Installation disc for epson 1650. How to perform automatic download and update

Manual download and update procedure:

This Epson Perfection 1650 built-in driver must be included in the operating room Windows system® or be available for download through the Center windows updates® (Windows® Update). The built-in driver supports the basic functions of your Epson Perfection 1650 hardware.

To perform automatic download and update:

Recommendation: Generally, we strongly recommend most Windows users(unless they are advanced users) to update your Epson Scanner drivers, download a special tool such as DriverDoc. DriverDoc downloads and updates the Perfection 1650 driver automatically to ensure it is installed the correct version for your operating system.

DriverDoc can be used for automatic update not only Scanner drivers, but all other drivers on your PC. This utility has access to a database containing more than 2,150,000 device drivers (the database is updated on a daily basis), so that your PC will always have latest versions required drivers.

Install Optional Products - DriverDoc (Solvusoft) | | | |

Epson Frequently Asked Questions About Updating

What do Epson Scanner device drivers do?

Device drivers ensure proper communication hardware device (Scanner) with your operating system. Epson wrote these unique, "mini" programs to ensure the Perfection 1650 works properly.

What operating systems are compatible with Perfection 1650 drivers?

Windows has supported drivers for the Perfection 1650 hardware.

How do i update Perfection 1650 drivers?

Perfection 1650 drivers can be updated manually using the Windows Device Manager, or automatically by downloading a driver update software utility.

What are the benefits and risks of updating Perfection 1650 drivers?

Benefits of updating Perfection 1650 drivers include better interoperability, ability to maximize hardware features, and increased performance. Risks of Installng the wrong Scanner Device drivers include software crashes, slower performance, and general PC instability.

About the author: Jay Geater is the President and director general Solvusoft Corporation, a global software company focused on innovative service programs... He has been passionate about computers all his life and loves everything related to computers, software and new technologies.

Top 5 Epson Perfection drivers (22 Models)

Install Optional Products - DriverDoc (Solvusoft) | |

This article introduces a series of tests for flatbed SOHO scanners. So that testing is not only subjective, but based on real numbers, it was compiled special technique. We recommend that you familiarize yourself with it first of all to the reader who is interested in the academic part of the test. If you don't want to bother with complicated formulas, you can just look at the results obtained during the tests: for ease of perception, they are designed in the form of final ratings and clearly reflect the place occupied by the test participant.
Let's start the article with a descriptive part and, since the machine from Hewlett-Packard is the latest development of this company (its rival Epson Perfection 1650 has been successfully sold for a long time already), let's consider it first.

Introduction

The ScanJet 3570c Single-Pass Flatbed Scanner is the first Hewlett-Packard machine to use the active adapter for 35 mm transparencies not a separate device, but is natively integrated into the scanner lid. This model is intended for a budget consumer, and its cost will certainly seem very tempting to many. But before starting my story, I would like to briefly outline the situation in the market for flatbed SOHO scanners, which has long been saturated, if not overcrowded.
Indeed, how can a manufacturing company attract the attention of an ordinary consumer, spoiled by abundance, who, to put it mildly, “cares about” optical resolutions and design delights? It is clear that the tough competition in the SOHO scanner market leaves a few manufacturers practically only two ways: either to leave the arena forever (as AGFA once left it), or to try to follow continuous improvement lineup, reducing the cost of components and riveting the attention of the consumer to your product with something special. "Special" for the ScanJet 3570c is an active adapter (illuminated) integrated into the lid for scanning films.
Note that over the past year, the average cost of scanners entry level for home and office has dropped noticeably, and now the border of this price category is somewhere around $ 200 (against $ 300 in 2001). How did such a significant price reduction become possible? First of all, by reducing the cost (reducing production costs by automating technological processes), using inexpensive components and minimizing the involvement of highly qualified personnel (engineers, application software developers, etc.). But does all this not affect the quality of the final product? How to check this, because there is certainly a dependence of quality on cost? This is exactly what it was intended for this testing which will further develop into a full-scale super-test of flatbed scanners.

