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It is an Automatic Document (only) Feeder. If you are a consumer and need an ADF that will automatically feed paper documents (and presumably scan each one) without spending a fortune, it will work for you. You must do this for each photo. I was looking for a low cost add-on that would allow me to automate scanning of many printed photos. You must prescan the image, marquee out the desired part of the image, adjust your settings and initiate the scan. Every image requires a prescan and scan.I did not try to batch scan a stack of documents.
I presume that it will do that. Installation was a snap. What does that mean. It will retain your settings from scan to scan. Photos load and feed rather effortlessly. I purchased this ADF to go on my Epson Perfection 4490 Photo scanner.
However, the Epson Scan software (comes with the scanner, not the feeder) does not allow you to run a batch on "full auto". But will not batch the whole pile.
I have yet to experience an error, jam, or large misalignment. The feeding is fantastic. The one thing that I don't like is that the general alignment of the scan head and the feeder are off horizontally just a hair so there is a tiny black stripe on one side of the scan. Given the cost of most ADFs I do have to confess that I wasn't expecting much. It turns out that this is quite a solid functioning machine. The noise level is far below what I would expect; it's not quiet by any means but I do not find the noise distracting if I am working in the same room.
However, the document feeder has the regularly recurring habit of feeding sheets at a slight but increasing angle until, eventually, it jams. If I were reviewing the document feeder strictly based on time and labor savings, five stars again. If you can life with the occasional crooked page and occasional jam, this combination is tough to beat.One star off for the light-weight feeder workmanship; otherwise, I love this scanner and document feeder. I can't believe I went as long as I did without a document feeder on my scanner. When I bought this new scanner I almost balked at the cost of the document feeder.The scanner is simply outstanding, and had I been reviewing it alone I'd have to give it five stars. Yes, you can work around it, but it's a colossal pain when it happens.If you want perfectly aligned, trouble-free scans, spend even more money and get a scanner with built-in document feeder.
Not too noisy and the software is pretty easy to work also. Only problem is the path the the picture feeds through to scan is a clear plastic sheet and it already had scratched on it. I kept getting Red and Green lines on my scanned images. I went to Help online and there was a section on how to clean the scan "glass" to remove dust and such. Can't clean those.Now if you didn't have the lines: The APF is GREAT and the few I did try running through it went through straight, no jams.
For the price it does very fine work. If you're scanning glossy documents (like photos), you have to continually clean the scan area, because it gets very streaky from dust. When it does jam, it's very easy to open up and fix. but they do). It's hard to judge the exact speed (or lack thereof), but it seems to process five to ten pages per minute, depending on resolution.
Also, it's rather loud.Overall, we've been very pleased with it. Not-so-nice bits: You do have to keep an eye on it, since it's not totally immune to making a mistake. We were having some streaky image problems (see below) and Epson tech support advised us that the ADF was chiefly meant for document scanning, not image scanning. A robust bit of equipment, it seldom jams or sucks up more than one page at a time. But once our problem was resolved, it seemed to do a good job with images.Nice bits: The tray can be adjusted to fit smaller pieces of paper, which decreases the risk of jamming.
(I'm not sure why glossy documents cause this problem more than non-glossy.
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