Minolta Dimage Scan Multi PRO Scanner Test Review
© 2006 KenRockwell.com about these reviews

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OPERATING TIPS

BUY THE Scanhancer! For $30 or so the scans, at least with Velvia and especially with ICE, will be far better. Just remember to increase the exposure inthe Minolta software to compensate for the light loss. No, no one pays me for this; I just tried it and it fixed all my complaints!

Speed

It scans faster run from inside Photoshop than with the stand-alone driver. If your scans run longer than 30 minutes you may have better luck with the stand alone driver, since sometimes the Photoshop driver crashes due to a defect in the firewire driver

ICE

ICE leaves more artifacts at lower resolutions. When using ICE, better scans are had by scanning at the highest resolution you can stand and resizing in Photoshop to the resolution you need. In other words, scanning a 35mm slide for the Internet is just fine at just 480 DPI, however the ICE artifacts are obvious if you use ICE at 480 DPI. If you only need 480 DPI and want ICE, scan at as high a resolution as you have time and resize in Photoshop.

Recalibration

I'm told that to have the scanner recalibrate itself you hit CMD + Shift + I. This should not have to be done much, if ever at all. I never have.

Autofocus

I tried one scan with the AF on Scan set to off and it was awful. I always leave the box AF ON SCAN checked, although it takes an extra moment to get the focus set each scan.

6 x 7 and 6 x 7 scans

I use the glass holder and 6 x 8 cm masks for these slightly smaller formats.

This allows me to crop to the very edge of the 6x7 frame, which may be cropped artificially with the 6 x 7 mask.

I'm lazy, so I don't bother to change the mask when scanning 6 x 6.

Panoramic film (6 x 12 cm, 6 x 17 cm)

The Photomerge feature of Adobe Photoshop Elements works just great. Full Photoshop 6 does not do this, Elements is the $99 program that is included with many Epson scanners and printers.

Make two or three scans of your image so you have plenty of overlap. Photomerge puts them together just fine. You don't have to fret over rotation or alignment or anything, Photomerge deals with all that by itself.

If you are using negatives remember to lock the exposure for both scans, otherwise the two sides won't match.

Remember to allocate a ton of memory to Elements if you want to work at full resolution.

I'm unsure if Elements can handle scans at the higher resolutions of this scanner.

RECOMMENDATIONS

As I said 20 pages ago, just buy one of these scanners. Read all these review pages since specific tips and tricks are splattered all over the review.

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