Product Reviews

The iQsmart1 is Creo's entry-level scanner, though at £7636 it's anything but a low-end machine. It's aimed squarely at the pre-press and repro market, and will also appeal to those needing high-quality scans for archiving.

You're going to need a lot of space to house the iQsmart1, because it's huge. At 850mm long x 590mm deep, it's certainly not compact, and at 35kg the scanner is no lightweight. The unit itself is fairly basic; just one status light and a power switch on top combined with two FireWire 400 ports and power socket on the rear. The extra FireWire port allows you to daisychain your equipment, and handily, if not a little bizarrely, it will also charge an iPod. The casing feels sturdy and although the styling isn't exactly cutting edge, it's not ugly either.

The pay-off for having a bulky scanner is a huge area, with which to digitise your images. The largest document that can be scanned on the unit is 305mm x 457.2mm, and a selection of film holders are supplied, including a mounted 35mm slide adaptor that can hold 96 transparencies at a time. The other mounts are flexible plastic and require slides to be taped down for accurate scans.

The CCD is inverted so that dust can't rest on it. A mirror sits underneath the CCD and reflects the signal to the document. The mirror is easy to remove, which means you can clean any dust or marks from it should it be contaminated. An oil mounting attachment is available as an extra if you need optimum scanning quality or have slides with scratches.

Optical resolution is 3200ppi, and when interpolated it reaches a maximum 7500ppi. The iQsmart1 utilises XY scanning, which allows the scan head to move vertically and horizontally. Therefore, images can be captured at the highest resolution anywhere on the bed, optical density is 3.9D and you can reasonably expect 3.7D, so detail at the extremes should be better than most scanners. This only really applies to transparency scanning, though.

Power-up is simple and the iQsmart1 is fairly quiet during its startup routine. The scanner requires a Mac that can run Mac OS X 10.2.3 or later, and 200MB of RAM as minimum. This isn't that high, but realistically the more RAM and faster processor you have, the faster it will be.

The

ADVERTISEMENT

iQsmart1 is supplied with oXYgen scanning software. This standalone application operates all aspects of the scanner. Files can be directly exported to Photoshop, but you can't scan from there. Two main windows control most of the scanning, with other palettes for options that aren't used as frequently. With the basic setup, you have to wait for all the preview scans to finish before working on any images. An upgrade to the Parallel Workflow option (£703 inc VAT) allows you to work on images as the rest are being finished. This would really speed up total scan time if you're working on a large number of images.

Input and output profiles can be modified, including an option to create your own. From this dialogue, sharpness, colour and levels can also be altered. One disappointment regarding the software is its inability to live preview. If you change the brightness or contrast you have to click Apply to see the result. Leaving this off the final software is a little odd, as it's such a useful feature. Once you've got the hang of it though, the software is extremely easy to use. Images are captured in RGB and the unit can be upgraded to CMYK with a USB dongle (£645 inc VAT). By default, the iQsmart1 scans at eight-bits per channel, but it also captures at 16-bit so image detail is good.

As you might expect from a scanner that retails at this price point, image quality is excellent. We scanned a range of transparencies with fine detail and a number of colours. The colour reproduction is perfect, and the detail is clear and defined. All our test images were reproduced accurately. Subtle tonal differences in the red, green and blue channels were well defined. Solid, bright hues next to dull flat patterns were scanned as they appeared on the originals. Skin tones were smooth and regular, with a natural colouration that matched the sample transparency very closely. Even though the high price point might put some off, serious professionals will find colour, detail and sharpness more than adequate for high-end work.

If you need a high-end archival machine for your documents or need an entry-level system for repro, then the iQsmart1 is a sound investment. The software is stable and, just as importantly, it's easy to use, which means your scanning time is reduced to a minimum.

This scanner produces crisp and clear image files, and both colour and detail are spot-on. The iQsmart1 provides an entry level to high-end scanning, and although its price tag is relatively low in this market, its quality certainly isn't.

Our only gripe about the unit is the lack of a live preview in the image editing settings. The multi-format mount, 35mm bulk film attachment and scanning area large enough for A3+ scans makes the iQsmart1 an extremely versatile machine. However, these are secondary to the excellent image reproduction.