what is a howtek 4500 capable of

[jtvr]

Dear Members

The moment has come for me to invest in a good scanner. Recently I found a company in Brussels (Belgium) that sells used Howtek scanners, and installs them too.
The choice is between a 4500 or a 7500.
I work with 4x5 and sometimes 8x10 transparencies, and need most often files around 500 mb and sometimes up to 1GB. The company can not say if the 4500 can do that.

I am surprised that I can not find this info on-line.
Who has experience with a Howtek 4500 and can tell me what it is capable of? Speed is not a priority.

If anyone has some advice on where to pay attention to, when buying one, your imput wil be highly appreciated.

Thanks a lot

jan t v rees

[George Stewart]

http://www.aztek.com/ sells referbished 4500s with their latest and greatest software. They are good people and may be able to help.

[robc]

I work with 4x5 and sometimes 8x10 transparencies, and need most often files around 500 mb and sometimes up to 1GB. The company can not say if the 4500 can do that.

If the company can not tell you what the scanner can do it sounds like they don't know anything about what they are trying to sell you. That wouldn't inspire me with confidence.

[Ted Harris]

The 4500 is speced at 4000 spi and the 7500 at 5000. The 7500 also gives you more bit depth than the 4500.

Whichever you choose be sure it comes with software and if it doesn't factor tht into the price. Also, make sure you have the necessary computer to interface with the scanner. Both require a SCSI interface. IIRC both also must run on a legcacy Mac running OS 9 (maybe 8).

[Jim collum]

actually, the 4500 can interface to a PC running windows using a SCSI interface. Silverfast provides a version of their scanning software for it as well (I'm running that combo myself).


The 4500 is speced at 4000 spi and the 7500 at 5000. The 7500 also gives you more bit depth than the 4500.

Whichever you choose be sure it comes with software and if it doesn't factor tht into the price. Also, make sure you have the necessary computer to interface with the scanner. Both rquire a CSI intrface. IIRC both also must run on a legcacy Mac running OS 9 (maybe 8).

[Ted Harris]

Thanks Jim .... wasn't sure

[Jim collum]

the Howtek 4500 will scan at 8x10 at 4000dpi, which will give you a 16bit file of 32,000 x 40,000 pixels, which is about 7Gb. I find scanning the 8x10's at 2000 to be sufficient in most cases :)

jim


Dear Members

The moment has come for me to invest in a good scanner. Recently I found a company in Brussels (Belgium) that sells used Howtek scanners, and installs them too.
The choice is between a 4500 or a 7500.
I work with 4x5 and sometimes 8x10 transparencies, and need most often files around 500 mb and sometimes up to 1GB. The company can not say if the 4500 can do that.

I am surprised that I can not find this info on-line.
Who has experience with a Howtek 4500 and can tell me what it is capable of? Speed is not a priority.

If anyone has some advice on where to pay attention to, when buying one, your imput wil be highly appreciated.

Thanks a lot

jan t v rees

[jtvr]

Thank you very much.

the difference between the software is still not clear to me. Which software is best and why?

I got a reply from Aztek, saying that the 4500 can not scan 8x10 inch at 4000 dpi, which i don't really intend to do.

(As with most self taught people, my knowledge goes as far as the different scanners that I got scans from and the few I operated myself. In this regard, I did a lot of work on a flextight and I feel like i,ve grown out of it, in particular because of the disturbance in the dark area's.)

jan tvrees

[Ted Harris]

There are at least three software options AFAIK: 1) Silverfast, 2) Trident and 3) the software that was originally developed inhouse by Howtek to run the scanners. My understanding is that Trident has always been third party software that Howtek originally sought as a less expensive option to their own software (that from Aztek's tech folks so don't quote me on it). The Aztek folk that I have spoken with, while not slamming Trident software, are not overly in love with it saying it lacks capabilities (whatever that means). I have friends who run Trident and are satisfied with it.

If I were to point to a basic difference among types of scanning software it would be the method in which they are designed to be used. Most software used with high end scanners (e.g. ColorGeniusEX which I use) is designed for the prepress industry. It is either designed to be used in a stand-alone mode or in conjunction with some sort of screening/dot copying software. An expert working with this sort of software can fully or almost fully obviate the need to use any image editing software such as Photoshop ... in many instances. Software designed for use with prosumer scanners is to be used in conjunction with photo editing software. Silverfast stands somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. The concentration on much of the prepress industry software is with very precise, very minute color adjustments. Finally, as noted earlier, the learning curves vary dramatically with those for the 'high end' software approximating learning advanced calculus and those for the prosumer scanners more like learning basic algebra.

This is not a complete explanation but I hope it helps.

[JohnnyV]

You can’t go wrong with either scanner. If extra parts or drums are needed there are many, many, many more 4500s than 7500s out in the world to pick from.

Regarding software to add to the above excellent comments....

The only two regularly updated Howtek scan drivers are SilverFast and Aztek’s Digital PhotoLab.

Aztek’s Digital PhotoLab is a Windows only application. It’s the only software that “connects” to the hardware side of the scanner. Meaning it controls the Analog / Digital Converter of the scanner for supposedly smoother tonality and accuracy. I have not used it myself so I couldn’t tell you if it would improve scans or not.

SilverFast has the same interface for all scanners it produces, from Polaroid to Nikon to Howtek. Silverfast updates it software regularly and at about 30% the price of Digital PhotoLab is my choice for Howtek scanner software.

Trident has not been updated in a number of years (four years or so) but works well on Mac OS 9, but buggy on Windows. It needs a dongle to work so be warned if a Trident disk is available it will only run in demo mode...until you buy dongle.

I’ve used both Trident and Silverfast with my Howtek 4000 and I prefer SilverFast as it works with the latest OS. Also SilverFast’s user interface is so much better than Trident’s.

[jtvr]

I want to thank everybody for this very valuable information.

jt v. Rees