Epson Perfection 4180 Photo Scanner

Epson Perfection 4180 Photo Scanner
Average customer rating:

works till it dies

no help

Poorly made

Best line of scanners on the market! been using Epson for 5+ years. love it!

Applicaton software and user documentation are woefully bad

Epson Perfection 4180 Photo Scanner

Manufacturer: Epson
ProductGroup: CE
Binding: Electronics

Slide & Photo | Scanners | Office Electronics | Categories | Electronics
Slide & Photo Scanners | Printers & Scanners | Camera & Photo | Categories | Electronics
Printers & Scanners | Used Photo & Camera | Specialty Stores | Camera & Photo Features | Electronics
Office Electronics | Refurbished & Used | Special Features | Electronics Features | Electronics
Scanners | Epson | Brands | Electronics Features | Electronics
Up to $100 | by Price | Gifts | Specialty Stores | Computers Features | Electronics
Scanners | by Type | Gifts | Specialty Stores | Computers Features | Electronics
Accessories:

Belkin F3U134-10 USB Extension Cable (10-Feet)

Canon 1029A004 Photo Paper Pro for BJC-8200 (8.5"x11", 15 Sheets )

Acoustic Research Spikemaster SM-BG8 8 Outlet Block, Standard Protection Surge Protector (White)

APC BE350U 350VA Back-ups Es

Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper (S041667, 8.5x11, 50 Sheets)

Product Features:

Up to 4,800 x 9,600 dpi resolution, 48-bit color, 16-bit grayscale

Epson scan and productivity software, Adobe PhotoShop Elements 2.0

Scans multiple 35mm slides, negatives, and medium-format transparencies

Copy, scan, save, and scan-to-email directly from the front panel

USB interface, cable included; PC and Mac compatible

ASIN: B0002P4UM2

Product Description

The Epson Perfection 4180 Photo is the ideal scanner for amateur photographers. It's great for scanning film and photos at a classleading 4800dpi resolution, has a large built-in film adapter that handles multiple film formats and includes photo restoration tools. The Epson Perfection 4180 Photo is the perfect partner for the photo enthusiast. Whether you want to make enlargements of your favorite images, archive your old films and photos or even add new life to faded memories, this scanner is the complete solution to meet all your needs.

Customer Reviews:

works till it dies.......2006-12-21

the problem with all epson home scanners are they are made chaeaply... they work fine till one day you turn it on and you get the flashing red light. cancel cristmas the scanner is dead. had this happen with a 3170 and 4180. no warning just quits. but when they work they are great. I took both of these scanners apart and they are built identical to each other. so im asuming the only difference is in the circuitry.
as far as working colors are good but ive seen better. Anyone buying a scanner for the software that it comes with. Step back and think about it. They want you to buy more software. Dont complain about the software.
save a few bucks by an oem unit and invest in decent software for the scanner (silverfast of vuescan). as far as it being slow.. well get a usb 2 cable and a usb2 card if your computer is so old it doesnt have usb2. the 4180 is slower than the 3170. but still not that slow. bottom line buy it if you get one cheap. but expect to by another in the future. the resolution alone is worth the price.

no help.......2006-08-27

I bought my Epson perfection 4180 Photo scanner 13 months ago. After using it no more than 50 times The machine will not work. According to the manual it seems the bulb is no good. I tried to buy a new bulb from Epson but they don't sell it. It keeps saying send to your dealer. One would think the bulb should last more than 13 months. Of course it had a one year warranty. Epson sucks

Poorly made.......2006-05-05

I have no complaints about the quality of the scans. But after about a year and a half, the pulley mechanism came loose from the floor of the unit. I opened it up and I can see that the pulley, which has considerable tension, is held down by two tiny, thin plastic tabs. It is easy for them to break, and once one does, there is no way to secure the pulley bracket in place. I can just see them saying that these flimsy tabs are going to last as long as the warranty period and then the consumer has to buy another unit. Unbelievably poor workmanship. I think this model is no longer in production, but if it's any indication of what current Epson products are like, beware.

Best line of scanners on the market! been using Epson for 5+ years. love it!.......2006-02-28

I have been using the Epson line of scanners for over 5 years now and once I switched to them I can't go back!

Excellent products.
I upgraded to the 4180 from an Epson 3120(?) (which is the one that got me hooked on Epson) when the 4180 first came out and it has never let me down!
I use it on both Mac & PC platforms and both are seemless.

