would recommend for quality scanning. The interface has had some minor improvements over the previous versions of ScanGear, but it also lacks some finer controls found on other scanners, but this needn't be a limitation for producing quality scans.

Advanced mode

Advanced mode

When ScanGear is launched for the first time there will be a blank page, click on the Preview button and the full platen is scanned. A selection will automatically surround the picture, this was very accurate, as you can see in the above screen grab the selection managed to locate the edges of the print, even though it was white on white. Press the Zoom button to enlarge the selected area to fill the preview window - the Zoom button changes to Undo. The blue button is for executing the scan and the cross button is for deleting the preview.

Before moving on to the right panel I want to show you the scanner Preferences, located on the bottom of the right panel.


Preview preferences	Scan preferences

Colour settings preferences	Scanner preferences

Preview preferences - defines how the scanner will deal with previews. By default the last image scanned appears, this can be changed to either Automatically perform a new preview or None. My advice is to stick with the default setting, especially if you decide to rescan your last image. The next section either applies an automatic selection or the last used or none, The default is automatic and it works very well too. You can always alter the selection by dragging the edges or corners. The final section is for thumbnail size on film scanning, I will return to this later in the review.

Scan preferences - there is a option to scan without using the ScanGear window, but I have not managed to work out how to do this yet. I would assume this will allow you to scan directly into an application, I will investigate this further. The Text enhance option is for use with OCR software, the characters are read differently to normal binary scanning. The smaller crop size for film sets the scanner to scan in 95% of the film length. For high quality scanning that retains as much image information as possible select the 48 bit mode. Select Automatically quit ScanGear after scanning to return to your imaging application after a single scan. When scanning several 35mm frames Scangear can create an index print or contact sheet for you, choose landscape or portrait mode and a file is sent to your imaging application.

Color settings - Recommended is set by default, this seems to produce a good scan without any user intervention. Colour matching gives you the option to scan with a custom profile and sends the file to your application in the target colour space you select (Adobe 1998 or sRGB are the popular choices but there are many other options depending on what's on your system). The monitor button will output the scan to your monitors profile, leave this unchecked to use the target colour space. Select None to perform a scan without any colour correction from ScanGear, more advanced users may want to use this. The Auto tone will automatically correct every scan for you, you may want to turn this off.

Scanner preferences - an energy saving mode will turn off the scanner lamp after 4, 8, 12, 16 etc., minutes. Quiet mode didn't make much difference, this scanner is very quiet to start with, but it did extend the preview scan time from 8 seconds to 20 seconds. The actual scan was marginally slower 13 seconds compared to 11 seconds. Select a temporary folder for scans, and finally select a some music whilst the scanner is scanning, no music is included so you will have to find something on your hard drive. Don't dismiss this feature, I know how long a 35mm scan in High Quality takes. Play a sound when scan is completed, I would suggest a loud drum track for this.

I will look at the right hand panel in more detail later in the day, it's a nice sunny day here in London so I am now going to the park with my daughters. Bye.