Number 210 - November 2000
Falling in Love With Your Scanner
by Bob Ryan, Access Magazine, Aug 13, 2000
    Life with your scanner is full of highs ("let's e-mail Grandma a picture of the baby") and lows ("this doesn't look anything like the original"). If you want more highs than lows, you have to be willing to meet your scanner halfway. Here is what every sensitive scanner owner needs to know.

Be Flexible:
    Your scanner's default settings will not always be the best settings. If the scanned colors are not a good match for the original, use the color adjustments in the driver to get a better match. Re-scan as often as necessary; because it's better to have a good image coming in than to try to clean everything up with your photo-editing software.

Be Reasonable:
    The most common mistake people make with a new scanner is to pump up the input resolution to the max, winding up with huge images that choke even the fastest home computer. For high-quality printing, 200 to 300 dpi (dots per inch) is enough; for e-mail, stick to 72 dpi.
Keep Up Your End Of The Relationship:
    To get the best results from your scanner, use high-quality originals. If you're spending too much time touching up images after you've scanned them, you may want to consider buying a better camera or brushing up your photography skills.

Small is beautiful
    Your hard disk can handle big image files; it's editing and printing them that can bring your computer to its figurative knees. Try to limit image size to about one-fourth the size of the physical memory (RAM) in your computer. For a system with 64MB RAM, that means keeping the size of the image files less than 16MB. 
            Color   Scan         File

Photo Size  Depth  Resolution    Size

4-by-6-inch  24-bit    72 dpi         0.4MB

                      200 dpi         2.9MB

                      300 dpi         6.5MB

                      600 dpi        26.0MB

                   600-by-1200 dpi   52.0MB

5-by-7-inch  24-bit   300 dpi         9.5MB

8-by-10-inch 24-bit   300 dpi        22.0MB
  Number 210 - November 2000