How to Use a Computer Scanner Efficiently

Here are a few tricks to help you get the best possible results from your scanner.

Difficulty:

Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Scanners
• Scanning Software

1. Pre-scan; then drag diagonally to select the area for the final scan.

2. Avoid scanning anything at a greater resolution than you can display or print.

3. Adjust scanning software settings to match the type of document: text document, line art, black-and-white photograph or color photograph.

4. Scan at 72 dpi (dots per inch) if you are scanning photographs or documents to use on the Web, because this is a suitable resolution for most Web viewing.

5. Scan at no more than 200 dpi if you are scanning text documents or documents to archive.

6. Scan at the scanner's maximum optical resolution if you are scanning photographs to print on a high-resolution printer (greater than 600 dpi).

Tips & Warnings

• Images scanned at a lower resolution produce smaller files, which load faster, are easier to edit and conserve disk space.

• Scanning software designed to improve your scanner's resolution is useful for graphics and for photographs lacking detail.