Acer ScanWit 2740S - Best Practice

Who is the Acer ScanWit 2740S good for:
+	For somebody how wants to upload his family photos (or similar) to the Web or send them as email on a more or less regular basis.
+	Or in order to create an own digital archive of the photos above.
+	Because of its cheap price, the ScanWit 2740S is also a good entry-level scanner for beginners of digital image processing how are not yet sure if they want to enforce this as a new hobby later.
±	Exceptional users without photo hobby ambitions should be aware of the fact that a scan service might be cheaper for them because of their typical small number of scans. Furthermore, a scan service guarantees a relatively good quality, is uncomplicated and may save time too.
÷	I cannot recommended the Acer ScanWit 2740S for professional use or even for advanced amateurs because of its limitations. It's no more or less than an entry-level film scanner with a reasonable price.

What is best practice to use the ScanWit 2740S:
+	Use Acer scanner defaults only, even for low key and under-exposed images: Shadows = 0, gamma = 1.50 [what ever that unusual value means], lights = 255. You should do all the needed corrections in your image processing software later. The very good message is that Adobe Photoshop LE is part of the Acer scanner software package!
+	All scans work fine up to 2700 dpi resolution. A full size scan with 24 bit color depth at 2700 dpi creates a TIFF file of up to 27 MB.
+	Always switch the ICE (image correction and enhancement) system on! Of course, it makes the scans speed significantly slower. But, the dust suppression is much more important as it saves hours of retouching after the scans.
±	It might be better to scan the full image size and to crop the result later on. This is reasonable because the preview window is too small and does not allow precise work therefore.
±	The computer should not be less than a Pentium III with 256 KB RAM, especially for high resolution scans and batch mode. Take as much RAM as you can, see also my scan speed page! Of course, the scanner works with much less RAM too. But, the scan speed decreases dramatically then.
±	I'm sorry to say this, but there seems to be the following dependency: If you have a choice between the Windows operating systems (dual boot?) for scanning: It seems that the scanner driver might be faster with the consumer MS Windows line (95, 98, etc.) than with their professional line (NT 4.0, 2000, etc.).
±	The handling of unframed slides is a bit strange: The scanner driver switches always back to negative films as its default then. However, framed slides can be easily scanned in batches of 4 images. Furthermore, filmstrips up to 6 images can be put into the scanner.
±	The "High Quality 48" bit mode seems not to improve the scan quality by comparison to the "High Quality 24" bit mode for the Acer ScanWit 2740S. But, it needs double resources.
±	Take care that JPEG compression always causes quality loss. JPEG (or JPEG2000 soon) are fine for the Web because of their high compression rates. However, prefer a none-lossy format (TIFF, etc.) for archiving your images, which should often be manipulated later again. Otherwise, you will create a more lossy copy of an earlier lossy copy.
÷	Avoid to use any kind of Acer scanner driver filters and use scanner default settings only! You should rather do all the needed or wanted changes (as for instance shadows, gamma, lights, color corrections, saturation, sharpen, etc.) after the scan in your image manipulation software, which might be Photoshop (LE). - Although this statement is partly against the common theory, is seems to be best practice for the Acer ScanWit 2740S.
÷	Avoid to make important other works at the same computer while scanning. Otherwise, you may lose your data as the instable Acer scanner hardware and driver software may crash the operating system under certain circumstances!