Rating: 
Summary: The auto feeder does not work!
Review: Dont waste your time on this one. You are buying for the auto feed mechanism but you will find that it works so sporadically that you would be much better off lifting the cover and scanning by hand. With the by hand method there is far less frustration. With the auto feeder you are tempted to try to make the machine do what the instructions promise it will do. This cost time and will undoubtedly raise your blood pressure a few notches.Dont waste your money. A good flatbed scanner can be had for $..., Why pay close to $... more for an attachment that has no value. Also there is no way to get anyone from customer service on the line if you also have a life that does not include being on hold and shuffled around. I'll never buy anything from this company again.
Rating: 
Summary: A few good points, but a disappointment overall (long)
Review: First a word on my background: I am an electronics engineer who's old enough to have a warm spot in my heart for Hewlett Packard's name. In my mind this name has always stood for quality in design and usability. I am also a fairly experienced photographer with about 20 years of printing my own negatives. I do software engineering for living. I bought the 5530 scanner for about $250 at a local CompUSA to primarily scan old pictures for family files. I will be taking it back. Here's why: Good points:
1. The scanner is fast with fairly good color representation
Minor issues:
1. The scanner is noisy. No big deal, of course, but the autofeeder's fan is loud enough to make it hard to think near it :-)
2. The scanner reverses the order of pictures as it's scanning them. Of course, one can learn to live with it, but would you accept a photocopier that reverses the orders of originals? Would Bill Hewlett?
3. Will not autofeed anything larger than 4x6. More serious issues: (Keeping in mind that the autofeeder will be the main reason to purchase this scanner) 1. Autofeeder is definitely the weak link. It lacks any grooves or guides for the photograph, instead relying on the vacuum suction to a set of rubber bands-on-rollers. This may work in a copier (light, textured paper) but fails with numbing regularity with photographs (heavier, glossy stock). 1a. It will often fail to feed the print. Fuji glossy paper is a lost cause. Kodak satin is best. Agfa glossy is pretty bad as well. The autofeeder detects a misfeed mostly during the outfeed cycle but will still insist on taking its sweet time to save the crooked scan which potentially screws up image numbering - see below. 1b. It will often fail to detect that a print was misfed by 2-3 degrees, producing a crooked scan with the feeder's mechanism on the background. 1c. Scanning small photos (smaller than 3x5) sometimes confuses the picture-extents-determination software, treating you once again to a scan of the feeder mechanism. 1d. What I find most touching about the feeder jams is the advice to look up "jam" in the help system. Go ahead, try it. It ain't there. 1e. Autofeeder will not feed pictures with scalloped edged (e.g. old photographs). 2. Software is VERY spotty 2a. I believe that there is no way to tell the scanner to use a pattern for filenames: e.g. ItalyScanXXXX.jpg. It will always write scanxxxx.jpg. 2b. I can't find a way to make it start the sequence at a different number. 2c. If you change filenames or copy files out the directory that the scanner is scanning into, the software will place the next file into the created "hole". E.g. say you have scan0001 through scan0099 in the directory. Then you move or rename scan10. The next scanned image will be called scan10, then one after that scan0100. This is pure madness. This, combined with scanner's propensity to misfeed, makes for a very messy ordering problem. 2d. When selecting multiple images for rotation or deletion, the software will occasionally lose relationship between the thumbnail and "reality". This should never ever happen. The QA department at HP gets another black mark. 2e. There is no scratch/dust removal feature. This is precisely the feature that the scanner SHOULD have, because it's much harder to do so in Photoshop once the image is saved in jpeg (which is what one normally does due to file sizes). In an uncompressed image, dust particles are small dots -easy to find and fix. In a jpeg image, they are little blobs - much harder. The software is full of features it SHOULD NOT have - color adjustment, rescaling, resizing, sharpening... all the miscellany that HP, with all due respect, doesn't have a clue about; e.g. the software can't read screen or printer profiles and doesn't support color space conversions, white point selection, gamma correction, etc. This is why I have Photoshop. I don't need HP's helping hand. I wasted 30 scans before I realized that HP insists of sharpening images by default. (Hint: It's not any good at it) 3. Negative/slide scanning.