Specifications

Company manufacturer	Hewlett-Packard	Epson
Model	ScanJet 3570c	Perfection 1650
Converter type	Ccd	Ccd
Maximum optical resolution	1200 dpi	1600 dpi
Maximum color depth	48 bit	48 bit
Interface	USB 2.0 (full speed)	USB 1.1
Scan area	216х297 mm, A4 / 35 mm slides and negatives	216x297 mm, A4
Source of power	12 V, 1250 mA	24 V, 800 mA
Slide adapter	adapter built into the cover for 35 mm films	optional
dimensions, mm	300x500x85	276x450x93
Weight, kg	3,2	2,6
Estimated cost	$144	$126

Contents and appearance of the HP ScanJet 3570c

To begin with, due to the light weight of the scanner (only 3.2 kg), the handles of its packaging box are not reinforced with any additional inserts, so you can bring the purchase home on yourself, without worrying that the handles will come off during transportation.

Opening the box, included in the package, I found the following components:

USB cable;
power unit;
user manual (in Russian);
service and support fact sheet;
one CD with drivers and software from HP.

And, as noted above, the adapter for 35 mm originals is initially built into the cover of the ScanJet 3570c, whereas for the ScanJet 3500c / 3530c it is only optional (i.e. purchased separately).
The plastic body of the scanner is designed in a gray-blue color scheme. It should be noted that the design of the device is well thought out and will withstand even the most captious examination. I would like to note the good tightness of the case, thanks to which dust microparticles will never adhere to the inner side of the glass or to the transducer matrix. In addition, to give the scanner the required strength, the body elements are equipped with stiffening ribs.
The top cover of the scanner, which houses the active slide adapter, is completely removable. This property allows you to put an original of any thickness on the scanner glass (for example, the Great Encyclopedic Dictionary), or even put the scanner itself on the original (attach the device to the wall and scan the wallpaper). Note that not all devices have this. of this class.
There are four quick scan buttons on the front panel of the scanner, the purpose of which is indicated by the corresponding icons.

The first E-MAIL button launches the scanning program using settings optimized for e-mail. The scan result is transferred to the installed mail program for transmission over the Internet. The next scanner image button will scan images directly using Hewlett-Packard software. The "Copy" button, on which the printer is drawn, sends, as you might guess, the scanned image directly to the printer. And, finally, the fourth button is designed to quickly launch the program for creating multimedia albums, with further burning the latter to CDs.

Installing the HP ScanJet 3570c Scanner and Related Software

The installation process is simple and is carried out literally "without looking" (in the instructions, of course). First, the scanner must be connected to the computer's USB interface (preferably USB 2.0). After that, you need to connect the Transparency Material Adapter (TMA) cable that comes out of the scanner lid to the appropriately labeled port on the back of the machine. Now all that remains is to connect the power supply, after which Windows will detect the new device, and it will be time to install the drivers and software. Let's consider what programs Hewlett-Packard has prepared for the buyer of this device.
Installation of the accompanying software is carried out under the control of an interactive shell written in Macromedia Flash from a single CD-ROM of the delivery set. The software is installed in two stages: first, you install the HP photo and imaging software, and then, if you wish, Hemera CD Design Creator 32 and JigSaw Puzzler 32. in puzzle games).
In addition to the section on installing programs, the shell allows you to go to viewing interactive instructions for connecting, as well as to call the help system.

I consider it necessary to note that Hewlett-Packard's own software will require ... 225 MB of free disk space! Such is the monster! Moreover, the most interesting thing is that I cannot say that the software package somehow abounds in a cascade of fine settings, has high flexibility and functionality, provides automatic separation of originals during batch scanning, or has a colorful graphical shell - there is none of this, and for this reason it is not at all clear what hundreds of megabytes of disk space are spent on. Moreover, in the process of operation it was noted that HP programs are extremely unstable, from time to time causing critical errors. However, more on that later.

After installing the software, the HP Director shortcuts and the “Share-to-Web upload folder” (the directory where the scans will be sent) appear on the desktop. The HP Director program is a kind of "control center" from where quick start related scanning programs.

User can choose between scanning images (photos, drawings) and text documents, making a hard copy and viewing the scanned material. Let's take a look at each piece of HP Director.
After the user activates the Scan Image module, a preliminary menu will open, in which it will be necessary to specify the type of original to be scanned (original from glass, slides or negatives from an adapter). In principle, this request can be disabled by checking the corresponding box, and the type of the original can be set directly in the scanning program.

After selecting one of the items, the main window of the image digitizing program opens. I decided to immediately check if the ScanJet 3570c supports batchscan by placing three photos on its glass. Let me remind you that batch scanning allows you to select several areas in preview mode and set suitable parameters for each (thus, the user significantly saves time when scanning several originals at the same time). It turned out that the scanner software (although it takes up a quarter of a gigabyte) is not able to separate the scanned originals, which is very sad. You can, of course, scan the entire area of the originals and then cut out the images from using Photoshop however, this will not only create unnecessary work for the user, but also a huge file on disk.

