How a Scanner Works

The difficulties that arise when you are using print media are endless: they are prone to degradation and it is quite cumbersome to manage them all. But printed photographs and other documents can be easily digitized using a flatbed scanner. You just need to know how to do it.

The World of Digitizing

Digitizing data has numerous advantages the most obvious of which are high compression, easy manageability, organization and reproducibility. You can easily manage and manipulate digital photographs with an image editing software program and a digital photo or document will not suffer from any of the problems that print media does.

These days most multifunctional inkjet printers suitable for home and office use come with built in scanners. These all-in-one units are very affordable and produce decent results. For basic photo or document scanning a multifunctional printer that will scan can be fine.

But a flatbed scanner is a must have if you want high quality scans of photographs or film. A mid-level photo scanner will not only scan photos but has the equipment and software to handle film products like slides and negatives. A number of companies that are into document management also create stand-alone scanners. A few of them are Canon, Xerox, and HP.

Can't I Just Use a Camera?

Now you may be thinking: Why can't I use a camera instead of a scanner? Well, good thinking. But here's the problem: A camera creates an image in one just one shot. However, a scanner takes in information line by line making the reproduction more clear and producing high resolution images. If you compare by speed then the camera wins, but if you compare image quality as far as detail, then the scanner wins.

The main components of a flatbed scanner include a light source, a photo sensitive chip fixed to a movable assembly and electronic control hardware. The photo sensor scans the document by converting the light reflected from the paper to electrical signals, those signals are relayed to the host computer to which the scanner is connected. Associated software controls the scanner and creates the complete scanned image.

The speed of the scanning process is one of the components in image quality. When a high resolution scan is requested, the arm of the scanner moves very slowly to capture more detail in each line of its run. This is one frustration for people as far as scanners go, it can be a slow process.