I'm a professional designer and use it regularly to capture clients art for thier creative and this scanner is the closest I can come to sending it out to have slides/film/photos/print materials drum-scanned!
matter of fact, I have not had to have anything drum-scanned since I got my 4180!
It paid for itself the first batch of color slides I scanned with it.

Its fast and reliable. It interacts well with the 'Import' function of Photoshop and the descreening function is invaluable!
I have had to use other scanners in the past (HP, ScanJet, Kodak, etc..) and NONE have come close to being able to make an existin printed image usable compared to the Epson!
All the rest capture the print screen and make the image useless.
But the Epson has a GREAT descreening filter that makes fullsized scans at even 600dpi usable for print. Allowing for cropping and enlarging by nearly 100%!!!

the software works well, and is easy to figure out. if you're a beginner the 'Simple' screen will get you almost everything you need, but for seasoned users, the 'Advanced' screen has about every option in easy to find/use menues and screens.

The sharpening for photographs is astounding!

Only function I have found to be somewhat inacurate is the film/slide scanning autodetect. I will sometimes not show the full neg/slide. But this is simple enough to solve by switching the preview mode to 'Normal.' And no other scanner on the market can come close to the quality/resolution when scanning a slide/neg in my opinion!

I would give it a 4.75 out of 5 stars, but Amazon doesn't allow for part-stars, so I rounded up!

Applicaton software and user documentation are woefully bad.......2005-09-22

I have been using the Epson 4180 intermittently for several months now. I initially gave it two stars because of the difficulties that I had with the user interface and with the documentation. If I knew then what I know now, I probably wouldn't have been that generous. The reference manual and the Help utility are both useless, and the reference manual seems to describe a different version of the Epson Scan application. The only way that I was able to figure out how the user interface works was through lengthy experimentation. The user interface has a drop-down selection list for selecting the "resolution". In some scenarios, the value you select is interpreted as the scanning resolution, and in other scenarios, it is interpreted relative to the virtual dimensions that you specify for the output. The design of the user interface obscures the distinction between the two different perspectives of resolution, and even after you are aware that it is sometimes interpreted one way and sometimes the other way, you struggle to infer the rules that determine which way it is interpreted. This is the sort of thing that you would like to find explained in the reference manual, but neither the Help utility nor the reference manual comes within a country mile of answering those sorts of essential questions. On two separate occasions, the button that you click in order to open the dialog box that lets you change the file save settings failed to appear in the application window. On several occasions, I had to reboot the computer to get the application to start or to get the application window to open fully from the icon in the task bar.

I'm going to discuss those problems in more detail, but first a few words about the very significant problem with the automatic placement of the scanning marquee when scanning 35mm slides. Using the slide tray and with the appropriate selections set for positive film, the thumbnail preview mode is supposed to find the interior borders of the cardboard slide mounts, placing the edges of the marquees for each slide at those interior borders. I noticed that some of my slide scans were excessively cropped along one or more of the edges. I used the other ("normal") preview mode so that I could see the entire slide, and was able to determine that the cropping at the top or bottom edge using the automatic marquee placement in thumbnail preview was sometimes 8% of the total height of the slide. I then noticed that the dimensions of all the slide marquees came only in certain heights and widths. Evidently, the edges of the marquee will only be placed at certain locations on the scanner bed, and the granularity of the allowed locations is much too course for scanning 35mm slides.

The thing that really makes this irritating is that, first off, it is exceedingly unlikely that this course granularity has anything to do with the physical scanner per se, but it is just something that is hard-coded in the algorithm used to find the interior edges of the cardboard slide mount. There are specific hard-coded locations where a check will be performed to see if the cardboard is inside the marquee, and if it is, the next location further in is checked, etc. Secondly, it would not be such a big deal if you were able to move the edge of the marquee using the mouse (while remaining in the thumbnail preview). You are able to reduce the area of the marquee using the mouse, moving the edges inward, but in the thumbnail preview mode (which is the preview mode in which the marquees are automatically determined), you cannot move the marquee edges further out than the location where they are automatically placed during the preview scan.

