Launch the Epson Scan Application #
Placement On The Scan Bed #
- Open the scanner lid and place the print face down on the upper left of the glass scan bed so that it is square with the corner. There is a white triangle indicating where the top left corner of the print should go.
- Close the lid and press Preview on the lower left of the scan dialog.
Basic Settings #
- Set Mode: Photo Mode
- Document Source: Scanner Glass
- Document Type: Reflective
- Image Type: 24-bit Color
- Resolution: 2400dpi Maximum. If the photo is large you may need to drop it to 1200dpi, 600dpi or 300dpi to keep the file size manageable. A file size in the 300MB-400MB range should be fine.
- Scan Quality: High
- Image Format: Tiff
- File Name: Whatever file name makes sense to you
- Folder: Desktop
Selecting Scan Area #
- Drag a box around the area you want to be scanned, usually the entire photo. Make sure that you do not include any of the white borders around the photograph. The selection should be just inside the printed image area.
Color Settings #
- Select the Color Management button
- For most images, leaving Brightness, Contrast, and Saturation on zero should be fine since you will be editing the image later in Photoshop. The goal here is to capture the most color tones/detail possible; similar to the RAW setting in a camera.
- If shadows are too dark bring up Brightness and/or lower Contrast until you see detail.
Other Settings #
- The other settings are dependent on the type of photograph you are scanning so you may need to experiment to find which works best in your situation. Each photo may require different settings.
- Unsharp Mask is usually left in the Middle or Lite. Sharpening can be done later in photoshop so you want to avoid over-sharpening during scanning if at all possible.
- Descreening settings are for printed material such as magazines, newsprint, etc…
- Dust Removal can work well if used lightly. It can soften the image a bit if you’re not careful.
Scan! #
- Press the Scan button and wait.
- With the settings above the file will be pretty big and take a few minutes to scan.
- Once completed, a .tif file should show up on the desktop. Copy the .tif scan to an external drive.
- Open the file and look it over. Since every image is different you may need to experiment with the settings to get the best scan.
- Don’t forget your photo in the scanner.
Postprocessing #
- You can now open the image in Photoshop and adjust color, tone, sharpness, dust, etc..
- Finally, resize it down to around 40mb and save it as a tif or PSD file.
