Epson Perfection 3200

At a time when other PC scanner manufacturers are pushing low-cost products, Epson might look out on a limb with its £349 Perfection 3200 Photo.

But there's no denying that you get value for money here, with its transparency adaptor, high-speed dual interfaces (USB2 and FireWire) and quite possibly the highest resolution ever to feature in a consumer flatbed.

In everyday scanning terms, 3,200dpi is plainly ludicrous, but it begins to make sense if you view the product as a photographer's scanner rather than just another consumer device.

Such a high resolution makes an excellent job of print enlargements and produces good results from transparencies.

There's a single quick-task button at the front. You would normally configure this to run the Epson Smart Panel program.

Smart Panel is a window of scan destination buttons - OCR, Copy and so on - which you can customise to a certain degree.

Epson's own Twain driver offers the usual variety of scan settings but can also be run in Full Auto Mode, which makes a great job of auto-detecting the originals sitting on the plate.

It will even determine whether it's a document, photo print or a transparency, then adjust scan settings appropriately.

The transparency adaptor lamp in the lid is big enough to scan two strips of 35mm negatives at once, or four mounted 35mm slides.

Plastic holders are provided so that the scanner can auto-detect and crop the multiple frames. Best results with transparency scanning were achieved using the professional Silverfast package with its extensive image enhancement functions.

By including it, Epson has ensured you won't outgrow the Perfection 3200 Photo too soon.

Contact: Epson 0800 220 546
www.epson.co.uk

Specifications:

• 3,200 x 6,400dpi max res
• 48-bit colour depth
• Epson Twain & Smartpanel, Adobe Photoshop Elements 1.0, Lasersoft Silverfast SE 6, Presto Pixexpress software
• 6kg
• 304 x 476 x 122mm (w x d x h)
• USB2 (1.1 compatible) & FireWire connections