I realize this is not a $15K drum scanner. But HP does provide a film strip scanner attachment, so they are fair game. I haven't tried scanning slides, but 3a There is no way to specify what type of film one is scanning. Color response curves are non-existent. 3b B/W negative scanning... I just can't figure it out. There's nothing in the manual about it and the output files look quantized. Could be operator error, but I doubt it. Try scanning "slides" with "colors inverted"... 3c There is no way to specify "No interpolation, just give me the pixels you measured". 3d. Film scanner attachment sits in a hard plastic frame on top of the glass. This provides ample opportunity to 1) scratch the glass and 2) trap all kinds of dust. 4. Accuracy.
I scanned a few pigment chips several times. The dark cyan chip did not come out anywhere near 8-bit consistent (more like 6.5), not to mention the touted 12 bits. The light orange chip isn't much better. In normal image scanning this shouldn't make too much difference however - very few photo papers (and printing processes) are capable of true 256 level consistency. Still, the HP marketing department needs a little education on the differences between precision and accuracy. Conclusion: Buy this scanner if you have a large collection of new-ish 3x5 or 4x6 photos that you need backed up. Specially if they are printed on satin Kodak paper. Otherwise, read the warning above and think twice. To me, this product feels like a beta release - another disappointment from a company I used to trust.
Rating: 
Summary: Do not buy this for scanning slides!
Review: Having boxes of childhood slides that I wanted to convert to digital, all of the product details showed this to be the one, for the money. The slide holder allows a scan of 3 slides at once, BUT... When you crop the 8 1/2 x 11 digital image down to one slide, and zoom in to see the image, the quality is worthless. The colors are gone and the resolution is terrible. Since I ONLY bought this for scanning slides, it is going back. The Minolta DiMAGE Scan Dual IV (2891-301) Film Scanner seems to be the right machine, and for only $279 vs $195 for this one. Works fine for images that are 3x5 or larger, but DO NOT buy it for scanning slides!
Rating: 
Summary: 5530 Works OK except for ........
Review: I bought the 5530 primarily to be able scan a stack of photos and also 35mm framed slides. This scanner does both. I read the other reviews and was concerned about the device but bought it anyway. HP offers a 30 day money back return - no hassle policy. Regarding the "jam" problem, at last one of the other reviwers was correct in saying there is nothing in Help about this situation - you have to go to HP online to obtain the info. I told the help tech guy in India that they should mention this in the help screen - I got a song & dance - bottom line was they ain't gonna do it. But the jam is no big deal - the photo drops onto the glass before you get the jam error message. You must use photos of the same size - per the instructions - and do not use photos with "corrugated" edges. If you have any of those, trim off the edges before feeding them into the device. I found the resolution on the slide scans to be OK. The whole slide scanning operation is slow & even more so for me personally because the USB on the scanner is high speed and my PC is not. The editing software is not so hot as the other writers explained but you can use other software for that. All in all, I think it works as advertised.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely tragic.
Review: I bought this scanner with the Automatic Photo Feeder so I could digitize my grandparents' photo albums and create a present for my mother. I'm now seeking a refund directly from hp. This is why: 1) The APF is not usable.
2) The scanning interface is abysmal. (actually a script running in Internet Explorer!)
