I did a scan in Silverfast of a a 4x5 trans @ 2000dpi that took forever. My
1200 dpi scans are pretty quick, although I haven't timed them.

You need to calibrate your monitor and your scanner or the scanner profile
is a waste of time. I am using Gretag Macbeth Eye-One Photo for monitor and
scanner and it is really good. It is also about $1,400. There are other
packages out there. I you want to go budget, then just use silverfast with
the calibration module, and whatever you like for the monitor.

I just did a full 4x5 trans at 1200 dpi, 48 bit color, for about 123 Mb of
file, using Epson's software. This is with none of the bells and whistles
turned on, no ICE, unsharp mash, dust, ect., on my 4990 using a new Dell
9100 3 Ghz Pentium with 4 Gig memory on a USB 2.0 port, it took just under 4
minutes and that is with two instances of Seti at Home running at 100% in
the background. Task Manager showed that the system was loaded at 100% CPU
usage and a total of 64 processes were running.

I do know that the SilverFast scanner software that came with the scanner as
a value added add-on package scans much slower, I'd say about three times
longer as it seems to scan the trans three separate times to produce a file.
I assume that using the twain channel to scan directly from the scanner to
CS might add a tiny bit of time but I don't seem remember any added time
between the two. But it is good in doing B&W negatives which have no
shoulder, so that the shadows don't block up.

I use the MonacoEZcolor 2.6 again that came with the Epson 4990 scanner as
part of the Pro package. All in all I paid about $75 to $100 over the street
value of the scanner alone. The MonoacoEZ package works very nicely for me,
I have profiled the scanner and my monitors and a number of combinations of
paper and ink for my Epson 4000 printer. I can tell you that the system
produces very pleasing results in both color and B&W. I couldn't get a
decent B&W print to save my life, using pre-packaged profiles for the papers
in use and the Epson printer with ultrachrome inks. The package goes for
about $200, give or take. The monitor profiling device is about another
$200. I did the eyeball monitor profile with the package and it does a good
job, unless your needing to color match down to a few thousands of color, I
really don't see the need. I haven't a clue if there is anything cheaper on
the market, but I surely would pay the $200 for the package if I had to, it
has saved at least that much in paper and ink to get great prints without
having to print a dozen proofs to get what I need on the print. It takes
about 20 or 30 minutes to get a good usable profile for a given paper and
ink combo, for that feature alone, I'd pay the $200.

Later Larry