[japniz]

I’m currently scanning several hundred old slides of varying size using the Epson software that came with my 4990 scanner, Twained to Photoshop Elements 3PSE). I’d opted for Elements because of Adobe’s benchmark reputation in handling images for such a special project even though I prefer Paint Shop Pro (PSP) 8 for most routine image handling.

The process used:
- import from scanner
- the Epson software opens and I preview
- then full scan (1200dpi, colour correction and Digital ICE applied)
- close the Epson software to access the scans in PSE
- then crop, flip, invert and caption before saving as uncompressed Tiff images for later processing

Initial observations on PSE was the paucity of keyboard shortcuts for the photo manipulation – I’d have to go to each menu to rotate, flip and invert the images as there was no separate keyboard combo for each action. (I checked the Help file to see if anything needed to be ‘turned on’, but there was reference to a ‘shortcuts bar’ but no more information than that.) Also the default save included a checked ‘insert in Organiser’ field, which I didn’t want, so would have to click that field box off too before completing the save. (Each scan is about 20mb so took a couple of seconds or so.)

I really thought nothing of this until trying PSP 8 for a comparison. As I said, I’d gone for Adobe because of its reputation and that Elements 3 is a much more recent version than PSP 8. The process was still the same, acquiring and scanning using the Epson software, but everything apart from the actual scan (about 32 mins for six slides) was just faster:
- all photo manipulation functions that I needed had keyboard shortcuts, which saved a lot of mouse clicks
- the speed with which the prog. saved and rotated/flipped the scans was about twice as fast as Elements, on average!

My question goes to any difference between the two applications. Is there any reason why Elements should take longer to manipulate and save the same scan? For example, does Elements do something that PSP isn’t doing under the bonnet during the save process?

I’m keen to get the best results and would be happy to keep using PSE if its less intuitive workflow produced better saves, but –to this layman – I can’t see anything obvious to explain the difference in performance (the resulting saves from both methods are about 20/21mb). PSP’s speed will, however, mean quite a bit over these several hundred slides/negs/films.

[pixelpixel]

Why dont you do directly from the Epson software

I once worked as a 'scanner boy' for a design house and I never got to play with photoshop while using the scanner and that was all day long. Hmmmm that noise.

[HotblackDesiato]

I'm slowly working my way through around 10000 slides and have moved to using VueScan. It works with a whole bunch of scanners in my case i found it certainly improved on the bundled Canon software, in terms of speed, flexibility and output.

[japniz]

Many thanks for your thoughts and your replies, guys.

Does no one, though, have experience of using PSE 3 and/or PSP 8? I'm convinced there must be some explanation or, at the very least, some secret way of accessing keyboard shortcuts in PSE.