3) HP support has offered no response to problems. The hardware would actually be cool for the price. The APF does a good enough job sucking in a stack of photos, jamming frequently but not too frequently. But hardware cannot work without software, and tragically this scanner has been saddled with possible the worst scanning software ever written - actually negating the usefulness of the APF and making even normal flat bed scans a nightmarish experience. My simple photo album project revealed critical flaws that must have been found in HP's quality assurance department, but inexplicably were not addressed. DETAILS: 1) Problems Using the Automatic Photo Feeder (APF) PROBLEM: False "jam" errors. Often the scanner reports that a photo has jammed, but the scanned photo is not jammed at all. It is sitting in the output tray exactly where it should be. PROBLEM: Scan is not saved when an error occurs (such as a "jam" error) even though the scan was completed successfully (and can be swiped out of the temp folder before it gets deleted if you are quick enough). This is by far the most infuriating item and shows that HP skipped the quality assurance phase of development. PROBLEM: "Descreen" is not available as a scanning option when using the Automatic Photo Feeder (APF) in batch scans. PROBLEM: Saved scanning profiles are not applied to photos in the APF - unless there is only one photo in the feeder (or it's the last of a batch) - which forces one to insert one photo at a time, virtually negating the concept of batch scanning a stack of photos. PROBLEM: Photos are consistently cropped incorrectly. The left edge of the image is cut off, while the right side of the image includes a portion of the scanning hood. It appears there is an offset problem. This problem occurs regardless of the size of the photo and is especially problematic with photos with rounded corners (most of the photos I'm scanning) PROBLEM: Photos are not saved after each scan. Instead the software waits until all photos in the batch have been scanned before writing the images to the destination folder. This methodology has three major drawbacks. 1) I scanned 6 photos through the APF without realizing there was a photo already on the glass. 2) Any errors / software mishaps will result in lost scan(s). 3) Work cannot begin on scans until entire batch is finished 2) Problems Using the "hp scanning" interface PROBLEM: Cropping rectangle dimensions do not "stick". Clicking "Descreen" or "New Scan" causes new coordinates to be auto-generated, even when "Automatically Crop Scanned Images" is disabled. Most scanning interfaces remember settings from scan to scan so a pleasant workflow can emerge. PROBLEM: Number Fields do not always hold their values after typing them in manually. Sometimes this is not evident until several clicks later when the number fields spontaneously revert to previous values. PROBLEM: After manually adjusting exposure and color settings - moving the cropping rectangle loses them and inserts auto-generated settings. PROBLEM: Clicking "descreen" makes custom exposure / color settings revert to auto generated values. PROBLEM: Dragging any of the sliders to min or max causes elements in the interface to become "selected" (like a web page) and can even "scroll" the entire panel behind its frame border so that some controls are inaccessible. Often adjacent sliders become selected and upon operating their knobs the mouse cursor turns into the "CAN'T DO THAT" symbol (circle with line through it). Once this symbol comes up, the slider knob will stop moving. Upon releasing the mouse button the user finds that the knob is stuck to the mouse cursor. Clicking on the interface a couple times will drop the knob and deselect the offending interface elements but by this time carefully placed settings have been lost. PROBLEM: The "Color Adjustment" wheel features a an un-clickable surface, and an icon that cannot be dragged more than a few pixels before you get the Internet Explorer CAN'T DO THAT icon (circle with a line through it). Then when you let go of the mouse, the icon is stuck to the cursor and the carefully placed setting is lost. This makes trying to do color correction a waking nightmare. PROBLEM: Menu bar: "Additional Items" and "Scan Preferences" lead to identical menus with identical title bars (the title bar says "Scan Preferences") However, the help file confusingly alludes to some significance in the difference between these panels. PROBLEM: Auto Exposure consistently over-exposes skies, eliminating subtle details and creating huge areas of solid white. PROBLEM: I have found no explanation for the "Best quality scan from Automatic Photo Feeder" preference. The only information I found on the hp support web site was that it "Optimizes scan settings for the automatic photo feeder" What does this option do and what would be a reason for disabling it? 3) HP Support responsiveness After 22 days of promises from HP support (in India), they still have yet to address any of these issues. I send them this list over and over, and they tell me they have forwarded my comments but never address them. Even the simple questions about the functionality of the product (last item in my list) go unanswered. I've seen some of these issues about their software reported over a year ago and they have never addressed them. There have been no updates to the software since September of 2003. From what I understand, this software is used in much of their imaging product line so beware. There's more but I have a 1000 word limit!
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely tragic.
Review: I bought this scanner with the Automatic Photo Feeder so I could digitize my grandparents' photo albums and create a present for my mother. I'm now seeking a refund directly from hp. This is why: 1) The APF is not usable.
2) The scanning interface is abysmal. (actually a script running in Internet Explorer!)
