Umax Astra 6450

The Umax Astra 6450 is no ordinary scanner - it has a built-in transparency unit and FireWire. This is usually an optional extra, but Umax has hidden it away in what could easily be mistaken for a standard document cover - the only clue is a 5in-square diffuser in the underside of the lid.

A single FireWire port on the rear connects to your PC using the FireWire card supplied. This has three external ports, leaving two spare. The front panel sports three buttons for one-touch processing and these can be configured for image scanning, OCR, copying or electronic transmission.

In addition to the drivers, the installer offers the Presto Page Manager document management application, VistaShuttle, for creating electronic cards, calendars and the like, and OmniPage LE and Recognita OCR. You also get Photoshop 5.0LE. VistaScan 3.73 can be used as a standalone application, or as a TWAIN module from Photoshop.

There are two modes: beginner and advanced. Advanced users are let loose in the engine room, with access to menus for setting reflective/transmissive originals, colour mode, resolution, filters, output size and so on.

To scan transparencies you need to be in Advanced mode. The preview scan cleverly isolates and crops the frame. A four-tabbed panel lets you make pre-scan adjustments to levels, curves, colour balance and orientation, although the preview doesn't provide sufficient visual feedback to make this practical - you're better off doing it in Photoshop afterwards.

The quality of the scans from both prints and transparencies was clean and crisp with good colour reproduction and tonal rendition, although with 35mm transparencies the enlargement factor exposes all kinds of ills. The FireWire link makes light work of big images, digesting a full A4 at 300dpi in half a minute.