PAPERLESS HOME

In this day and age when everything is digitally recorded and stored, from your images to audio and video, why should your documents be in black and white? We all know the advantages of using a digitally recorded medium. Large files can be stored in your computer, archived on CD or DVD media and can even be shared easily by putting the data on a website or sending it off as an e-mail. Even though we cannot truly eliminate the requirements of paper yet, your old documents, bills, etc can be scanned to be digitally archived and even the photographs that you took from your old 35 mm film camera can be scanned to be archived or shared using the Canon CanoScan 4400F scanner.

Features

The Canon CanoScan 4400F features a CCD scanner element unlike many other scanners that use the CIS scanning element. This gives the scanner a slight advantage in terms of quality. This gap is slowly being diminished. This scanner boasts of an optical resolution of 4800×9600 dpi which is amongst the highest in its category. This should allow the scanner to pick up the minutest details in an image. Such insanely high resolutions

are generally required to pick up the small details in the 35 mm film that is capable of capturing more details then most mainstream digital cameras can deliver. It is also able to scan transparencies and 35 mm film thus allowing you to convert your paper based assets into digital format It can scan images at a colour depth of 48-bits which is standard for all high end scanners. It can scan documents of the size of A4/Letter at the maximum

Layout and Design

The scanner is provided with seven one-touch shortcut buttons to perform various tasks like creating PDF’s and making a copy, scanning to e-mail, etc. The Canon is provided with a C shaped-lid which makes it easier to scan fat books, novels, encyclopedia’s etc

Software

The USP of this scanner is the bundled software. With the software, you can almost eliminate the need of a professional mage editing program like Photoshop unless you want to run some advanced filters on the image. The software can remove the effect of dust and scratch marks on the glass and can even do backlight correction. The ScanGear

software can also revive images that have faded overtime. The grain correction feature gives images a natural look. Shadows created by book gutters can be eliminated by Gutter Shadow Correction

Performance

As far as performance is concerned, the CanoScan 4400F delivered spot on quality. In our magazine scan test, the details in shadow regions were maintained and the colour reproduction was almost up to the mark. We had no trouble scanning text and the bundled OCR software picked up text flawlessly. This scanner is no slow coach as far as scanning speeds are concerned. A preview took as quick as 8 seconds at 300 dpi while a complete scan lasted about 44 seconds

Verdict:

At a price of Rs 8,995, this scanner is a steal to buy. It provides a decent set of features, great performance and a software bundle that can provide all basic image manipulation needs

FOR: High resolutions, Good colour reproduction, support for transparencies and 35 mm film AGAINST: None