Epson (http://www.epson.com) has announced the latest consumer
scanner in its line-up: the US$99 Perfection V300 Photo. It can
handle everyday scanning need from photos and slides to negatives and
documents to 3D objects using the high-rise, 180-degree lid.

Offering 4800 dpi (dots per inche), the Perfection V300 Photo
features one-touch scanning and photo restoration with Epson's Easy
Photo Fix technology. It also sports Epson's ReadyScan LED
technology, which delivers fast scans and no warm-up time.

The Epson V300 Photo has four buttons to quickly and automatically
scan, copy, e-mail, or PDF documents, photos and more. It utilizes
4800 x 9600 dpi maximum hardware resolution with 48-bit color
scanning and 3.2 dynamic range.

The Epson V300 Photo features four scan modes to accommodate various
user levels and abilities. Full Automatic Mode allows users to
automatically scan photos, documents and film with just the touch of
a button. Home Mode provides users more control over scans with
setting menus and one-touch functions such as Easy Photo Fix.
Advanced users can choose to scan using Professional Mode, which
offers image correction tools including a histogram, tonal curves,
color palette, and densitometer. New to the Epson V300 Photo is
Office Mode, which gives users functionality typically found in
Epson's GT-series of document scanners including threshold control,
text enhancement and color dropout.

The consumer scanner also features a built-in transparency unit for
scanning of slides and negatives. You can scan one 35mm film strip
(up to six frames) or four 35mm mounted slides with the included film
holder to create enlargements up to 13 x 19 inches. What's rmore,
this scanner is also equipped with a high-rise, 180-degree lid for
scanning oversized and 3D objects.

The Epson V300 Photo's software bundle includes Epson Scan with Easy
Photo Fix for automatic color restoration of faded photos, dust
removal and grain reduction, ArcSoft MediaImpression and ABBYY Fine
Reader Sprint Plus OCR. The scanner is compatible with Mac OS X
10.3.9-10.5.x, and is also TWAIN compliant.