Ambir Technology Inc - AMBIR Photo Scanner with PictureStudio Software - Black

This is an amazing photo scanner. I struggled to scan low resolution photos on my one year old Epson WF Pro 3820, but this is soooo much faster. I used to work on my computer while images scanned, but this scanner completes even 8x10 at 300 dpi in just a few seconds. This scanner is small enough to fit on my desk between my secondary screen so I can use my pull out keyboard. I don't even have to get up to scan and work on the images with the PictureStudio software. I would like more options to have sub Albums for the photos.

When I saw this and looked at the reviews, I had to try it. I have had several scanners over the years and tried at times to digitize my old non-digital photos from years ago. I have never been happy with any of those options. Even the older ones with the feeder vs. the flat scanners never really seemed to work well at all. Enter the Ambir Photo Scanner, it’s a reasonable sized unit and out of the box could not be simpler to install and setup. You first pick your system to use for it. I have a small desktop mini PC that I do love but also have a newer Asus Zenbook that I love and it has a 1TB SSD on it. I decided to use it because the portability is very advantageous. The nice thing is this is a single cable that plugs from the scanner to the USB-C on the Asus. So I literally can quickly move this anywhere I need it. For example, I started in my den, just sitting on my couch scanning pics but quickly picked up and moved to our dining room when some of the family showed up. Now, out of the box, the first thing you do is go to either the Google or Apple store and download and install the PictureStudio Software. This was super simple and easy. Once installed, it will have you plug in the scanner so that the software can find the scanner as it’s installed. Again, this worked without issue at all. Once installed, it will ask you to calibrate the scanner. The scanner comes with a very nice folder/packet which has calibration sheets that you will be asked to feed one into the scanner and it uses it to calibrate it. There are a few more pieces that I haven’t used yet, so they seem to give you adequate supplies. One thing that would have been helpful would have been a quick video to show exactly how to quickly start scanning, setup of an album, etc. It is intuitive to do but I can see where someone not used to doing this type of work would struggle a bit. The software is powerful and very functional and even intuitive as I have mentioned. I played around with it a bit at first but then realized that I needed to go into the settings on the right hand side and setup my defaults as I wanted, for example, I changed the DPI from 300 to 600 which increases the resolution but also the size. After scanning a few 4x6 pictures, and then editing them (cropping, rotating), I learned you can enhance the picture on the right-hand side of the app by adjusting the Exposure, White Balance and Saturation. This is very helpful for older pics (I was doing some 30+ year old pictures). A tip that I figured out was that the faster method is set up one or more albums based on the group of photos you are going to scan (I did by people), then just scan the photos in. It will allow you scan the next as it is still processing the last one. Scan a bunch of photos in and then go in and do an edit on each if needed. Once done, then you can “select all” and then put them all into an album that you select. This is key because this is where the real value of this Ambir Photo scanner comes in. For the first time ever with a photo scanner device, I honestly felt like I could move many photos in a short period of time and again, this is where the value of this device is. So other features of this device are that you can leverage are ability to move to many different cloud options such as email, Facebook, Pinterest, Dropbox, Google Drive, Flickr or OneDrive. I am choosing to ensure that Google photos and Amazon Photos will backup and copy those new folders that PictureStudio creates for my albums. That way I have them double backed up in both clouds and now these 30+ year old memories will now be preserved forever. Priceless. I would highly recommend this to anyone. The software is solid and works and my hope is that it will only get better over time. Regardless, this was an excellent purchase and will serve to preserve many precious memories.

I’ve scanned many photos using a flatbed scanner, but the process is less than ideal. You have to make sure you keep the glass spotless, and lining up and scanning each photo just takes too much time. For these reasons, I was interested in the Ambir Photo Scanner. It’s a sheet-fed scanner, similar to a document scanner, allowing you to load a photo into the feeder and automatically scan it into the included Picture Studio software. Setup is easy. It begins by downloading and installing the software from Ambir’s website (.Net Desktop 8.0 is required). Once this is complete, you are prompted to connect the scanner. Next, insert one of the included calibration sheets into the scanner. A few moments later, you’re ready to start scanning your photos. There are lines on the back of the scanner to indicate where you should place your 5x7 or 4x6 photos, but photos of many different sizes are supported. Available resolutions are 300 dpi and 600 dpi. This is usually sufficient for old family photos, but isn’t high enough if you’re looking for professional tool. Insert the photo face down, then click the scan button in the software. The scanner can also be set to automatically start scanning when it senses a photo being placed in position. The software is simple, but does provide some good options for enhancing your scanned images. The license for the software is authenticated by connecting the scanner, so it’s not possible to use the software on its own without at least connecting the scanner when you start up the software. Photo editing options include exposure, white balance, saturation, brightness, contrast, sharpening and blur. There are also a number of pre-set filters included, such as vivid, warm, cool, etc. You can remove red eye, dust and scratches, or change the tint and color levels. Overall, the software provides a decent set of tools for making basic changes and improving your photos, but it’s not a replacement for a full-featured photo editing package. Once you’re finished making changes, clicking “save” brings up the choice of output formats, but selecting one doesn’t bring up a button to finish the process. You’re left wondering how to make it save, only to find out that the file has already been saved. Once you know this, it’s okay, but there should be some confirmation of file operations. The software has a bit of a quirky user interface, but you get used to it quickly and can find your way around. I wasn’t expecting to get bundled software on the level of Adobe Photoshop, so my main interest was more in the hardware as a tool to provide an easy and fast way to digitize my piles of old photos. Unfortunately, almost all of my photos feature a glossy finish, and that finish turned out to be something that didn’t work well with this scanner. The scanner uses a rubber roller to grip the photo and pull it down and across the camera lens. It does just fine with photos that have a matte finish, but on glossy photos it does not pull the photo through evenly, resulting in skewed, distorted images (sample attached). There is also an included plastic sleeve, called the carrier sheet, that is meant to be used for photos that may be too damaged or fragile to scan on their own. This can be used for scanning glossy photos, but I sometimes had trouble getting the carrier sheet to feed correctly as well. Cleaning the roller with alcohol seemed to correct this, and the carrier sheet worked well after that, so the carrier sheet does seem to be an option. Ultimately, though, I have a large collection of glossy photos, and having to load and unload the carrier sheet for every photo would be much slower than being able to feed the photos through one right after the other. I want to give kudos to the team at Ambir. In addition to the issues with the feeding of photos, I also had trouble with the drivers for the scanner which rendered the software inoperable. I contacted Ambir for support, and I must say they were wonderful to deal with. They were very responsive to my emails, and then put me on the phone with a technician. They quickly shipped out a new unit the same day. They were trying to determine if the original unit was defective, and although I don’t think it was, I was very impressed with the level of service. They also sent me a pre-release update to the software that corrected my issue with the drivers, so I was able to run the software again. This kind of service is rare these days, and Ambir should be commended for providing such good service! Is this the right solution for you? If you’re scanning photos with a matte finish and don’t require a lot of complex editing, then yes, this would be a good solution. If you’re like me, however, with loads of slick, glossy photos, then this is not the ideal way to go. The Ambir Photo Scanner is reasonably priced and with a good set of features, but for me its most basic function doesn’t work well enough to meet my needs, and thus I can’t recommend it.