I've now been working with Epson Scan 2 (as opposed to the original Epson Scan) for the past 2 months or so, and to be quite frank, I'm not very happy with it. Long story short, I had been using Epson Scan as the interface between my iMac and Epson Perfection V750 Pro for the past ten years. However, in early September, my iMac crashed, and I needed to get a new one. Unfortunately, with the newer 64-bit iMacs running iOS 11 (Big Sur), this meant that my old Epson Scan software would no longer be working. So, I switched to Epson Scan 2.
Right off the bat, as an interface, Epson Scan 2 had a lot to be desired over the original Epson Scan. Epson Scan 2 was nowhere near as intuitive, and seemed quite clunky. But I could get by with it. However, a couple of days ago I upgraded to iOS 12 (Monterey) and right off the bat, I noticed that Epson Scan 2 was having problems. Every action I do now results in a "pinwheel" as the program is "thinking". I get this, for example, whenever I try to resize a box around an image, play with levels in the histogram, etc. It's gotten quite annoying.
I did some research on this issue, and it seems that since I downloaded Epson Scan 2 in mid-September, there was an updated driver/program made available in October. So I uninstalled the older version of Epson Scan 2 and downloaded/installed the newer version. Unfortunately, this did not at all resolve my issues. Further, I've run into a new problem: After adjusting the histogram in preview, the resulting scanned image is coming out totally out of whack. (sigh)
At the moment, I'm scanning some of my grandmother's old negatives from the 50's. These were most likely taken on a Kodak Brownie (or the like), and to be clear I'm not expecting to get Hasselblad-quality scans. The film is either 126 or 127 (I haven't measured) and I am scanning via wet-mount method with the supplied Epson wet-mount tray.
This image was done with the older version of Epson Scan 2 after I adjusted the levels in the preview:
The next image was done with the newly downloaded Epson Scan 2 after I adjusted the levels in the preview to be quite similar to what I did in the previous image, which, as you can see, did not come out very well.
I then scanned the same image a third time, this time cropping it so that there was no black border (when scanning via wet-mount, I like to capture the unexposed edges of the negative so as to get as much of the original image as possible, which can then be edited out later if necessary), and not playing with the levels at all (i.e., letting Epson Scan 2 do the work of the manipulation).
This image is acceptable, but will most likely have to played with a bit in post to make it better.
Right off the bat, as an interface, Epson Scan 2 had a lot to be desired over the original Epson Scan. Epson Scan 2 was nowhere near as intuitive, and seemed quite clunky. But I could get by with it. However, a couple of days ago I upgraded to iOS 12 (Monterey) and right off the bat, I noticed that Epson Scan 2 was having problems. Every action I do now results in a "pinwheel" as the program is "thinking". I get this, for example, whenever I try to resize a box around an image, play with levels in the histogram, etc. It's gotten quite annoying.
I did some research on this issue, and it seems that since I downloaded Epson Scan 2 in mid-September, there was an updated driver/program made available in October. So I uninstalled the older version of Epson Scan 2 and downloaded/installed the newer version. Unfortunately, this did not at all resolve my issues. Further, I've run into a new problem: After adjusting the histogram in preview, the resulting scanned image is coming out totally out of whack. (sigh)
At the moment, I'm scanning some of my grandmother's old negatives from the 50's. These were most likely taken on a Kodak Brownie (or the like), and to be clear I'm not expecting to get Hasselblad-quality scans. The film is either 126 or 127 (I haven't measured) and I am scanning via wet-mount method with the supplied Epson wet-mount tray.
This image was done with the older version of Epson Scan 2 after I adjusted the levels in the preview:
The next image was done with the newly downloaded Epson Scan 2 after I adjusted the levels in the preview to be quite similar to what I did in the previous image, which, as you can see, did not come out very well.
I then scanned the same image a third time, this time cropping it so that there was no black border (when scanning via wet-mount, I like to capture the unexposed edges of the negative so as to get as much of the original image as possible, which can then be edited out later if necessary), and not playing with the levels at all (i.e., letting Epson Scan 2 do the work of the manipulation).
This image is acceptable, but will most likely have to played with a bit in post to make it better.
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