Epson Photo - Creative Hints and Tips

Easy Photo Fix™ Colour Restoration and Dust Removal

Restoring your photos with Epson Easy Photo Fix™ is easy.

Simply scan an image and click on a check box for instant colour restoration or dust removal. Epson Easy Photo Fix™ makes this process effortless because it is incorporated into the Epson Scan driver that comes with your Epson scanner.

Scanning made easy

The Epson Easy Photo Fix™ Colour Restoration feature of the Epson Scan driver can be accessed several ways: through the Home or Professional Mode of the Epson Scan driver or through the RePrint Photos applet in the Epson Smart Panel. Follow the simple three step process below to access the Easy Photo Fix™ Colour Restore feature.

How to use Easy Photo Fix™ Colour Restoration

Step 1: The Epson Scan driver can be accessed from imaging software such as Adobe Photoshop, or in stand-alone mode from the Desktop or Programs group. If the driver is accessed from stand-alone mode, the first screen that appears will prompt for a path and file type to save the scanned image. Click OK to continue.

Step 2: The driver now opens in Full-Auto mode as illustrated. The scanner begins a pre-scan, but can be paused by clicking the Pause button. In order to access the Home or Professional modes and the Colour Restore feature, click Pause.

Step 3: Once paused, choose Home or Professional Mode using the pull-down menu in the upper right corner of the driver under Mode.

Epson Scan driver – Home Mode

Home Mode is designed for beginners, or for users who prefers the ease-of-use of preset scanning controls. In Home Mode, you can choose basic settings such as Document Type, Destination and Target Size.

How to use Home Mode

Step 1: In Home Mode, click the Preview button to pre-scan the image. The image is auto-cropped and put into a thumbnail in the preview window on the left. Alternatively, the image can be pre-scanned without the thumbnail mode by clicking the menu next to the Preview button and selecting Normal instead of Thumbnail. Using Normal Preview mode allows you to select the image with the dotted line crop frame in the preview window.

Step 2: Once the image is in the thumbnail mode or fully selected with the crop frame marquee, click the Colour Restoration checkbox on the lower left of the Epson Scan driver interface. The image in the preview window shows the image after it has been enhanced using Epson Easy PhotoFix technology.

Step 3: Click Scan to scan the restored image.

Epson Scan – Professional Mode

Professional Mode is designed for advanced users who want complete control of the image being scanned. Professional Mode closely resembles more traditional TWAIN drivers and pro-graphic scanner drivers with features such as multiple marquees and a densitometer.

How to use Professional Mode

Step 1: In Professional Mode, click the Preview button to pre-scan the image. The image will appear in the Preview Window. Click the Auto-Crop button on the left of the Preview Window or align the mouse over the corner of the image, hold down the button and draw a crop frame marquee around the image.

Step 2: Once the image is completely selected with the crop frame marquee, use the scroll bar on the right of the main Scan interface to scroll down through the options until the Colour Restore checkbox is visible on the lower-left corner of the interface.

Step 3: Click the Colour Restoration checkbox and the preview window will show the image with the Easy PhotoFix enhancement. Click Scan to scan the restored image.

Restoring colour using Epson Smart Panel and RePrint Photos function

The Epson Smart Panel has an applet called RePrint Photos - which scans images and reprints them on a photo printer. This feature works best with EpsonStylus photo printers, but can be used with other photo printers as well.

How to use Smart Panel

Step 1: To access the Smart Panel, click on the Smart Panel desktop icon or press the scanners Start button. Once the Panel is open, click on the RePrint Photos applet button in the upper left corner.

Step 2: The applet opens up the main RePrint Photos interface. Click on the Photo picture to choose the type of image being scanned (reflective photo or film). Next, choose the type of photo paper that is loaded in the photo printer by clicking on the centre paper image. Finally, select the Print Size by clicking on the sizing image.

Step 3: To apply Colour Restoration to the print, click the Colour Restoration button in the lower right of the RePrint Photos interface. The Colour Restoration button turns blue to indicate that the feature is activated. Click the green Go button at the bottom of the screen to scan and print the photo using this feature.

Easy Photo Fix™ dust removal feature

Like the Colour Restoration feature, the Easy Photo Fix™ dust removal feature is accessed through the Home or Professional Mode of the EpsonScan driver, but only when scanning positive or negative film. Dust Removal and Colour Restoration can be used at the same time on an image.

EpsonScan Driver – Home Mode

Select Positive or Negative Film under the Document Type and click Preview. After the thumbnail appears in the Preview window, click the Dust Removal checkbox near the bottom of the Scan interface.
Click Scan to scan the film with Dust Removal.

EpsonScan Driver – Professional Mode

Change the Document Type to Transparency and then select Positive or Negative Film under Film Type.
Click Preview to pre-scan the image and create a thumbnail in the Preview window.
Use the scroll bar on the right of the main Scan interface to scroll down through the options until the Dust Removal checkbox is visible on the lower-left corner of the interface.
Click the checkbox to activate Dust Removal, and click the + sign (Windows) or _ (Macintosh) to open the Dust Removal Level options.
Select Low, Medium or High depending on how much dust is on the image.

Notes about the Photo Samples:
Since old and faded photos are generally treasured, the samples we have provided are scanned copies reprinted on a high-quality photo inkjet printer. These samples provide an idea of how colour restoration works on different types of faded or colourcast images, but it should be noted that line and more patterns may be visible from the printing process.