3) HP support has offered no response to problems. The hardware would actually be cool for the price. The APF does a good enough job sucking in a stack of photos, jamming frequently but not too frequently. But hardware cannot work without software, and tragically this scanner has been saddled with possible the worst scanning software ever written - actually negating the usefulness of the APF and making even normal flat bed scans a nightmarish experience. My simple photo album project revealed critical flaws that must have been found in HP's quality assurance department, but inexplicably were not addressed. DETAILS: 1) Problems Using the Automatic Photo Feeder (APF) PROBLEM: False "jam" errors. Often the scanner reports that a photo has jammed, but the scanned photo is not jammed at all. It is sitting in the output tray exactly where it should be. PROBLEM: Scan is not saved when an error occurs (such as a "jam" error) even though the scan was completed successfully (and can be swiped out of the temp folder before it gets deleted if you are quick enough). This is by far the most infuriating item and shows that HP skipped the quality assurance phase of development. PROBLEM: "Descreen" is not available as a scanning option when using the Automatic Photo Feeder (APF) in batch scans. PROBLEM: Saved scanning profiles are not applied to photos in the APF - unless there is only one photo in the feeder (or it's the last of a batch) - which forces one to insert one photo at a time, virtually negating the concept of batch scanning a stack of photos. PROBLEM: Photos are consistently cropped incorrectly. The left edge of the image is cut off, while the right side of the image includes a portion of the scanning hood. It appears there is an offset problem. This problem occurs regardless of the size of the photo and is especially problematic with photos with rounded corners (most of the photos I'm scanning) PROBLEM: Photos are not saved after each scan. Instead the software waits until all photos in the batch have been scanned before writing the images to the destination folder. This methodology has three major drawbacks. 1) I scanned 6 photos through the APF without realizing there was a photo already on the glass. 2) Any errors / software mishaps will result in lost scan(s). 3) Work cannot begin on scans until entire batch is finished 2) Problems Using the "hp scanning" interface PROBLEM: Cropping rectangle dimensions do not "stick". Clicking "Descreen" or "New Scan" causes new coordinates to be auto-generated, even when "Automatically Crop Scanned Images" is disabled. Most scanning interfaces remember settings from scan to scan so a pleasant workflow can emerge. PROBLEM: Number Fields do not always hold their values after typing them in manually. Sometimes this is not evident until several clicks later when the number fields spontaneously revert to previous values. PROBLEM: After manually adjusting exposure and color settings - moving the cropping rectangle loses them and inserts auto-generated settings. PROBLEM: Clicking "descreen" makes custom exposure / color settings revert to auto generated values. PROBLEM: Dragging any of the sliders to min or max causes elements in the interface to become "selected" (like a web page) and can even "scroll" the entire panel behind its frame border so that some controls are inaccessible. Often adjacent sliders become selected and upon operating their knobs the mouse cursor turns into the "CAN'T DO THAT" symbol (circle with line through it). Once this symbol comes up, the slider knob will stop moving. Upon releasing the mouse button the user finds that the knob is stuck to the mouse cursor. Clicking on the interface a couple times will drop the knob and deselect the offending interface elements but by this time carefully placed settings have been lost. PROBLEM: The "Color Adjustment" wheel features a an un-clickable surface, and an icon that cannot be dragged more than a few pixels before you get the Internet Explorer CAN'T DO THAT icon (circle with a line through it). Then when you let go of the mouse, the icon is stuck to the cursor and the carefully placed setting is lost. This makes trying to do color correction a waking nightmare. PROBLEM: Menu bar: "Additional Items" and "Scan Preferences" lead to identical menus with identical title bars (the title bar says "Scan Preferences") However, the help file confusingly alludes to some significance in the difference between these panels. PROBLEM: Auto Exposure consistently over-exposes skies, eliminating subtle details and creating huge areas of solid white. PROBLEM: I have found no explanation for the "Best quality scan from Automatic Photo Feeder" preference. The only information I found on the hp support web site was that it "Optimizes scan settings for the automatic photo feeder" What does this option do and what would be a reason for disabling it? 3) HP Support responsiveness After 22 days of promises from HP support (in India), they still have yet to address any of these issues. I send them this list over and over, and they tell me they have forwarded my comments but never address them. Even the simple questions about the functionality of the product (last item in my list) go unanswered. I've seen some of these issues about their software reported over a year ago and they have never addressed them. There have been no updates to the software since September of 2003. From what I understand, this software is used in much of their imaging product line so beware. There's more but I have a 1000 word limit!