The image scanning software (scanner driver) consists of three functional groups: the preview window, the main menu, and the tool area. The window appears immediately after accessing the scanner (either through the quick scan buttons or from an external software package). The start of work is marked by a warm-up event and a pre-scan of the original on the flatbed. For ScanJet 3570c this procedure is quite long and takes 50 seconds. waiting for a miracle. Prescan without wasting time for lamp warm-up is 17 seconds. Note that the lamp timeout value set by the manufacturer in the driver is relatively small.
The lamp warm-up operation is not disabled in the driver, but you can set an increase in the timeout for it. It's better to do it right away.

Scanner driver is not rich manual settings to digitize the image. By and large, the user is given the opportunity to choose the scanning resolution, resize the image, and work tone correction, based on the picture in the preview window. The sharpening filter values are set discretely; color correction implies a choice between two items "normal color" and "enhanced color"; the descreen filter “hides” under the “Remove moire” item. That, in fact, is all.
After defining the boundaries of the original in the preview window, as well as the job required settings you can click on the "Accept" icon, thus starting the scanning process.
If you plan to scan documents containing text, then select the appropriate option in the HP Director. In the window that opens, the user has no choice but to answer the question “What is being scanned?”, Because you cannot configure any scanning parameters here.
Document scanning program dialog box. An interesting feature: if you select the destination - "Save to file", then the image will be written as a pdf file.

During the translation of the scanned material by the I.R.I.S. OCR sometimes encountered strange errors, which, however, did not affect the final result.

Perhaps the most powerful software utility is the HP Photo & Imaging Gallery. With its help, you can not only view all kinds of graphic files, but also create photo albums by burning them to CDs, edit and pre-press, publish personal photo files on the Web, etc.
When accessing a folder containing photos, the program presents them in the form of thumbnails. Further possible actions with images are indicated by the menu buttons at the top and right of the window.

I believe that everyone who has a huge amount of photographs on their hard drive would like to organize all this “economy” by creating something like photo albums. A special HP software utility will help in this matter.
Having made a selection of the files of interest and following the wizard for creating a multimedia album, you can create a Video CD literally in no time.

The next step, to the disk being created a music file is attached that will be played when displaying photos.

CD burning parameters are set at the final stage of Video CD preparation.

While studying the shell of the scanning program, I found that some of its windows are based on Microsoft Internet Explorer... Notice the top left corner of the dialog: the familiar IE icon. Then it is not at all clear what the 225 MB of disk space was spent on, even if the driver shell uses the MSIE kernel.

Summing up the interim results concerning only application software, we can say one thing: the main problems of this scanner lie in the morally backward software, as well as in the driver, which does not have sufficient flexibility in settings. By and large, the driver will not stand up to comparison in functionality with many, even outdated, software shells from manufacturers such as AGFA or Mustek. Note that the settings set by the user before scanning are not saved, and every next time you have to set everything again. Well, HP's programmers have a lot to work on. It is only important that they clearly represent the needs of the user.
With regard to service technical support there is also a serious remark. Imagine, even if you are the rightful owner of the ScanJet 3570c scanner, you will not be able to download updated drivers and related software for it from the HP support site for free. If, for example, you have lost installation disc, then you will have to shell out extra money to send a new one. It is interesting that, despite the presence of the Russian-language page of the HP company, for updates you will be transferred to the American site www.hp.com, where there is nothing to do without knowing the language.

Advantages:

Relatively low price for a scanner with a slide adapter
Fully localized user manual and software

Flaws:

Long lamp warm-up and scan times
"Bloated" volume of application software, not supported in any way by functionality
Incomplete scanner driver, riddled with bugs
Charging additional fees for driver and application software updates

