Epson FastFoto FF-680W Scanner Review - Part 3

This is Part 3 of my review of the Epson FastFoto FF-680W Wireless High-speed Photo Scanning System - other parts are here:  Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 4 - Part 5.

A tip sheet that I received in advance of the scanner's delivery suggested using it for other memorabilia, such as greeting cards and postcards.  It so happens that my late husband saved EVERY card and letter I gave or sent him over the eighteen years of our marriage, and I'd started scanning some of those for my grief blog.  

The Epson FastFoto is perfect for this task, because greeting cards have two sides - outside and inside (front and back for postcards).  I treated the cards similarly to photos, with some of the same settings.

I set the scanner to scan the cards at 300 dpi and produce JPEGs, and to scan ALL the "backs," as this was the inside of the greeting cards.  I also set the scanner to do auto enhancements (brightness, contrast, saturation) and to restore faded colors, and to apply these enhancements to a second copy of the card, and not to the original scan.  I left remove red eye unchecked; it wasn't necessary for cards.  I also turned on auto rotation, curled photo correction, and reduce lines and streaks in the advanced settings.  (See Part 1 for a discussion of these various settings.)

Because of their size, I fed the cards in opened up with the outside of the card facing up, and the front cover of the card as the leading edge, as in the photo below.  That image is followed by some examples of my results, and what I learned.

Above:  The scanner loaded with some cards and ready to go.

Below:  Example of a scanned card.  The first image is the original scan of the outside of the card, the second is a copy of that scan with enhancements (auto brightness, contrast, and saturation; and restore faded colors) applied, and the third image is the inside of the card.

Above and below:  Interestingly, for these two cards, the software could "read" enough of the image to orient the outside of the cards correctly, but not the insides.  Not a problem, this is an easy fix.

I did notice a problem with a few of the cards that required me to change a setting and rescan them.  Remember for the advanced setting, "reduce lines and streaks," the user guide noted that "enabling this setting may slightly crop your photos."  On some cards, I wrote messages right up to the edges of the card, so this was an issue, as in the example below.

Above and below:  First scan of this card, with the advanced setting "reduce lines and streaks" checked.  This cut off part of my message on the inside of the card, below.

So I turned off the advanced setting, "reduce lines and streaks," which undid the cropping of the inside of the card.  However, this time there were two lines or streaks on the outside of the card, most noticeable on the outside back (which I will be cropping out when I use these images in my private blog).  You can click on the image below to enlarge it and see it better.

Second scan of this card, with the advanced setting "reduce lines and streaks" UNchecked.  Now my handwritten message on the inside of the card, below, is entirely visible - but also visible are some streaks on the outside of the card, above.

According to the user guide and the Help utility in the software, these straight lines can be caused by dirt or dust on your photos (or cards) or by dirt or dust on the glass surfaces of the scanner.  For the latter, a microfiber cloth and instructions in the user guide are provided for cleaning.

I also scanned some paper business cards and some plastic cards as if they were photos - face up, top down, 300 dpi, saved as JPEGs, not scanning the back sides, no enhancements turned on, and only auto-rotate turned on with advanced settings (since one of my plastic cards was in portrait orientation.  You can scan up to 30 paper business cards at once; I only had twelve.  Here's how four of them turned out:

You can scan up to five plastic cards at one time, but one of mine jammed - I think because it was not of uniform thickness (thinner on the edges than in the middle).  Here are the other four (it did auto-rotate the one portrait-oriented card):

These are all ID cards from previous workplaces, but I imagine you could use this scanner and the FastFoto software to scan both sides of a driver license or other official ID.  Although that technology has been around a while (such as at doctor's offices), I didn't want to take a chance with my driver license!

Note that this scanner, and the Epson FastFoto software, can be used to scan other types of documents IF you want to save them as JPEG or TIFF files.  Check out the next post for scanning and saving as PDFs.

© Amanda Pape - 2025 - e-mail me!