which computer components are most critical for scanning?

[jrhandyman]

Im buying a new Epson V750 scanner to use on several thousand B&W photos and negatives from the 1940's, 50's and 60's. I need to get a new computer as mine is quite old.

Which components of the computer are most critical when scanning? The processor speed, amount of memory or the video card? Any other advice would help in my selection of a computer.

Thanks

 

[Braineack]

RAM. the answer is always more RAM.

 

[Robin Usagani]

No need to worry about anything. Any spec will do for a brand new computer. Scanning is nothing. Now if you are asking about editing videos, that's a different story.

 

[ecphoto]

Im buying a new Epson V750 scanner to use on several thousand B&W photos and negatives from the 1940's, 50's and 60's. I need to get a new computer as mine is quite old.

Which components of the computer are most critical when scanning? The processor speed, amount of memory or the video card? Any other advice would help in my selection of a computer.

Thanks

Memory, scanning relies heavily on it. I would say 6-8 gigs of RAM would probably be a good amount for you. Depending on the software and scanning technique used you may need a high performance processor as well.

 

[IronMaskDuval]

Memory, but not all memory is created equal. Fast memory is always ideal.
Hard drive, SDD is best but a fast spinning disk will work as well.

 

[Robin Usagani]

The spec recommends 512 mb. Almost any cheap puter will have way more ram than that. Come on guys?

Epson Perfection V750-M Pro Scanner B11B178061 B&H Photo Video

 

[IronMaskDuval]

The spec recommends 512 mb. Almost any cheap puter will have way more ram than that. Come on guys?

Epson Perfection V750-M Pro Scanner B11B178061 B&H Photo Video

Recommended specs vs having more than enough for when you need it. What if OP scans, lightroom, shops, browses and whatever else at the same time? It's the recommended specs for this one component-- not multitasking. Sure 512 is really small, and I can see your point. You're right, any modern computer can handle this task without upgrades.

 

[Msteelio91]

As they are saying, RAM will help. It is always good to get a new computer with a solid processor. As this is the second most difficult thing to replace down the road. Adding more RAM as needed is easy, same with video cards and hard drives.

I'd say, in order of importance:

-Processor (Don't cheap out!)
-RAM (8g+ is pretty typical now, look for DDR3)
-Hard drive/SSD (an SSD capable of holding thousands of pictures will be $$$$$. Look for a 10krpm HDD if you want a fast drive for less dough.)
-Video card (This will help more with editing.)

The spec recommends 512 mb. Almost any cheap puter will have way more ram than that. Come on guys?

Epson Perfection V750-M Pro Scanner B11B178061 B&H Photo Video

He didn't give a budget :/

He could drop around $600 on a computer that will be good for years and handle anything he needs to do with those photos.

 

[JerryLove]

Memory, but not all memory is created equal. Fast memory is always ideal.

All memory waits at the same speed.

Hard drive, SDD is best but a fast spinning disk will work as well.

Will he be doing a lot of swapping? Pulling lots of textures in RT?

The scanner or scanner interface to the computer is what will determine your max scan speed. Nothing else remotely modern is likely to be a limiting factor.

I'd focus on enough HDD space to store all these scans (Several thousand photos will take a lot of space... so seriously: Hard drives (and a backup solution))

When discussing "enough RAM": a 40mp scan at 16-bit depth should take up 80MB of RAM (even my PS files at 20MP take up no more than 200MB at most). I'm pretty sure your OS will be more of a hassle. I hear prices moved up, but assuming not ridiculously so, I'd consider a 4GB PC proper over-kill and inexpensive.

 

[JerryLove]

-Hard drive/SSD (an SSD capable of holding thousands of pictures will be $$$$$. Look for a 10krpm HDD if you want a fast drive for less dough.)

My VIDEO is captured to and played back from 5200rpm drives*. I cannot imagine any possible advantage for 10k drives when discussing scanning.

(*If I ever give a shot to 4K video, I'll likely have some very different opinions on minimum drive speeds)

 

[SpikeyJohnson]

I can help you out a ton on picking components if you want. I build computers for part of my job and have been building for a long time.

First though, what is your budget? What are you willing to spend? Do you want a desktop or laptop? With those questions answered I can help you out

 

[Light Guru]

The spec recommends 512 mb. Almost any cheap puter will have way more ram than that. Come on guys?

Epson Perfection V750-M Pro Scanner B11B178061 B&H Photo Video

Exactly. The v750 came in in 2006 that's 8 years ago. Even the base model computer these days will beat the top of the line computer from 8 years ago.

 

[Robin Usagani]

The most important thing is to make sure you have at least a VGA monitor. Monochrome and CGA monitors suck.

 

[AlanKlein79 18]

As others have said, any new computer will get the job done. I was using an Epson V600 scanning 35mm and 120 medium format color with a 7 year old computer with no problems. Of more concern is how you intend to edit them? what program? How big are the negatives? Also, get a decent monitor since editing colors and BW tones after the scan are critical and you want to have reliable and accurate monitor. Since you said your film is BW, I don't know how critical this may be. Maybe others can comment.

 

[bratkinson]

As others have mentioned, scanning isn't a problem, and the software needed to run your scanner needs very little horsepower or RAM.

But...you will soon find out that doing some 'touchup' is always needed, especially for older, faded photos. I recently did perhaps 200 photos for a friend and every one of them (95% were B&W) needed some sharpening and a bit of extra contrast & exposure adjusting to make them look good. So the issue becomes RAM and horsepower. I'm using Photoshop Elements and can hold maybe 15-20 pictures in RAM that were scanned in before it starts swapping it out to disk (paging). So, I simply scan that many in, then do touchups and save each, then start over with the next group of 15 or so. Since I'm editing, a quad processor computer is strongly recommended as PSE and others can likely take advantage of the multiple processors. Also mentioned previously was using a Solid State Drive (SSD) as it's far faster than 'regular' hard drives. I use SSD for the operating system, documents, and any work 'in process'. I also back up the work in process to the slower 1TB hard drive that is also in the computer. Using SSD speeds up all computer aspects from boot up, program start up, and retrieving/saving files. It's well worth the extra $$$ in my estimation.

For what it's worth, when I built my computer, I'm not interested in game-speed graphics, so I have a cheapo video card that's good enough for me. So if it takes a 1/4 second longer than some $500 graphics card to display an image, so what. I think I paid $39 for mine 2 years ago.