Epson Perfection 1650 Package Contents and Appearance

At one time, Epson successfully mastered the market of flatbed SOHO scanners and today offers a lot of interesting models on the Russian market. The scanner that was selected for testing, although it is not the latest model(the Perfection 1660 replaced the Epson Perfection 1650), but today it can be seen on the shelves of many computer stores.
The Epson Perfection 1650 single-pass flatbed scanner allows digitizing printed originals with a maximum optical resolution of 1600 dpi (its twin brother is the Epson Perfection 1250 model, scans at 1200 dpi). The scanner is equipped with its own processor, which is responsible for speeding up image processing. In addition, it is thanks to him that the load on CPU computer. In the Micro Step subscanning mode, by moving the scanning head in steps of up to 3 microns, the device operates with a resolution of 3200 dpi, which allows you to obtain excellent images with good color saturation. According to the manufacturer, images from 50 to 6400 dpi are scanned in 1 dpi increments (in the interpolation mode, 9600 dpi and 12800 dpi are achieved by the scaling function).
The Epson Perfection 1650 scanner has original but discreet appearance... Its body is made of durable plastic, and the bottom profile has the necessary stiffening ribs. The movement of the scanning carriage along the guide rod is carried out by means of a toothed belt. On the flatbed scanner, there are ruler divisions with the marked boundaries of standard originals. The top cover of the scanner is removable, and external module slide adapter (optional for this model). On the back of the device there is a mechanical lock for locking the carriage during transportation, a power socket, a USB connector and a connector for a slide adapter.

The scanner comes with:

USB cable;
Power supply 24 V / 0.8 A;
Installation guide;
CD with application software and detailed electronic version of the instruction manual.

There are four quick scan buttons on the front panel of the Epson Perfection 1650. Each one has a certain picture, by which it is easy to guess about its intended purpose.

In general, pressing any button starts the scanning program with given parameters, and the first button, with a green light, simply activates the Epson Smart Panel app. By the way, in case of an error, the same button starts blinking red.

Installing the Epson Perfection 1650 Scanner and Companion Software

The scanner is shipped with a single CD-ROM with driver and software utilities. Immediately before connecting the scanner to the USB port, it is necessary to install the software package, and there are reminders about this both in the reference manual and on the scanner itself in the form of a special sticker. In the event that the scanner is nevertheless connected to the computer before installing its own software, operating system Will "slip" its (simplest) driver from the standard package.
So, we put the CD into the drive. If you have a Russian-language OS, then the language will be selected automatically. Here, it should be noted, Epson programmers clearly overlooked one nuance. The fact is that to install the driver, you need to go to the English-language section of the program (that is, go up one point and select another language), and this is not mentioned in the installation manual. This means that, despite the Russified paper and electronic versions of the description, the scanner driver itself remained unlocalized and for this reason is absent in the Russian section.
In the Russian-language part of the installer, you can select only one item: “Interactive tutorials”.

To install the scanner driver, you will have to go to the English section.

You can install the following software from the CD: TWAIN Driver, Epson Smart Panel, ArcSoft Phoroimpression, and Adobe acrobat Reader 4.05.

Always, before installing any software, it is worth checking whether it has appeared on the technical support website updated version driver. I did just that, immediately going to www.epson.ru. Fortunately, a new and Russified version of the driver was waiting for me there, which I installed instead of the one on the attached CD.

After the software installation is complete, the scanner is connected to the computer. But since the scanner is equipped with a transport lock that protects the carriage from mechanical damage When transporting the device, before connecting the power, it must be moved to the unlocked position. However, otherwise the plug cannot be connected, because in addition to blocking the mechanics, the latch also covers the power socket.
A transport lock locks both the scanner mechanics and access to the power socket.

Let's see what software Epson has prepared for their scanner. The main launch window is the Epson Smart Panel, which contains all the necessary scanning utilities. The user just needs to click on one of the eight icons to activate the application required for work.

The Copy icon launches the copy utility, thanks to which the scanner-printer link can be used as copier... The clarity and ease of use of this utility will not leave even an unprepared user in thought. Copying the original image takes place in two passes. The first is prescan, during which the boundaries of the original are determined and the brightness values are adjusted, and the second is the final stage of scanning, with the direction of the digitized image to the selected printer.
Having set a minimum of tuning parameters, the user will receive a completely functional home copier.

The next icon Scan to E-mail starts the scanning program with pre-set parameters optimized for sending by e-mail. Scanning the original, determining its standard size - everything goes automatically, but the user is left with the opportunity to switch to manual mode.
In the event that automatic scanning has not justified itself, you can switch to the manual control and personally configure the necessary settings.

After scanning one or a series of photos, you need to specify the program Email through which the shipment will be carried out.

