Canon CanoScan LiDE 25 Color Image Scanner
PC and Mac compatible, the Canon CanoScan LiDE 25 is an efficient color scanner that delivers high-quality results. Ideal for home or small office use, this compact flatbed model with 8.5-by-11.7-inch platen produces up to 1,200 x 2,400 dot-per-inch (dpi) optical resolution (software enhanced resolution: 19,200 color dpi) and 48-bit color depth, for over 281 trillion possible colors and incredibly vibrant images. The Z-Lid expansion top easily accommodates bulky items. One simple cable provides both power and a USB connection, which helps reduce the number of wires cluttering your workspace. Whether you’re scanning old family photos, personal documents, or a company memo, the streamlined LiDE 25 is easy to use. Three butt…
Related posts
Tagged with: Canon • CanoScan • Color • Image • LiDE • Scanner
Filed under: Scanners
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
I bought this scanner to scan in about 150 old black and white family photos, and they all came out very nicely. I scanned only a handful of color pictures, and they were fine as well.
Some experiences I had using the scanner:
- smaller pictures end up getting a better final resolution
- the quality is great for pictures, but only average for text; for example newspaper articles don’t scan well enough to allow you to read smaller text
- I was able to scan aout 30 pictures in an hour
- scanning multiple photos is usually easy: you don’t have to crop a big image into the individual photos because the scanning software figures out the picture boundaries. However, occasionally the picture boundary detection stuff messes up and the scanner detects 1 fewer picture than was in the scanner, forcing you to rescan
For some old polaroids, the scanned picture was clearer and brighter than the polaroid. it brought out the picture in
an amazing way.
I mainly bought this scanner because of reviews that mentioned being able to save things in PDF format. Well, it’s easy once you figure it out–but that took me over 90 minutes!
The scanner comes with several different kinds of software, and only one of them will save to PDF format. That’s the CanoScan Toolbox. Neither ArcSoft PhotoStudio nor the Scansoft OmniPage software will.
The Quick Start Guide suggests trying your first scan using the ArcSoft software. I tried a small chart of plant names. It scanned very slowly and the result was unreadable. I tried again using a higher DPI. When I tried to save the file, I discovered no PDF option in the drop-down box. And even trying to close a window in the program took forever.
Next I tried the OmniPage software, since it was designed for text. It looked much clearer, but the procedure was still slow because it kept asking me to confirm the spelling of nearly every plant name. Again, no option in the drop-down box for saving to PDF format.
Finally in desperation I clicked on CanoScan Toolbox, where there was a big button marked PDF. I had a two-page document scanned and saved, wonderfully readable, in about a minute. Why on earth doesn’t the Quick Start Guide suggest starting with this one, being the easiest and fastest?
I think I’m going to be very happy with the scanner, but am deducting one star for lack of documentation.
The power supply on my hp5470C finally bit the dust, and this scanner doesn’t cost much more than an HP power supply. plus, it’s a lot more portable.
i read the earlier reviews and was prepared for noise and slow speeds. i was pleasantly surprised.
WRT noise, the scanner makes a noticeable mechanical whine when preview scanning at 150DPI. at 300 DPI or more, it’s much quieter. i measured the sound output from about a foot away, and it’s roughly 56 dB (A weighted). that’s not loud.
WRT speed, a full page is roughly 15 seconds at 300 DPI color. i tried scanning a dollar bill at 1200 DPI to get a feel for the resolution – the 1200 DPI scan took about a minute and a half, of just the bill.
sharpness was excellent. i could zoom in on the engraving on the bill with very nice results. color was good, and sharpness was fine.
on text scanning, i tried OCR’ing a page of the instructions that were written in small (about 6pt) type. the included ScanSoft Omnipage software got 100% accuracy.
the three buttons on the front of the scanner were easy to configure, and worked very well. a high quality copy of a color photo came out very nicely, when printed directly to my HP inkjet.
the form factor is great. it’s about as thick as my hand, is roughly 14 3/4″ x 10 1/4″. weight is very light. it’d travel very easily in a briefcase or backpack, and i would have no compunction using it in a library (from a noise standpoint). it takes power from the USB cable, so would work very well w/ a notebook.
overall, i’m extremely pleased with this purchase. it exceeded my expectations.