Rating:
Summary: Best Value for Price
Review: I hesitated buying this scanner based on previous reviews on several sites. But, with a ton of old photographs to scan, I was hoping to find a reasonably priced autofeed scanner, and this was really the only show in town for under $200. I scan photos using the feeder directly from PhotoShop, using only a semi-automated approach (i.e., load up the pix in the autofeed, launch PS, import one by one using the preview screen, but generally keeping the same settings for all photos in the batch). The scanner is not perfect, and the first reviewer provided an accurate assessment of where the scanner has its weak points (although, in contrast to this reviewer I have been able to scan photos--old and new--on many different types of paper...it appears that this is a hot-or-miss item by individual scanner). However, with a little bit of time (the software is kludgy...and the documentation subpar), I've been able to really crank up the number of photos I get scanned in a session. And, with the right settings (higher res than the default, turning of HP sharpness, etc) you can get high quality scans.
Rating:
Summary: When it Works Correctly It Scans Well..Auto Feed is Terrible
Review: I've had the scanner for a month. The first reviewer is definitely on point. I bought the scanner because of the Auto Feed feature - no one else offered this. I was able to scan a new (just back from Kodak) stack of photos with no problem, but everything else I put in the feeder jams. Do not even think about putting different sized pictures in at the same time, either. Also, when I put anything on the glass that does not fill the surface, I end up scanning a picture of the mechanism itself along with the picture. What's going on? Did I forget to do something? The numbering and renumbering of pictures will definitely make you crazy as well! The pictures I was able to scan, came out great. The software included with the scanner was also very useful. However, if I can't figure out why I'm getting a picture of the scanner and why the auto feeder doesn't work this baby will have to be returned. If I'm going to have to scan photos one at a time, I might as well get a model under $100. Also, if anyone does decide to get this scanner, it sells for about $40 less at Costco than Office Supply stores, etc.
Rating:
Summary: When it Works Correctly It Scans Well..Auto Feed is Terrible
Review: I've had the scanner for a month. The first reviewer is definitely on point. I bought the scanner because of the Auto Feed feature - no one else offered this. I was able to scan a new (just back from Kodak) stack of photos with no problem, but everything else I put in the feeder jams. Do not even think about putting different sized pictures in at the same time, either. Also, when I put anything on the glass that does not fill the surface, I end up scanning a picture of the mechanism itself along with the picture. What's going on? Did I forget to do something? The numbering and renumbering of pictures will definitely make you crazy as well! The pictures I was able to scan, came out great. The software included with the scanner was also very useful. However, if I can't figure out why I'm getting a picture of the scanner and why the auto feeder doesn't work this baby will have to be returned. If I'm going to have to scan photos one at a time, I might as well get a model under $100. Also, if anyone does decide to get this scanner, it sells for about $40 less at Costco than Office Supply stores, etc.
Rating:
Summary: This one is going back
Review: Many recent HP products have great designs but poor execution, and this is unfortunately one of them. Like many other reviewers, I was looking for a scanner with an automatic 6x4" photo feeder, since I was very sick of placing pictures on a flatbed one by one only to be confronted with slanted scans. This HP is the only one on the market with this well-thought-out feature. And like some of the reviewers, I saw its high rating in both PC World and PC Mag. But the two hundred bux was totally a waste. The scanner is bulky and huge! It's also heavier than most scanners you'll encounter. But the biggest problem is the photo feeder, which is very poorly constructed and jams all too easily. (Sidenote: I personally do not like HP laser printers because they jam easily, too. I guess HP's mechanical engineers need a re-education in designing these mechanisms.) I have hundreds of old 3x5 and 4x6 photos which I was hoping to digitize, but after getting very frustrated with having the first batch of a dozen photos (Kodak, Fuji and Agfa papers) jammed again and again and again, I pretty much gave up. This is an expensive scanner and it fails miserably at the one thing I paid premium for, the photo feeder, so it's going back to the store. My advice: wait for the next version, or wait for a similar offering from Epson or another competitor (hopefully soon).
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