HP Photosmart S20 Scanner

What's New, Screen Shots, How Does it Work?

What's New in the S20:

• USB interface: The Photosmart S20 scanner connects via USB. A USB port card can easily be obtained if you computer does not have built in USB ports. HP chose USB as the interface for the S20 to align with the industry trend to simpler, easily configurable peripherals. This interface is a bit slower than the SCSI alternative, which increases scan time ~10% compared to the original Photosmart scanner. On the plus side, the S20 is trivial to install in newer computers with built in USB ports.
• 36 bit dynamic range: The S20 scans natively with 12 bits per color. After the scan completes, the S20 driver converts the 36 bits to 24 bits prior to saving the file on disk. If you are using the S20 Twain interface from an imaging application, the S20 driver will negotiate with the application to send the most data allowed by the application. For example, Micrographx Picture Publisher 7.0 only accepts 24 bit data, therefore the image is converted to 24 bit format by the S20 driver. Photoshop 4 is capable of accepting the full 36 bits of image data, therefore the image is not converted by the S20 driver.
• New scanning modes: The S20 has many new scanning modes. These include preset modes for old and faded negatives & transparencies, black & white negatives & transparencies, modes for scanning unmounted transparency strips, and modes for scanning 35mm panorama negatives & transparencies.
• User interface improvements: The S20 driver allows the user to setup a custom scan on each frame of a negative or slide strip. You can specify custom exposure, color, crop, sharpness, and rotation setups for one or all frames, then scan all selected frames in ONE pass. The individual frames are saved as separate files, or transferred as separate images if in Twain mode.
• Histogram: The S20 scan setup includes a histogram window. The histogram aids the advanced user in optimizing exposure and color settings.
• Sharpness: The S20 includes sharpening capability, user controllable.
• Setup Save: Setup parameters can be saved as user defined filters. Color, exposure, crop, size, sharpness can be saved and reused. This allows scanning multiple frames with identical setups. I find this especially useful for scanning photos I plan to piece together into a panorama.
• Speed control: the S20 data transfer speed can be set to optimize with the user's computer. Fast systems can take advantage of the full speed of the S20 and USB. Slower system owners can can configure a slower transfer speed to eliminate stop & backup problems.

User Interface Screen Shots:

Preview window: This screen shot is the preview window. Here, I have captured the preview of a 4 negative strip. Two of the 4 frames have been selected for the final scan pass (highlighted in gray). Custom setups can be done for any or all of the frames, including rotation, color, exposure, crop, and sharpness. Filenames are specified in the title bar below the frame. Up to 5 frames can be scanned in a single pass. Film strips longer than 5 frames have to be scanned in 2 passes.

Scan setup windows: When you hover over a frame in the preview window above, a magnifying glass icon appears. Clicking that icon brings up the "Image Adjustments" window shown at the center below. From that window, you can launch the other "adjust" windows which I have arranged around the "Image Adjustments" window. Once you configure the location of these adjust windows, the same windows come up in the same positions each time you launch the "Image Adjustments" window "set". Sorry about the size of this screen capture, but I thought you would want to be able to see the details of this interface.

How does it work?

I have owned both the original Photosmart (S10) and the new S20 Photosmart scanners. The S20 performs every bit as good or better as the S10 on all the essential functions. The interface allows you to setup custom scans for all frames on a strip, which eliminates the annoying process of insert, scan, reinsert, scan, reinsert that was required to scan a film strip on the S10 scanner. With the S20, you can also scan strips of slide film. This allows photographers to choose to leave slides unmounted at processing time.

About the "S10 Noise Problem". For those unfamiliar, many S10 scanner units had problems with noise artifacts in the dark areas of slide scans. This problem is fixed in the S20.

Filters: You can now save a scan setup, called a user defined "filter", and reuse that setup on subsequent scans. That is an essential feature if you desire to combine 35mm frames into a panorama using an image editor. This is also useful when a roll of film has a consistent color shift.

Histogram: The S20 provides a histogram view for optimizing your setups. The histogram view updates real time as exposure is adjusted allowing the advanced user to optimize color and exposure to fully utilize the dynamic range.

Sharpness. I have not experimented with this much. I prefer to perform sharpening in the image editor where you can preview and undo. The limited S20 preview window does not allow me to see the effects of the sharpening well enough to incent me to use this capability. I am sure I will experiment with it eventually.

Overall, a much improved product over the S10. The new capabilities and improved user interface make the S20 Photosmart a most capable scanner for the digital darkroom enthusiast. Together with the Photosmart Printer, I doubt I will ever use film printing processes again. Will that save me money in the long run, no. Will I enjoy photography more, most certainly, yes. Your mileage may vary.

More Information? http://www.Photosmart.com

A more comprehensive Photosmart S20 Product Review: http://www.sphoto.com/s20.html

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