The Scan to OCR icon assumes scanning a document containing text, with the further direction of the latter to the OCR program. Note that the PRESTO recognition program that comes with the kit does an extremely poor job with its direct responsibilities. For absolute results, it's best to use proven FineReader.

The window of the program for preparing scans for transferring to the character recognition program.

The program is designed to help with the output of images from the scanner to the printer Epson Photo Print. Its main advantage is its ease of use. The user will be able to specify what he needs in almost two clicks. Interestingly, the program automatically detects the orientation of the original and, when outputting a photo to the width of the sheet, will take up all the useful space by applying the autoscaling function.

Of all the application software that is installed as if by default (that is, without asking about it), I found the Epson Scan to Web program absolutely useless. Its main purpose is to upload scanned images to a personal page on the Epsonphoto network of sites. Providing the user of Epson products with a free page on the Internet is, of course, a good idea, but Russia is absent from the huge list of countries (but there are countries such as Estonia, Burkina Faso or the Seychelles Islands). By the way, Hewlett-Packard comes out with a similar initiative, which, however, provides this service and for a Russian user.

Scan to Web window.

From additional programs(besides Adobe Acrobat Reader) the CD contains powerful editor Photographic ArcSoft PhotoImpression. With this package you can add special effects to scanned images, make photo retouching, remove red eyes, prepare images for printing on a photo printer and much more. By and large, first of all, this program will appeal to novice users, for whom Adobe photoshop extremely difficult.
Now it's worth talking about the scanner driver, which has more functionality and flexibility than the HP ScanJet 3570c driver. Behind the seeming simplicity of the driver's software shell hides an almost complete list, for this class of scanner, of all kinds of settings. Unfortunately, like the device from Hewlett-Packard, the Perfection 1650 driver does not have a batch scan mode. Perhaps this is the only drawback.
The main window of the scanner driver is divided into a preview area and a tool area. Please note that the “Unsharp Mask” filter, which is used in most cases when editing images, is not hidden in the bowels of the driver.

In the scanner configuration menu, you can enable or disable preview(which is not unimportant, the driver implements the memorization of the image adjustment parameters, i.e. every time you do not have to set everything anew), as well as adjust the gamma parameters or assign a color profile for color correction.

In the image parameter settings for digitizing, you can manually set the white point and black point, adjust the exposure and gamma.

All user settings are displayed in a special information window.

Summing up the description of the software part of the Epson Perfection 1650 scanner, one cannot fail to note the competent approach of the Epson programmers, who clearly understood the needs of the scanner user. Basically, I found everything I needed by studying the software part of both the driver and the application utilities.

Advantages:

Excellent and very visual implementation of the driver and accompanying software
High level of technical support and regularly updated drivers
Detailed and Russified electronic description of the scanner with a user manual

Flaws:

Relatively high noise level from broaching mechanisms
Originally non-localized software
Weak character recognition program included

Testing

You can read about the testing method here.
When comparing scanners in terms of design, I would prefer the HP model. The lid of this unit is designed in the style a la iMac and shimmers depending on the angle of view. On the contrary, the Epson model looks more like an office, strictly. The ergonomic score is objectively higher for the Perfection 1650. First of all, due to the presence of rulers along the edges of the tablet. The ScanJet 3570c, on the other hand, has no edge marks. Each of the scanners under test has quick scan buttons, and they function equally well. If we assess how convenient a particular scanner is in everyday work, then this assessment will mainly depend on the service capabilities of the application software, as well as the speed of the scanner. More on this below.
The ScanJet 3570c has a relatively long pre-scan time, which, together with the lamp warm-up time, is 50 s (without lamp warm-up - 17 s). In addition, the time interval after which the scanner extinguishes the lamp (timeout) is extremely small (it's good that the driver provides for an increase in the timeout!). Note that the life of a cold cathode lamp is designed for five years or more (the typical MTBF of such a lamp is about 10,000 hours), and therefore, it is not entirely clear why the lamp should be extinguished so soon. Interestingly, long MTBF is the main advantage of the cold cathode tube, and the main disadvantage is the warm-up time when turned on. On the other hand, the Perfection 1650 demonstrated very decent speed characteristics, especially in terms of the time spent on the prescan. How quickly scanners complete digitizing tasks for typical originals is shown in the following table:

Performance

With regard to the quality of scanning, relying at first only on visual preferences, we can say that the originals from the glass are digitized by ScanJet 3570c with a relatively high quality, and from the slide adapter they turn out a little worse, somehow in an amateurish way. At first glance, Epson is not inferior to the device from HP in the quality of digitizing originals.

