Want To Win an Epson Scanner Of Your Own? Scroll to the Bottom of this post and enter to win one thanks to Epson Canada and this blog.

With the camera being a staple in all cell phones today, stand alone cameras, film and paper prints are pretty much ancient history for the average household. When was the last time that you got film developed at the local store? Technology advances but that does not deal with all of the film prints that we have acquired up until this point. If you are anything like me, something that has been on your bucket list for quite some time is getting all of those all cherished family photos uploaded to the internet cloud. When I heard of the Epson V550 photo scanner, I was very interested to give it a review. This scanner is capable of scanning not only your old print photos but “developing” scanned in negatives as well. It also contains a few special functions to remove dust and discoloration from your photos automatically.

Quick Review of the Espon V550 Photo Scanner

Epson V550

Pros:

• Affordable
• Can scan negatives (and several sizes of negatives)
• Fast scanner with very good quality – no “warm up” time
• Built in Photo Retouching – Doesn’t add a lot of time
• Removes scratches and dust in “ice mode”

Cons:

• Instructions are not detailed (even online)
• No ability to upload “directly” to the cloud – Pictures are held first
• Software has many options that can take some time to get use to

The scanner itself looks like most scanners. The software installs quickly and easily and includes a few different scanning applications. There is no photo editing software built in. There were a few things that I found tricky with the setup though.

As already mentioned, I was most looking for an option that would allow me to upload photos to the Internet to make sure that I would always have access to the photos in case anything ever happened to them physically. Regardless of doing a search online, the Epson help sections were confusing (simply telling me to “click the Facebook button” which I couldn’t find) and I was unable to find exactly where I was allowed to upload photos directly to Facebook, Google Drive, or even Flickr. Basically, there are two separate software applications that get installed from the CD. 1) Epson scan, the other 2) Easy Photo Scan. Easy photo scan is installed in a separate windows directory, Called “Epson software”. Not the standard “Epson” directory that I was using. Easy photo scan is a kind of “Overall” application that holds all the photos you scan in a temporary holding area and then you can do a batch upload all at once to your favorite Internet service. It actually launches “Epson Scan” to do the actual scanning in the background. So I hope that this helps save someone else who is looking for that section in the future.

Without Color Restoration Scan

With Color Restoration (so Worth it!)

All in all, I really tested the scanner out, scanning in about 1000 photos/negatives. Some tips for anyone who is planning on uploading their photos as well:

Top Tips for Backing Up And Scanning Your Family Photos

1. Make sure you sort through the photos in advance. If you’re anything like my family there are lots of pictures of scenery, landscape, pictures around the house, fluffy photos that may not be that interesting now that you look at them years later. Select photos that have meaning to you to scan in. I focused on People, pets, and “locations that have changed”. This scanner allows you to scan in a roughly 4 photos at a time. Sometimes depending on the size of the photos, a few more. It suggests that you have an inch of space between all of the photos. But I found if you tilted the photos onto the end fit for a nicely.

2. Once you get familiar with the scanner I stopped using the easy photo scan option and simply got the system down using the push scan button on the front. Make sure to check the box to not display a warning screen in advance and you can get a nice little system going to scan photos quickly. I uploaded all the photos to cloud at the end. It wasn’t worth the extra time hassle of scanning into “easy photo scan”. If you were only planning on scanning in a photo or two this would work great to upload a great “throwback Thursday photo” a week for example.

3. Make sure you check the photos color restoration option. Many of the photos I had from the 70s were red tinted discolored. This checkbox automatically removed the tint and made them much clearer to see. It didn’t add much time. It took roughly 30 seconds or so to scan 4 photos in with color restoration on. Worth it. Another note here. Make sure you go inside the scanner and “remove the white plastic scanner mat”. The instructions are not very detailed and again, I kept receiving an error message “please remove the document mat and/or close the document cover”. I had no idea the white cover should be removed, nor was it mentioned anywhere on the instructions.

4. Getting a nice system going is your best bet, or break up the scanning into a few days. It really didn’t take as long as I thought it would once I get the pattern set up.

Some more overall thoughts;

• The auto crop function is amazing. As long as you leave enough space between the photos you can scan in more than one photo at a time. Sometimes it didn’t detect it but its easy enough to crop. Previous scanners did not have this function and the Auto Crop is a HUGE time saver in backing your photos up.
• The power button is located on the side, but the light is on the front. Kind of strange and I read online many people had issues finding it.
• There is no “warm up” time like there is on many other scanners. This saves lots of time.
• You can play with the settings in the software for quite some time. There are tons of options to get your images scanned in just right.

Always was a geek – basic photo scanned in

Epson Canada  has given me a Scanner to giveaway to one of you lucky readers! If you would like to get your photos backed up enter now!

CONTEST CONTEST CONTEST 😀