In order to be able to move the marquee edges further out, you have to switch to the "normal" preview mode. In the "normal" preview mode, the marquees are not determined automatically, and you have to draw the rectangles for each slide manually using the mouse. The individual slides do not appear as large in this preview mode as the individual thumbnails do in the thumbnail preview mode, and in order to get the edges of the marquees placed where you want them, you have to first do a preview scan, then draw the four marquees roughly, then zoom for each one individually. Each time that you perform the zoom for one of the four marquees that you have drawn, another preview scan is performed, and each one of them requires an additional half-minute or so. This is the best way to get the marquee edges exactly where you want them, but it would be unnecessary if you were simply allowed to move the marquee edges further out in the thumbnail preview mode. In fact, it shouldn't be necessary to manually adjust the marquee edges at all. The way that this sort of thing is normally done is by starting with a course granularity to find the approximate location quickly, and then home in on the edge by searching with progressively finer granularities. If they were concerned about the preview scan taking too long, another approach would have been to give you a button in the preview pane that you can click to cause the positioning of the marquee edges to be refined further. One of the supposed advantages of the Epson 4180 is its supposed ability to scan film and slides with results comparable to a dedicated film scanner. Yet, they did a poor job with the automatic placement of the marquee and with the user's ability to adjust the marquee in the thumbnail preview mode.

The Epson Scan application offers the user three distinctly different user interfaces corresponding to Epson's perception of three distinct levels of user expertise, i.e., "Full Auto", "Home" and "Professional". My inclination was to look in the documentation for an explanation of the differences between these modes. There is a chart in the reference manual that gives a summary of the supported uses for each mode, but that chart didn't give me a sense of the specific capabilities that are available or unavailable in each mode. It didn't take long to discover the significant limitations of the Full Auto mode, and I also did not find any advantage of the Home mode over the Professional mode. From the very start I thought that the three-tiered approach only increased the complexity, and I still feel that way after having used it for several months.

Even though the reference manual says that film scanning is supported in Full Auto mode, I was not able to successfully scan color positive slides in the Full Auto mode. I noticed that in the other modes you have to specify whether film is positive or negative, and there is no way to specify this in Full Auto mode, so the likely explanation is that color positive slides are not supported in Full Auto mode, and someone just forget to mention that in the reference manual. The Epson Scan application starts up in whichever mode was previously in use, and when it starts up in the Full Auto mode, it automatically commences the preview scan based on the settings that were last used, and then proceeds automatically to the full scan. The full scan that I was attempting for a document was taking way too long, and I decided that I had probably set the scanning resolution too high for a full-page document. To change the setting I needed to halt the current scan operation, and the only way to do that was to click on the Cancel button, which caused the application to exit. When I started the Epson Scan application again, it started again in Full Auto mode. After repeating this cycle a few times, I realized that the same button, if pressed during the preview scan, prevents the full scan from starting, allowing you to change the settings. The way this button behaves after the full scan has started is stupid and annoying. If you want the application to exit, you can do that the same as you do with any Windows application.

In the Home Mode, you select a Destination from among the offered choices: "Screen/Web", "Printer", or "Other". This selection has the effect of either pre-selecting the resolution, or, when you select "Other", of enabling the Resolution drop-down list so that you can select the resolution manually. After you perform the preview scan, you can select "Original" for Target Size. It was not difficult to figure out that this was the way to directly specify the scanning resolution, but this early optimism was short-lived. One of the first things that I wanted to understand is what the Resolution selection does in every scenario. If you click on Help and navigate to the section for Destination and then find where it talks about the selection of the Resolution, here is what it says:

"Resolution: When you select Other as the Destination, the resolution for the current scanning operation can be changed by selecting a resolution or typing in the value."

This doesn't exactly tell you the effect of the Resolution selection in every scenario, and it doesn't even tell you that if you want to specify the scanning resolution directly, you need to select Original for the Target Size. You can also find a section in the reference manual where it offers advice for presentation resolution to use for different purposes such as printing. But that doesn't explain the effect of the Resolution selection in different modes and scenarios, and there is no other information to be found in the documentation to explain the effect of the Resolution selection. Through trial and error, I discovered that the effect of the Resolution selection depends on whether you use pixels or physical dimensions to specify the Target Size, and even depends on the type of original document that you are scanning (which you specify). I will attempt to describe what I discovered, but I must warn that I cannot guarantee that this is 100% correct.

