Mustek Scan Express A3 1200 Pro USB Large Format Scanner
by Mustek
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Category: CE
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Digital Photo Product Details
Manufacturer: MustekAudio: English (Original Language)
Platform: Mac OS X
Model: ScanExpress A3 USB
Color: silver
Product features:
- Large format full color scanner
- Scans images and documents up to 29.7cm x 42.0cm (11.7" x 16.5")
- Creates full-color 9600 dpi scans
- USB 2.0 connectivity for fast, reliable data transfer
- Windows and Mac compatible
- AmazonBasics USB 2.0 A-Male to Mini-B Cable (6 Feet / 1.8 Meters)
- AmazonBasics USB 2.0 A-Male to B-Male Cable (6 Feet / 1.8 Meters)
- AmazonBasics USB 2.0 A-Male to A-Female Extension Cable (3.3 Feet/1.0 Meter)
- AmazonBasics USB 2.0 A-Male to A-Female Extension Cable (9.8 Feet/3.0 Meters)
- Monster Power HD PowerCenter 850 with GreenPower
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Mustek Scan Express A3 1200 Pro USB Large Format Scanner
Customer Review: For Snow Leopard and CS5 Owners: It Works Great!
Summary: 5 Stars
I read a lot of this scanner's reviews on Amazon before pulling the trigger and buying it. I was a bit worried because more than half the Mac users here could not get it to work at all. But for the price, there's really very few options with as much value as the Mustek 1200, and I really needed a tabloid-size scanner for my massive collection of comics and newspapers, which I am scanning for a future website. The Mustek 2400 is the only other scanner close to the 1200's value, and if I'd known that the 2400 would work as easily as the 1200, I might've shelled out the extra 80 bucks for that. But since I was rolling the dice on a cheap scanner working well, I figured why risk an 80 extra bucks on the gamble?
I do already have a letter-size scanner, but I'd put my old Epson CX6600 all-in-one through the wringer (over 10,000 scans easy). It still works quite well, but I longed to be able to scan large documents and artwork without stitching separate scans together in Photoshop (many stories behind that, but let's just say I need stitching accuracy down to one pixel). So I tossed caution (and bad reviews) to the wind and bought this scanner from good ol' Amazon.
Four days later I got the scanner. I unpacked it, laughed at the lousy documentation that came with it, and downloaded the driver from the Mustek site instead of installing it from the CD, as some other reviewers had advised. I successfully installed the driver and then plugged in the scanner to my Mac Mini (Snow Leopard 10.6.6) and my power strip (and yes, there is no power indicator light on the scanner, which is stupid insane). Fired up CS5 Photoshop...and saw nothing in the Import fly out list. Well, I knew it wouldn't be that easy. So I went to the Adobe site and downloaded the TWAIN plug in for CS5 Photoshop. Dragged the plug in file into the Photoshop/Plug-ins/Import-Export folder, rebooted Photoshop and...saw nothing in the Import fly out list.
It had only been ten minutes, but I was starting to worry. But I still hadn't read every review on Amazon or Googled anything yet, so I got started on that and discovered the key issue to making this whole thing work: Photoshop CS5 needs to run in 32-bit mode instead of 64-bit mode in order for it to recognize a TWAIN plug in. To get Photoshop CS5 to run in 32-bit mode, you close Photoshop, locate the Photoshop application icon in your Applications/Photoshop CS5 folder (the APPLICATION icon, not the Photoshop FOLDER icon), right click the icon, and select Get Info. The Get Info box opens and you can check a box that says "Open in 32-bit Mode." So I checked that box, rebooted Photoshop, clicked on the Import fly out menu...and lo and behold, there was the option: "ScanExpress A3 USB 1200 Pro." I clicked on that and the interface to the scanner opened right up. I scanned an 11.5 x 14.5 inch document and it came out beautifully in Photoshop, ready to save as a tif or jpeg or anything I wanted.
It took less than 30 minutes for me to get this thing to work on a Mac and scan/import to Photoshop, and if you follow my advice above it will take you less than 5 minutes. Running Photoshop in 32-bit does not slow anything down that I can tell, and I think all other features are retained.
So what about the scanner quality? Well, the scans look great. I scanned at 300 dpi in 24-bit color (48 bit just doubles the file size of the scan and I don't need that overhyped "advantage" for what I'm doing. You might want 48-bit color for certain artwork or photography). The colors I got were neither over or under saturated, nor did I get blown out whites or inaccurate tonal ranges. And that was straight off the scanner's default settings for brightness, contrast and gamma (the three options available under the "Enhance" tab) and with no filters applied. Available filters include "none," which I used, and blur, sharpen, invert, flip, emboss, and unsharp mask. I am sure I can get a wide variety of scanning results by adjusting these options.
The interface in Photoshop is rather small, especially when you have a 1200x1600 display as I do, but I could still see everything clearly and it was functional. The scanner bed measures almost exactly 12 x 17 inches, but the effective maximum scan area is 11.68 x 16.52 inches, and it will scan up to that exact size without any loss in quality at the edges of the scan (which is why the bed is 12 x 17 inches). The inside of the lid does have a black matt plastic sheet mounted to a flexible dense foam which fits in perfectly to the recessed bed, which will work fine for any opaque reflective material you scan. If you scan anything that is not absolutely opaque, you may want to add a sheet of white paper on top of your document to reduce the bleed-through of the black in your finished scan.
I did not find any OCR options in the TWAIN interface, so I don't know if that will be possible with Photoshop, but it may be possible with some other configuration or the native software. There are many other options for OCR capability beyond a scanning device, so don't fret about that. There were also no copy, email, or fax capabilities with the TWAIN interface, and that may be the case with any Mac installation, so buyer beware. I don't need that stuff. I just need a large-format scanner that works pretty well. And this does.
The scanner scans pretty fast, too. Way faster than my old Epson all-in-one. A full-size (11.68 x 16.52) color scan at 300 dpi took 45 seconds from the moment I hit "scan" to the moment it appeared in Photoshop. Not blazing speed maybe, but that's pretty good for a 50MB scan. The resolution options are preset, but there's a decent range of them, with 100, 150, 200, 300, 400, 600, 900 and 1200 dpi available in true dpi. There are also options for 2400, 4800, 7200 and 9600, but those would be interpolated and you won't need that very often (especially since you can't scan slides with this thing anyway).
Wow, this turned out to be a huge review, but this scanner is such an affordable option for artists and cartoonists and many others who are on modern Macs but have low budgets. Don't believe any of the other reviewers who say this doesn't work on Snow Leopard or with Photoshop, because I am living proof that it does. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to make it work. Only time will tell if it will last 10,000 scans like my Epson, but Mustek isn't new to this game, and they make some high-quality equipment for graphic and printing professionals. I suspect I will be very happy with the value I got from this purchase for many years to come.
Description of Mustek Scan Express A3 1200 Pro USB Large Format Scanner
ScanExpress A3 USB Digital Scanner Tabloid Sized Scanner with Powerful USB ConnectionDigital Cameras & Photo Categories
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