HP Scanjet 2400 - originaly displaced drivers

I would like to share some trouble stones with HP Scanjet 2400 - to
others loosing time with software incapability of that scanner. I
didn’t found this information anywhere on internet, and also not at the
HP.


The Stones:
--------------

1. Brightness and Contrast adjustment is displaced by default after
installation for 28%
(yes, 100% gray is scanned as 72% gray)
2. Automatic adjustment doesn’t do equalization (auto balancing)
3. Scanner Profile could be not transferred to other computers

How to handle such anomalies?


Setting Scanner Properties
---------------------------

I have printed a gray scale with laser printer, than scan it, and try
to adjust manually the shades to get proper percentage of gray over the
scale. I have done the scale with steps by 10% gray.

To see the Properties of the scanner we have to visit the Scanner and
Camera Wizard in Control Panel. We get them under the name Custom
Settings. So, to get 100% gray from Black source, and all other shades
in proper proportion, we have to move the sliders:

Brightness to -30
Contrast to 30.

We get all shades fine with this adjustment, except white paper is
scanned as 4% gray.
This adjustment should be the default (e.g.0,0) and who knows why HP is
distributing such error.

With Brightness -20 and Contrast 30 we get white paper as 1% gray, but
shades below 50% are little weak (for 3% to 4%), so we get 10% gray
source as 6% grey.

These two adjustments should provide good starting point for basic
scanning.



Adjusting anomalies in HP Director
---------------------------------

To see the scanning properties in HP director we have to visit Preview
Panel. There we have three useful settings: Highlights, Shadows and
Midtones.


Useful setting for scanning various document papers in color or gray
mode is:

Highlights 240
Shadows 15
Midtones 1,33

This gives us a bit contrast picture with near to white paper.

Here is another setting, more useful for color picture scanning:

Highlights 250
Shadows 22
Midtones 2,00

This setting gives us scale of shades with not more than 3% deviation.
Something, what the button “Auto” should be dream on.



Saving Settings in Color Profile
--------------------------------

These settings could be saved in scanner profile. I have searched the
hard drive completely, file names and then also the contents of files
on drive C. No success.
Is it mean, that I could not share this profile with someone on
internet or save it for my needs on diskette?

I have asked online technician at HP about. So, she explained me, that
I have possibility for “Print Screen”, so I could save the picture of
the Preview window on my hard drive. Oh yes, and we prefer using
stones, rather than paper…



Conclusion
-----------

I still had Epson Perfection 610 under the desktop (scanner year 2000
edition), and I didn’t believe it:

150 dpi – 24-bit color A4 is scanned in 16 seconds on that Epson.

And HP 2400 bought last week? 31seconds.

Where is technology going? ...$$$


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Hard_Error
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Addition to 1st stone:

Color adjustment is also overriden (displaced) for about 30%.
Unluckily, we could not set it in scanner Preferences (Windows Control
Panel).

In Preview window (HP Director) we should set Color Adjustment to 75
(originally 100).

Or something, what we called in old age times - default.




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Hard_Err

Addition to 3rd stone:
---------------------
Our own Scanner profile could be not loaded automaticly when scanning
from third party software. We are to load the profile each time
manually.

Which means, we could not automate scanning with this scanner, since
the default settings, which are loaded automaticly are not useful due
to 30% original displacement.




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Hard_Err