In Home mode, the "resolution" is preset to 96 dpi for "Screen/Web" and to 300 dpi for "Printer". It is important to note that these values are applicable to the image presentation, e.g., 300 dpi is a good printing resolution. The resolution in that sense is generally not the same as the scanning resolution, because the physical size of the original document being scanned is generally not the same as the presentation size when the image is printed or displayed on a monitor. This is a purposeful approach to specifying the scanning resolution, albeit indirect, whenever the purpose of the scan is that specific. It is useful to think of that sort of resolution as the target resolution. In order for a target resolution to be meaningful, it must be specified in the context of a virtual image size, known as the Target Size. The Target Size is not actually an attribute of the file that you create when you perform a scan, and does not become real or tangible until you print the image file or display it on a monitor.

If you select a Target Size using a dimension-based specification such as 4" x 6", the marquee in the preview pane will be adjusted as need to match the 2:3 aspect ratio of that Target Size, cropping the document as needed. The Resolution that you select (or that is pre-selected when you select "Screen/Web" or "Printer" for the Destination) is then multiplied by the dimensions of your Target Size to determine the number of required pixels along each dimension. The application software then chooses the scanning resolution that will yield the required number of pixels from the marquee dimensions (as measured at the scanner bed). Whenever you use a dimension-based specification such as 4"x6" for the Target Size, the Resolution that you select is interpreted by the software as a target resolution.

Instead of selecting the Target Size using a dimension-based specification, you can select the Target Size using a pixel-based specification. In that case, you are directly specifying the number of pixels along each dimension. Since the Resolution that you specify is not needed for determining the pixels along each dimension, and since the scanning resolution is implied by that number of pixels and by the dimensions of the marquee, the obvious question is what, in this scenario, is the purpose and effect of the Resolution selection. I experimented with a color page from a magazine and with a color positive slide, and it seems that there are (at least) two different possible behaviors when a pixel-based specification is used for Target Size. It appears that there is one behavior for reflective documents and a different behavior for film. Of course, it is entirely possible that the conditions, that determine which of the two behaviors will apply, are not as simple as they seemed. It would be nice if the user documentation gave you definitive answers to these sorts of questions, but nothing in the user documentation comes within a country mile of answering these sorts of questions.

When I was scanning a positive film slide, the behavior that I observed, when a pixel-based specification was selected for the Target Size, was that the Resolution selection had no effect. I did several test scans using different values for Resolution but with the Target Size set to my monitor dimensions (1024 x 768) each time, and I got the same results each time. Yet, the drop-down list for Resolution remained active (when the Destination selection is "Other") and I was able to change the Resolution value even though it was evidently meaningless. If the Resolution selection is meaningless, in this or any other scenario, the drop-down list should have been disabled. It should not have been enabled in the first place prior to the selection of a dimension-based specification for Target Size. This is shoddy workmanship.

When I was scanning the magazine cover, the behavior that I observed, when a pixel-based specification was selected for the Target Size, was that the Resolution selection was interpreted as the specification for the scanning resolution! The software uses that resolution value, together with the pixel count along each dimension, to set the area of the marquee accordingly. Because I had left the Resolution value at 3200 dpi from the prior scan of the film, when I changed the Target Size to 1024 x 768 after the preview scan of the magazine cover, the marquee shown in the preview pane shrunk down to a tiny area in the upper left corner. (At 3200 dpi, 1024 x 768 equates to .32" x .24".) Now, given that the selected (or pre-selected) Resolution has this effect on the marquee, you would expect that you would be able to enlarge or shrink the marquee by changing the Resolution value. Not so. You can select a different Resolution value, but it has no effect on the marquee displayed in the preview pane. When I changed the value for Target Size again, that had no apparent effect either, notwithstanding that the first time that I changed the Target Size after the preview scan, the effect was inescapable. The marquee displayed in the preview pane seems to correctly indicate the area that will be scanned regardless, and you can always control the scanning area by using the mouse to drag the corners or edges of the marquee. As you stretch or shrink the marquee using the mouse, you would expect that the displayed Resolution should change accordingly, especially since the Resolution value was partly what caused the marquee to shrink so small in the first place. Yet, as you change the area of the marquee, the displayed value of the Resolution does not change.

