Mustek ScanExpress A3

Mustek ScanExpress 600 Pro A3 Bought via Misco, never worked properly from the off. Misco have disowned it and Mustek customer services (in Ireland) are a joke. Scanner still sitting in box awaiting resolution after 5 weeks.

Machine is about 18months old and although not used much the light source has failed. Then I phoned Mustec they simply said they could not help as far as I am concerned. When I complained about their customer service their agent was also unhelpful in my opinion. I do not recommend Mustek ScanExpress a3. The safest bed is not to waste your time or your money with them - use a company that will provide a decent product, give good customer support and show their customers some respect in my opinion.

I ordered one from Provantage.com. It worked, although poorly, for about a week until it would not reset. I called Provantage and they, unbelievably, replaced it in one day. Unfortunately, the replacement was also defective. They then issued me a refund. In short, the scanner is of very low quality, the software is inadequate and the scanned images are of poor quality. Mustek needs to improve it's quality control.

You get what you pay for. The included program for scanning is a joke. But the TWAIN interface works well from within Photoshop or Paintshop. The scanned images are not accurate in their colour representation. Best not to try to improve them while scanning, and never use the b/w mode, as the Mustek ScanExpress A3 scanner has no good calibration for pure white or black. Do all the post processing in e.g. Photoshop.

I scanned a test card (Kodak IT8.7/2-1993) and adjusted the level and hue saturation as adjustment layers in Photoshop. Applying those gives very acceptable results (store them in a separate small PSD file and drag them from there to your scanned image). For the levels it suffices to use the eyedropper for what is supposed to be white and what is black on the scanned image. For hue saturation, based on the test card, I used:

reds: saturation (S) +64, lightness (L) -1 Hue 0 (for all settings)

yellows: S +33 L 0

greens: S +22 L +2

cyan's S +35 L -13

blues S +23 L -11

magenta's S +21 L -12

Hope this is useful for other users.

I have had the Mustek ScanExpress A3 scanner for 18 months, and is now faulty, with stripey images and weak resolution, and so on. Mustek don't want to know, They disown this scanner and are not interested in mending it.

The Mustek ScanExpress A3 has very poor reproduction of colour. Would not recommend to anyone wishing to scan photos.