if it can't scan fluorescent colors. There are numerous contemporary scanners that do hot orange, pink, and green just fine. I'd suggest you take advantage of your evaluation period to swap for a different one. Definitely check out the Epsons as most all their models do a fine job.

Regarding light and dark scans.... anyone doing chip scans needs to use a picture editing program. Most can be set so you scan directly into the editor where you can touch up the brightness (and sometimes contrast) before saving the file. As you have shown, there is no default setting that will be right for all chips. A picture editor will not help with the scanner's inability to sense fluorescent colors, though.