My scans look like crap, what's wrong?!?

[Kronos]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcus76/3499820542/
This photo and the next two in my photo stream were all 5x5 proofs scanned in with my Kodak ESP 7 into PhotoShop CS2. They all look like crap. And it doesn't matter what program I scan them into, they all look like that. Is it just a setting I should try and find and change or should I go exhange this all in one printer for an Epson,HP, or Canon?

[mattchase]

It could be a setting, or it is could be the paper. There have been papers on the market for some time that have copy protections built in, such as causing color casts and whatnot. Have you tried these proofs on a different scanner?

Turn off all the automatic settings in the scan program, the lines and noise could be generated by the scanner trying to auto correct exposure too much (like dragging the midtone slider in levels way too far). This could also be causing poor color.

What do the proofs look like? Clear, no grain, color accurate?

[Kronos]

They're photos I took with my Mat-124 and had processed locally. Then tried scanning in the prints. The one that's listed first is underexposed by 1 stop at least, the other two look to have plenty of light and were exposed properly. The prints are a smooth gloss.

[Kronos]

Problem solved. Exchanged for an HP Photosmart C6380. The scans are acceptable now, I can live with them as is if I'm just printing same size copies. If I really want them to look good I can clone out a few dust speckles here and there. But nothing as bad as the scanlines the Kodak was getting. When I took it back to Best Buy I told them to send it back to the vendor and not to resell as open item because it'll just keep coming back returned if they do.

Before I made up my mind to exchange it, I tried it on a PC too, and even 4 different prints developed at various places around town, from various times within the last 5 years and the scans were all shit.

I've uploaded scans of two of the same pictures on Flickr (same link as above) so you can see the same photo scanned on the same computer, into the same program, with two different scanners.

[mattchase]

Too bad that scanner was such junk. Glad you got it all worked out though.