How to Buy a Scanner

scanners

Essential device for getting information from paper into your marketing campaign

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by Tim Arends

Scanners long ago ceased being considered "sexy" or "cutting edge," but they are still incredibly useful devices for all computer users, including web marketers. With a scanner, you can bring in logos for incorporation into a website, scan drawings, and capture photographs for manipulation, then add them to your sales page. And, of course, for graphic artists and print publishers, scanners are indispensable.

Outside of the realm of web marketing, you may find it handy to scan in paper documents and save them as PDF files to eliminate clutter, or to capture and add to iPhoto treasured family photographs in a format that will never discolor or fade.

You don't need a stand-alone scanner these days, except for high-end print output. Multifunction devices (MFDs) include a built-in scanner, offering lower resolution than comparably-priced standalone models, but still perfectly good for most uses.

Should you buy a scanner or MFD?

Unfortunately, in some ways, choosing a scanner or MFD can be almost as difficult as choosing a computer. Like computers, scanners come with a vast array of bundled software, features, and prices. You have to become familiar with terms like interpolation, TWAIN and bit depth. You also need to make a basic decision--whether to buy a handheld, sheetfed, flatbed scanner or a MFD.

Handheld scanners, such as the IRIS IRISPen™ Express 6, are great for those who are on the go, and want something small and lightweight to connect to their MacBook. Sheetfeds, which pull pages in for scanning one at a time, are desirable largely for their space-saving profile and may be a fine choice for scanning documents for OCR (Optical Character Recognition). But if you plan on doing heavy-duty graphics or web publishing, a flatbed scanner or MFD is a must.

For one thing, you may want to capture information formerly in print for use on your website or in your article marketing campaign. But OCR is very slow with a handheld scanner because of the narrow swath the scanner captures in each pass. Or maybe you want to scan text from a public domain book. You can’t do that with a sheetfed scanner without cutting up the book! Furthermore, handhelds generally have a less powerful scanning engine than flatbeds, limiting the clarity of the images they can capture.

Scanners come in almost as great a range of prices as computers do. However, a “low-end” or lower-priced scanner will be more than adequate for most web marketers. “Low-end” are generally considered to be those scanners costing less than $200, or those incorporated into most multifunction devices.

What will you miss out on if you buy a low-end scanner? not much for the purposes of web marketing, but image quality of photos may suffer a bit, especially if you do heavy-duty scanning. On the Epson multifunction device I have, scanning large numbers of printed photos through the document feeder results in streaking of the scanned images after the first few scans, something that is clearly due to a software issue, not to any actual smearing of the scanned sheets. The document feeder, intended partly for sending faxes, however, can be a great feature for scanning large numbers of text pages.

So that you can better understand the mechanics of scanning, let’s explore some of the terms you will encounter while shopping for a scanner.

-- Resolution. A scanner works by bouncing light off a printed page and converting what is reflected into binary information--bits--the ones and zeros a computer understands. Resolution refers to the fineness of detail the scanner can capture. As with printers, this is measured in dots per inch (DPI). The smaller the dots, the more of them can fit into a given area and the more sensitive a scanner must be to capture them. Thus, the higher the number of dots a scanner can capture per inch, the greater is its resolution. The minimum acceptable resolution for a grayscale scanner is 300 by 300 DPI. For color scanners, look for 400 by 400 or 300 by 60��0.

--Interpolation. In addition to the actual (or optical) resolution of a scanner, almost all scanners have special software that helps boost the amount of detail the scanner can capture. Interpolation makes educated guesses based on mathematical probability to determine the placement of pixels it can’t see and insert these into the final image. Interpolation can boost the resolution as high as 4,800 DPI. When it works well, interpolation significantly sharpens an image, but beware: it is no substitute for a decent optical resolution.

--Bit depth. This term simply refers to the number of shades or colors the scanner can recognize. The scanner assigns a certain number of bits to each sample point of an image. 1-bit scanners sample all points as either black or white. Most grayscale scanners assign at least 8 bits to each point, for a total of 256 shades of gray (if you choose a grayscale, make sure that yours does, too). For a color scanner, be sure to get at least 24 bits. It will be able to capture more than sixteen million colors.

-- One-pass vs. three-pass. This is an issue you no longer have to worry about. For a scanner to capture color, it must bounce the three primary colors of light (red, green and blue) off an image. In the "old days," scanners made three separate passes (one for each color), while modern models do everything in a single pass, making them considerably faster.

-- Software. Scanners come with a variety of bundled software. Getting the software you need with your scanner can cost significantly less than purchasing everything separately.

Since few images will scan in perfectly with no need for enhancement, scanners typically include image editing software, albeit software you may have never heard of. Some Epson scanners, for example, come with ArcSoft Photo Impression. Some higher-end scanners, however, may be bundled with Adobe Photoshop elements. Photoshop is the king of photo manipulation and Elements is its capable little brother, but the other packages can do basic touch-ups, as well. The scanner, of course, will also come with its own scanning utility. Some scanners may come with extras, such as special software for scanning and cataloging business cards.

If you plan on using public domain materials in your Web marketing campaign, be sure to get a scanner or multifunction package that includes an OCR (optical character resolution) program. You may get a “limited,” or less full-featured, OCR package with a low-end scanner, but it will be fine for most purposes. Some of the Epson multi-functions and standalone scanners, for example, come with an excellent package called ABBYY FineReader which does an admirable job of capturing text, albeit only one page at a time. If you want batch options, such as when scanning in text from a public domain book, or when running a large number of sheets through the document feeder, you will definitely want to get the pro version. If you later decide you want more features, you can sometimes upgrade to the full package at a discount. Also, if you plan on scanning a lot of looseleaf sheets, be sure to get a scanner with a document feeder.

--TWAIN. This is a software standard that allows you to scan an image directly into the program that you want to work in. For example, the TWAIN plug-in for Photoshop lets you scan an image using the scanner’s own utility, and the image appears in a new Photoshop window.

Now that you know the basics, reading the catalog descriptions should be a breeze, right? Not entirely. Catalogs do not always list all of a scanner’s important technical specifications in their descriptions. Even if you shop in a store, rounding up the facts is not always easy. Salespeople may be poorly informed and full specifications may not always be listed even on the scanner’s packaging.

If buying in a store, try to get fact sheets on the scanners you’re interested in, then come back after you've had a chance to study them at home. If buying by mail, call the catalog company to double-check all of the specifications for the scanner you are interested in before ordering. Sometimes the same scanner model will be available with different software bundles (and different prices), so you must be careful when comparing prices from one dealer to the next that you are comparing the same software bundles as well.

With a little research, you can find a scanner that meets your needs and gives you good service for years to come.

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