Scanners - Notes 2

A digital Scanner is an input device that makes your computer a more useful tool. Photographs, pictures, graphic images, and drawings can be copied and saved into a file. This file can be imported into other programs including word processors for desktop publishing, Powerpoint for presentations, or graphics programs for editing and printing. Color, black and white, or line art drawings can be scanned for later use.  Graphics programs such as Adobe Photoshop or Jasc Paint Shop Pro allow you to size the picture, edit shading and colors, rotate images, sharpen images, plus perform other editing operations.

Another use for scanners is optical character recognition (OCR). A typewritten page can be scanned into an editor such as Notepad, or a word processor program as text. Once the text is captured, it can be formatted and printed from the program. This saves time re-typing a document. Special software is required to use OCR. Two popular programs are Textbridge and Omni-Page.

Scanners range in price from about $50 to a few thousand dollars depending on the features. Specifications for scanners include:

1. Dots per Inch (dpi) - This number defines the scanning resolution. Typical numbers run from 300 to 9600 dpi.

2. Number of bits - This number specifies the depth of color resolution. The higher the number, the greater the color resolution from 16 colors to billions of colors.