Testing helped to objectively evaluate both models, which showed the following:

The reproducible optical density range of the ScanJet 3570c is slightly worse than that of the Perfection 1650. This displays a graph of relative brightness deviation (range 18 - 24).
In terms of digitizing light and grayscale areas, as well as in terms of color accuracy, the ScanJet 3570c scanner nevertheless turned out to be better than its rival. This can be seen from the behavior of the function of the relative deviation of brightness in these areas of the color target, as well as the values in the final table.

The set of normalized values in the final table made it possible to determine the test winner. It was the HP ScanJet 3570c scanner, which scored 4.48 points (versus 4.21 for the Epson Perfection 1650).

Summary table

Scanner model	U impurity	U main colors	U shadow	U semitone	U light	sum (U)	Place
HP ScanJet 3570c	1,291933704	2,009892053	0,256476684	0,321993808	0,604299465	4,484595714	I
Epson Perfection 1650	1,753624829	0,306795592	1,394366197	0,243569087	0,509027027	4,207382732	II

Now for the interface. The ScanJet 3570c uses, according to the manufacturer, USB version 2.0 (i.e. it was logical to assume that the transmission would be 480 Mbps). In practice, it turned out that there is no difference between connecting to USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 ports. The transfer is only 12 Mbps, which corresponds to Fullspeed USB. It is clear that the USB 2.0 specification stipulates three speed modes, but not every user realizes that USB 2.0 Fullspeed in terms of data transfer speed is no different from USB 1.1. In this regard, there is no difference between the tested scanners.

Conclusion

Summing up the final conclusion of the article, we can definitely say that both scanners are not as perfect as we would like. Probably, the fact is that their main purpose is to work from home, where the requirements for digitization are not so great. If you want to choose the right scanner as much as possible, then first of all imagine what you will need to do with it. Determine the scope of tasks. If, for example, you buy a scanner for digitizing text documents, in order to translate the latter into a format for working in Word, then focus on the speed of the device (to work with very large amounts of text, you may have to pay attention to scanners with an automatic document feeder originals). That is why, in terms of performance, I prefer the Epson 1650 scanner. If you want to digitize home photo archive, in order to create a Video CD or to transfer electronic photos to your Internet site, then choose a scanner with a high optical resolution and good color rendering. This is especially important when outputting scanned images to a photo printer. Remember that the scanner software is also important in its own way. Testing has shown that the quality of the ScanJet 3570c application software, coupled with the paid update service, leaves much to be desired. Even taking into account the distribution of places in the final table in favor of the device from Hewlett-Packard, I would choose the Epson Perfection 1650.

SEIKO EPSON Corporation has proudly named its series of low-cost flatbed scanners "Perfection". Simple bragging? We don't think so. In our opinion, the manufacturer observes a certain tradition, calling new devices beautifully and loudly. The idea is obvious: "As you name the yacht, so it will float." It will be interesting to see how the Perfection 1650 Photo lives up to its name.

This model belongs to the class of SOHO-devices intended for use at home or in the office. The design of the device is simple: a rectangular plastic case, on the front panel there are nice-looking and pleasant-to-touch control buttons. On the rear panel, in addition to the connectors for the power supply, USB-cable and slide-module, there is a latch that blocks the movement of the carriage during transportation. Its design is carefully thought out: in the closed position, the latch slider overlaps the power connector, so it is impossible to turn on the locked device. However, given the fact that the design of the Perfection 1650 Photo broaching mechanism excludes spontaneous movement of the carriage even with strong jolts, the presence of the above safety mechanism looks more like a tribute to tradition.

The cover of the tablet, inside which, by the way, the slide-module is located, can be easily removed if necessary (for example, for scanning thick books, albums, etc.). To do this, disconnect the Option cable from the appropriate connector on the back of the scanner, lift the cover to a vertical position and pull up so that the plastic pins protrude from the mounting holes. The built-in slide module is another great feature of the Perfection 1650 Photo. But before you start working with slides, you need to remove the plastic seal from the cover, which is necessary when scanning paper originals. By the way, the flatbed scanner is graduated, which helps to correctly place both slide holder frames and opaque originals of various sizes.

