Microtek Scanmaker i800 (and other scanners)

Hello everybody,

I just got a new iMac with Leopard, and I'm fixing to get Photoshop CS3 ('till then, I have an old copy of CS) and a scanner.

I was wondering if anyone has used the Microtek Scanmaker i800 scanner with either version of Photoshop on Leopard. Does it work in Leopard (within Photoshop, that is -- I hate having to go out to a separate program to scan things) and is it a decent scanner? Initially I considered getting an Epson Perfection 4490 because I have used an Epson Perfection 2400 for four happy years with no problems, but the Microtek Scanmaker does legal-size scans, so that is why I'm considering getting a Microtek.

I have no prior experience with any Microtek products, so if anyone has any advice about them (and the i800 in particular), I'd be really grateful for help in choosing the right scanner (Microtek or Epson).

Many thanks,

Jason

Welcome to Mac-Forums, ptolemy18.

First I'm not sure Adobe CS will work in Leopard. Wait for other members to reply to this but I seem to recall it didn't work at all.

Second, you should have no problems using that Microteck scanner or other scanners you are considering even if the driver is bad or it seems to be missing for OS X. There is a third-party driver called VueScan that is wonderful and adds a lot more functionalities to all the scanner drivers I've seen so far. To make sure the scanner you want is supported, check out this list of supported scanners. The latest version is compatible with Mac OS X 10.4.x and 10.5 Leopard.

http://www.macworld.com/2006/07/reviews/scanmakeri800/index.php

Here is a review in Mac World. They talk about separate programs that come with the scanner. I use Epson Perfections and they work great with Leopard and in Photoshop. You use Image Capture in the Applications folder and have it scan the files into Photoshop. If that scanner shows up under Image Capture it will work.

And Yes, Adobe CS works in Leopard. I have it installed and so far it works great. Can not afford CS3 at this time and did not want CS2 because of no native Intel support.

It does? Cool! I was mistaken then. Thanks for the heads up, trav.

MacHeadCase said:

It does? Cool! I was mistaken then. Thanks for the heads up, trav.

Click to expand...

Photoshop 7 is totally broken in 10.5. It will not load at all. CS has worked here on any 10.5 machine I have tried it on. Works faster on a G5 or even my 1.8Ghz G4 though since CS has to run under Rosetta on Intel Macs.

Thanks for the replies, everybody. One thing I do know is that if the scanner (the Microtek ScanMaker i800) doesn't allow me to scan from within Photoshop, that is a dealbreaker. I hate having to switch between programs, save files, open them again, to manipulate scanned images. So I can guarantee I won't use whatever scanning software comes with the scanner -- it has to be Photoshop-compatible (i.e. you scan from a drop-down menu in Photoshop, like the good ol' Import function) or nothing.

Has anyone used Photoshop with this scanner in Leopard?