** 1 page review / 406 words **

ScanX updated!

Dan Dreibelbis reports...

At the end of April Nima Montasser from HOMA SYSTEMS HOUSE released ScanX v1.08R1 for use with the Microtek Scanmaker line of SCSI colour scanners and added a whole slew of new features including:

** UL **
* Support for more members of the Microtek flatbed scanner "family" including the new E3+ and E6+, E630, E330, and V300 scanners.

* Support for all Atari and graphic card resolutions from 640x400 upwards which means ScanX now works in TrueColor mode - no more switching to 256 colours just to use ScanX. Falcon/Nemesis, Hades, TT and MegaSTe/graphics owners will appreciate this.

* Choice of colour or greyscale prescans.

* Inverse scanning supported offering a quick and easy special effect to add impact to your projects.

* Scans can now be saved in either TIFF format or Targa format.

* Now works under the Geneva multitasking system.

* Special support for users of CBHD v5.02 and HD Driver v7.1 (or later) hard disk driver software.
** /UL **

In Use

My tests were carried out using my 14Mb Falcon fitted with Nemesis/Videlity running in TrueColor used with a Microtek E3.
Apart from the extra choices in the Options dialog for colour scans and inversion the interface remains unchanged and retains its simple hands-on design.
The new colour prescan option makes it easier to get a handle on the document borders and precise positioning of the cropping tool before performing your final scan.
Geneva users will be delighted to be able to use ScanX at last but less impressed to discover ScanX takes over the system so you can't launch other programs while it's running - it's a real pain to have to quit ScanX to run a graphics program or viewer to display scan results. To avoid these limitations run ScanX as a desktop accessory.
Overall the new options and improvements make ScanX even more indispensable than before - two thumbs up!

Existing ScanX users to upgrade their copies to this version by downloading the demo version from the web pages.

** boxout **
Future features

There's an even more powerful version in the pipeline called ScanX Pro. This release will support other file formats, the ability to zoom into a prescan view for a closer look, along with precision cropping, wrapping and masking functions. I've seen the work-in-progress version in action and it's reassuring to know ScanX is still actively developed and looks set to get even better.
** /boxout **

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