Agfa SnapScan 600

The scanner market is currently awash with flatbed scanners for £100 and less, so it's good to see a couple of higher-end units grabbing more attention than the bargain-basement devices. The LinoType Jade 2 (reviewed p171) and the Agfa SnapScan 600 are both scanners that cost a little more than the average scanner but claim to offer better quality.

It seems a little odd, then, that the SnapScan's packaging seems to be pushing the unit more towards the casual home user, when its quality and price mean it could be considered a semi-professional scanner. This is a fact that's also reflected in the scanner's build quality: it's large, well constructed and solid. The document lid is substantial, too, and pulls out to accommodate scanning from thick magazines or books.

The button on the front of the scanner is a power switch rather than the one-touch scan control that some cheaper models sport, so the TWAIN driver needs to be manually initiated. Most potential purchasers will be importing from within Photoshop, or some other image-editing software, so it shouldn't prove unduly bothersome.

Unlike the LinoType Jade 2, the SnapScan is quiet in use, and was practically inaudible against the normal background hubbub in the PC Pro office.

Connection is achieved using the supplied Adaptec AVA-1502AP SCSI card and a metre-long Centronics to D-type SCSI cable. The back of the unit sports a SCSI ID selector, plus a nine-pin connector for plugging in the optional transparency and automatic sheet-feed adaptors.

Software in the package comes on three CDs, with applications for both Macintosh and PC. The PC titles are Ulead iPhoto Express, Visioneer PaperPort LE and Caere OmniPage Limited Edition.

PaperPort is a document management application that performs well but is pretty light on features. It will attempt to intelligently import documents to installed applications, performing OCR where necessary by using its TextBridge OCR (optical character recognition) engine. The Caere OmniPage Limited Edition OCR is not so good, however, and completely refused to work with the FotoLook TWAIN driver in the test system. Finally, iPhoto Express is included for basic image-editing tasks. Its primary function is to produce postcards, calendars and the like, so it will be of little use for more serious applications.

Unusually, the SnapScan is supplied with two different TWAIN drivers: one called FotoSnap, which has a minimal set of controls for fast acquisition of images, and another by the name of FotoLook, with more adjustments for finer control. The FotoLook driver is comprehensive and includes descreening and sharpness filters, as well as a range of luminance and chrominance controls. It also has a tone curve editor utility for precise gamma adjustment. This driver will display image histograms too, and allows density adjustment, although it's not quite as comprehensive as the Jade 2's impressive ColorFactory Pro software.

The scan engine is rated at 600 « 1,200ppi, with 30-bit internal colour resolution and a 220 « 300mm maximum scanning area.

Speed is reasonable: using the FotoLook TWAIN driver, an 8 « 10in 600ppi scan took 5.45 seconds to process, while a 6 « 4in image at the same resolution took 3.15 seconds. It's slightly slower than the Jade 2, however.

The SnapScan 600 fared well when compared with the CMYK output of a professional drum scanner. Using a specific colour test target, cyan and yellow were slightly below the correct intensity but magenta was very close to the ideal. Process black was reproduced to about 75 per cent of the level of the drum scan. Detail was very well resolved, with the grain of photos being the limiting factor in most cases rather than the abilities of the scanner itself. An area where many scanners have problems is the reproduction of skin tones; again, the Agfa gave a good account of itself, although with the default settings light, peachy tones were given a reddish cast. However, with the tonal control on offer in the TWAIN driver, this can be corrected - as long as you're sufficiently confident with tone curves and you're prepared to spend a little more time on getting things right.