Thin is Good (Canon Canoscan FB630U)

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Product:	Canon Canoscan FB630U
Date:	24/09/00 (188 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: great image quality

Disadvantages: slow

The specifications of the unit are rather average. The basic resolution is 600dpi, with a scanner motor capable of moving in 1,200dpi steps. This gives a hardware resolution of 600x1,200dpi. With software interpolation this can be taken up to 9,600dpi, although this will make for a very large file that will take the Canon an age to complete. I tend to scan pictures at 300dpi and, for most printed work, this is sufficient,

The Canon does have the advantage of being very compact. A very small and light scanner, it weighs only 1.5kg and could fit inside a briefcase.

I got impressive results from this tiny scanner. The image quality was excellent, with the photo scans rendered clear and bright. The line art also came out clean and fine details were picked up. Only in greyscale i found the Canon a bit below par, images weren’t quite as sharp as in the other modes and looked slightly ‘smoky’.This is easily corrected, however, and greyscales were as full of detail and the quality was as high as elsewhere.

The Scangear software driver is easy to use, and there are enough controls for advanced users too. Adobe’s PhotoDeluxe takes care of photo-editing. Caere’s OmniPage LE text-recognition package was another fine inclusion in this impressive but rather slow scanner.

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