Best scanner

[Daryl Barberousse]

Being new to all of this, I have to be the guy that asks alot of silly questions.

I'd like the forum's opinion on scanners. I have been told that the HP 5370 with the Precision Scan Pro software is the way to go when scanning a b&w logo and turning it into a vector file. But, being my luck, they have discontinued that model.

Are there any other scanners that meet or beat this scanner?

Thanks in advance....I'll go back to my leatherwork now.:D

[Aleta Allen]

HI,

I don't know about other scanners, but, I found that one on ebay a few years ago. I was then in the local computer repair office and he also had one. I think they are still around if you want to look for one. Mine off ebay was new. If you can't find one, I could check in town for you and see if the local guy still has his for sale.

[Daryl Barberousse]

Thanks Aleta,

I believe they were popular a few years ago and then HP just quit making them. I wonder if there is a model out there that performs the same? From what I have been told, these were the "cat's meow" of scanners for our type of work....just scan it and laser.

[Mike Mackenzie]

Daryl,

I too found mine on E-Bay I paid a whole $25.00 for it and it works perfectly.

[Lee DeRaud]

Ok, I'll bite: what is it about this scanner that makes it so good?

Since nobody makes a scanner that outputs vector files, I'm guessing it's the software that came bundled with it. Any reason that software can't handle a raster file from another scanner?

[Mike Mackenzie]

Lee,

It is the precision Scan Software that only works with these paticular scanners.

It is not perfect but if you scan in good black & white art you can save the file in a WMF format which is all vector.

A little clean up and its done.

[Lee DeRaud]

Lee,

It is the precision Scan Software that only works with these paticular scanners.

It is not perfect but if you scan in good black & white art you can save the file in a WMF format which is all vector.

A little clean up and its done.Hmm...I think I'd try to hunt down whoever did that software for HP, because I seriously doubt it was done in-house.

[Bob Belt]

I to got mine on Ebay for $30. A model 5470c and the software also will do .WMF. Can't beat it.
Bob

[Nick Adams]

I bought 3.. call me paranoid, all under 25 shipped ~

2 broke. HP told me they would NOT repair it, so I am down to the last one. Hoping I can figure out who make the recognition software for them. I to believe it was a subed out thing since HP discontinued it and didnt make them for that long.

[George M. Perzel]

Hi All;
Not sure if it matters but I have a HP 5470c,. not 5370, with the same software-works great.
George

[Hilton Lister]

I have an old 5200 with Precision Scan software. It works very well. If the original copy is very good, no clean is necessary at all.

[Daryl Barberousse]

So I take it that the Precisionscan Pro software is the key, and only a certain type (discontinued HP's) of scanners were able to use this software?

[Mike Shauer]

Precision-scan is the software that makes them work so well. It seems to come on only some of the older HP scanners and is now discontinued. There was a thread over on the engravers etc forum a while ago that had all the numbers of the different scanners that had this software with them. I just bought a 5470 that has this software, came as new in the box for $30.00 so their out there.

[Daryl Barberousse]

I found a 5300C with the mentioned software. I'm gonna give it a shot and see what happens.

Thanks to all the posted their information. It definately helped.

Merry Christmas to all........

Daryl

[Lee DeRaud]

How old are these discontinued HP 53XX machines you folks have mentioned? Reason I ask, I've had problems with older hardware (and software, for that matter) under XP, unless updated drivers are available.

[Mike Mackenzie]

Lee,

There are drivers available for those scanners using XP. We went to the HP site and downloaded the XP Drivers.

[Roy Brewer]

How old are these discontinued HP 53XX machines you folks have mentioned?
Lee,

32bit drivers for these can be downloaded from the HP site (with a bit of work to understand HP's explanation).

These are not without issue.
For instance, installing some of the 32bit drivers over older drivers for the same system or 6200/6300 over 5100/5200/5300 render the software unusable. Similarly, some of the systems are very difficult to recover if you plug in the scanner *before* installing the software will have same results. HP used to have tech notes that would tell you which files you need to delete to fix this, but current techs & notes have no idea what you are talking about.

If software installed first on a fresh system (no previous or especially *newer* ScanJet installed) the success rate is well over 95%. Under the best conditions there is one little issue all 32bit systems have with PrecisionScan and that is a "server busy" message comes up on any medium to large scan. The only real issue here is if you can't see the message; all you have to do is Retry or Switch to and the scan proceeds as directed.

So as you suspected, there are issues, but those of us who use this software for raster->vector will gladly put up with these issues to obtain the results we're getting.

[Dan Racette]

Hey guys,

I work in the pre-press industry. We convert black and white to vector all the time. Anyone is welcome to PM me for tips, but basically we scan at 800-1000dpi at a 100% in greyscale mode and bring it into a photoeditor and clean up with various filters and manual cloning. Then conver to high dpi bitmap and do an "autotrace". There are tons of different ways to do it.

Now we work on mac G5's with 2 gig or more of RAM and dual processors.

Most cheap scanners can get you by since you aren't really scanning for final output.