Maximizing your scans

You’ve switched to digital and now you store all your photos on CDs and your computer. But what about the photos you took before you made the switch or those heritage images you inherited? How should you go about storing those digitally or getting quality digital files to brush up? Your flatbed scanner will do just the trick.

Whether you’re enlarging a photo for a layout, restoring a heritage print, or just creating a digital archive of pictures from the past, you can use your scanner to do the job. And although many of you may know the basics of using your scanner or have read them in our February 2003 Tech Talk, we wanted to share a few small but important details that can help you to maximize the quality of your scans.

Before You Scan

• Cleaning
One of the most important things to remember is to take care of your equipment. It’s a good practice to clean the glass of your flatbed scanner often to remove fingerprints and dust particles. Use a soft cloth that doesn’t leave lint or specks behind or cause scratches (try a microfiber cloth), or use an anti-static brush or compressed air. Keeping specks and lint off the glass will prevent them from causing spots or lines which can be difficult and time consuming to repair.

• Alignment
Be sure to place the document in your scanner so it is straight, or as straight as possible. If necessary, you can use a small piece of removable tape to secure the document to the scanner—tape the back of the document to the edge of the scanner—not to the glass—to hold it in place and keep it from shifting when you close the lid. Lining the document up correctly to begin with will eliminate the hassle of rotating and cropping to make the image even. It will also save you time.

While you Scan

• Scanner Settings
You’re more likely to get a better scan if you tell your computer exactly what you want. Your scanning software should give you a control window that allows you to select whether you want your image to be in color or black and white as well as set the size of your document and the resolution (DPI). By setting these specifications—particularly the resolution—before scanning, the resulting image will be a better quality.Scanning at a higher resolution will capture more details but result in a larger file size. For example, if you scan a 3?x 5?color photo at 600 DPI, the resulting file will be approximately 16 megabytes. The same file scanned at 200 DPI will only take up 1.8 megabytes of space. Typically, an image of 300 DPI is optimal for a document you’re planning on printing, while 72 DPI is sufficient if the document is just being used for the web, emailing or sharing online.

• Preview & Crop
Another way to improve the quality of your image is to utilize the “Preview” button on your scanner software. This will give you a quick overview of your entire scanner bed, allowing you to see if you want to adjust any settings such as adding more contrast or brightness. Use the selection tool to make a rectangle around just the image or the part of the image you want, and press the “Scan” button.

Cropping out any extra surface area will reduce your file size. More importantly though, eliminating unnecessary parts (such as the white surface around the edge of a photo) will allow your editing software to adjust the color and brightness/contrast of the image better, because it won’t include that data in the file. Scanning only the part of the image you want will also prevent your image from being larger in size than it needs to be, therefore reducing the time it takes to scan.

By caring for your scanner and taking the time to set up the scan properly, you can easily improve the quality of your scans—whether they’re for a cherished heritage layout or a simply a digital archive.

For more tips on using your flatbed scanner, read through your manual or visit the Hewlett Packard website and search for “scanning.”