The electronic "stuffing" of the scanner makes a good impression - behind every detail, behind every screw, you can feel the painstaking work of designers and installers. Stepper motor and both printed circuit boards shielded, signal cables are fixed by holders, all mirrors of the optical system are rigidly fixed.

Perfection 1650 Photo is based on the proprietary EPSON E02A34EB processor. The rest of the circuit components (which are omitted for simplicity) are either also EPSON's own developments or are produced by other well-known companies. For example, a carriage-moving stepper motor such as EM-436 is manufactured by OKI Electric.

To get your scanner ready for use, you need to install a driver. This took us about 1 minute.

The next step is connecting to a computer. The moment the interface cable connects the switched on device with system unit, The OS detects and accurately "recognizes" the scanner - EPSON Perfection 1650 Photo. Now you can get to work.

So let's see how “perfect” the Perfection 1650 is. Launch Photoshop and choose EPSON TWAIN 5.54E from the File ® Import menu. By default, the driver works in full automatic mode Full auto, while it pre-scans itself and determines the type of document. After such a cheerful start, the question involuntarily arises: "What are you - and will you eat for me?", To which the driver, without embarrassment, answers: "Aha!" with the finished image.

Main driver window: almost all controls are duplicated by icons

This independence of the driver is a definite plus for inexperienced users who are scared off by complex dialog boxes and an abundance of settings. But to achieve good results, Full auto mode alone is clearly not enough. For experienced users Manual mode is provided. To go to it, you must press the Cancel button during scanning in Full auto mode. This is what we did. As a result, dialog window, in which the default additional operations on the image were displayed: Unsharp mask, Color correction, etc. Turning them off so as not to overload the driver with unnecessary work, we measured the speed of the scanner, the level of acoustic noise during scanning, and also assessed the usability with the device in different modes. Test machine configuration under Windows control 98 SE was as follows: Intel Celeron 800 MHz, 256 MB RAM, Ge-Force2 MX 400 video adapter, IBM Deskstar hard drive. The acoustic noise was measured using a EuroAudio Pro 600 audio analyzer at a height of 1 cm above the geometric center of the scanner cover.

The slide scanning process is very convenient

The next stage of testing was a practical assessment of the range of optical densities perceived by the scanner. We scanned grayscale plates of a standard reflective AGFA IT8.7 / 2 original, the optical density of which was previously measured with an X-Rite Digital Swatchbook spectrodensitometer. The results of this test were pleasing: as it turned out, EPSON Perfection 1650 Photo freely distinguishes between the darkest plates of the table - 22 (2.01 D) and 23 (2.21 D). Consequently, the maximum optical density (Dmax) perceived by the device is not less than 2.21 D.

Note that to scan slides or films, the machine needs to be prepared in advance. First you need to remove the matte plastic plate from the cover, revealing access to the slide module. Next, you need to install the film or slides in the holder and place it on the flatbed glass in the upper right corner. If everything is done correctly, then after pressing the Preview button, the driver will pre-scan and display each frame on the screen in a separate window. To scan any frame, now you just need to select the required window, set the required values of resolution and color depth, after which it remains to click on the Scan button. Batch scanning is also supported, which is very convenient, since it allows you to digitize all frames or slides in a frame at once. And when scanning negatives, the driver independently inverts the image, turning it into a positive, and with good quality. For the sake of fairness, we note that in this case, the scan time is doubled. Therefore, in order to save time, when scanning negatives, we recommend that you set the TPU image source: positive in the scanner settings, and perform the inversion using Photoshop.

Let's summarize. The EPSON Perfection 1650 Photo made a good impression: the excellent design and excellent assembly guarantee smooth operation for a long time, the scan speed at resolutions no higher than 300 ppi is excellent, in other modes it is quite acceptable. The acoustic ("noise") characteristics of the device should also be admitted as satisfactory, but it cannot be called "quiet" in any way. The quality of the scanned originals is good, the installation and connection of the scanner is easy, and the process of adjusting the scan settings is straightforward. The organization of scanning of slides and photographic films deserves a separate kind word.

The most significant drawback should be considered the lack of an interface cable in the kit. The built-in power switch would also be useful, because disconnecting the device from the power supply every time "pulling out" the adapter from the socket is not very convenient.

Nevertheless, overall EPSON Perfection 1650 Photo can be considered an almost perfect scanner for home or office. Not everything is perfect in this apparatus, but is there absolute perfection? No wonder the ancient sages argued that there is no perfection in this world, but there are paths leading to it.

Specifications