At this point, I question whether these behaviors are what was intended, or whether this is simply how it worked after the first couple of iterations through the software development cycle. In my estimation, this application software is not so much the result of a thorough specification as it is the state at one moment in time of something that started out as only a crude understanding of what was needed and then evolved in an ad hoc manner. The one thing that I would have considered unforgivable was for the user interface to render the distinction between scanning resolution and target resolution ambiguous by presenting the user with an interface where it is not obvious whether the resolution value will be interpreted as scanning resolution or target resolution. There is a single drop-down selection box in the user interface, that in most scenarios, is interpreted as target resolution, but in at least one other scenario, is interpreted by the application software as the scanning resolution, and is used, in conjunction with the pixel dimensions selected for the Target Size, to derive the scanning area of the document. Allowing the Resolution value to be carried over, as the Target Size is changed from a specification that uses physical dimensions to a specification that uses pixels, is stupid. A change in the style of the specification used for the Target Size should cause the Resolution value to be cleared. At all times, the drop-down box used to select the Resolution should be clearly labeled as either Scanning Resolution or Target Resolution, with that label changing whenever anything changes the way that the Resolution value will be interpreted. This user interface is shoddy workmanship.

Before I had sorted out what causes the marquee in the preview window to shrunk down into the upper left corner, I foolishly thought I would let the Epson technical support people explain to me why that happens. The technical support person that I spoke with was unable to offer a single definitive statement explaining how this user interface works. The concept, of providing definitive statements that explain how the user interface works, is evidently an alien concept, both in the user documentation and in the technical support.

I encountered multiple errors and glitches in the software, and it stands to reason that the ones that I stumbled into are only a small fraction of the total number present. In the Professional mode, I changed the Target Size from Original to 4x6, and the aspect ratio of the marquee in the preview pane changed as it should, but then after I changed the Target Size back to Original, the marquee did not change back as I naively expected. There should be a way to undo the cropping and revert to the document dimensions that were determined during the preview scan. The simplest way to do that would be for that to happen whenever "Original" is selected for Target Size.

Another feature of the user interface that mystifies me is the way that you access the file save settings, e.g., graphic format, jpeg compression level, etc. To change these settings, you press a little button with an arrow, located next to the Scan button. There isn't any Windows-compliant menu bar at all. I don't object to the use of a dedicated button for this purpose, but what I don't understand is why it is a little button with a little arrow, instead of a big button that is labeled "File Save Settings". This is stupid. On at least two occasions, this button was absent altogether. The first time that this happened to me, I was not yet familiar with the use of this button, and because it wasn't there to be found, I spent a lot of time searching around for a way to specify the location for the file to be saved. The second time that it happened, its absence was conspicuous, and no amount of repetition of the preview scan, would cause it to appear. That part of the application window, to the right of the Scan button, was simply blank. I believe that it appeared after I changed to a different mode and back again.

Epson Perfection 4180 Photo - Flatbed scanner - 8.5 in x 11.7 in - 4800 dpi x 9600 dpi - Hi-Speed USB

Average customer rating:

Epson Perfection 4180 Photo - Flatbed scanner - 8.5 in x 11.7 in - 4800 dpi x 9600 dpi - Hi-Speed USB

Manufacturer: Epson
ProductGroup: CE
Binding: Electronics

Office Electronics | Refurbished & Used | Special Features | Electronics Features | Electronics
ASIN: B0009X1OOY

Product Description

Offering superior image quality and performance, the Epson Perfection 4180 Photo delivers a remarkable value. True 4800 x 9600 dpi with Micro Step Drive technology ensures precision clarity and color. And, with powerful one-touch color restoration and dust removal capabilities, anyone can easily restore faded color photos, slides and negatives. The convenient built-in transparency unit enables users to scan multiple 35mm negatives, slides, or medium format transparencies.The Epson Perfection 4180 Photo offers fully automatic scanning for increased productivity, plus two advanced scanning modes for greater control. With all that, plus a full-featured photo software solution, including Adobe PhotoShop Elements 2.0, this powerful performer makes it easy to achieve high-quality scans from virtually any original, for stunning color reprints and enlargements. And, with Hi-Speed USB 2.0, the Epson Perfection 4180 Photo speeds through every scan, so as not to delay one's creativity.Compatible with both Windows and Macintosh systems, this scanner provides an unbeatable solution for any task or project. When partnered with an Epson Stylus ink jet printer, the Epson Perfection 4180 Photo offers the perfect choice for creating brilliant images that last.

Average customer rating:

Epson Perfection 4180 Photo - Flatbed scanner - 8.5 in x 11.7 in - 4800 dpi x 9600 dpi - Hi-Speed USB

ProductGroup: CE
Binding: Electronics

Office Electronics | Refurbished & Used | Special Features | Electronics Features | Electronics
ASIN: B00069883G

Product Description

Electronics:

Electronics

Electronics