How-To Guides:
Scanning Tips

For Macintosh and Windows Users

It can be helpful to scan in a document or a logo for use in a project or as part of a homework assignment.

The following scanning steps and tips may be helpful: ( These steps are written taking into consideration the HP Precisionscan Pro software. The same should work for most of the softwares except with a few changes)

Steps:

  1. Open the HP Precisionscan Pro software.
  2. The first thing we want to do when we are scanning is get a preview of the entire document on the scanner bed. This is done by selecting "Scan->New Scan" from the menu bar.
  3. Then we select the exact area we want to actually scan . This can be done by dragging the cursor across the desired area. If you wish to make some changes to the selection area you can do so by extending/reducing the selection area. There are some big black squares at different places along the border of the selection area, and these change into double headed arrows when the cursor is moved towards them. The changes can be made using these arrows.
  4. Once the selection is made change the scanner settings according to the type of the document being scanned.
  5. Go to "Output type" in the menu bar to select the output type depending on the document being scaned for example if it is a photograph select "True color", if it is an article select "black and white document", etc. If you are not satisfied with the file size and quality of the output you can change the output type and rescan.
  6. Then select the resolution of the scan by selecting "Tools->Change Resolution" from the menu bar. 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. Scan at no more than 300 dpi if you are scanning text documents or documents to archive. Scan at the scanner’s maximum optical resolution if you are scanning photographs to print on a high-resolution printer (greater than 600 dpi). Avoid scanning anything at a greater resolution than you can display or print.
  7. Then go to "Scan->Scan To" from the menu bar to select the format of the document being scanned. This is the place where you decide whether you want your document to be scanned as a PDF document, image, text document (to use the OCR to edit the text), etc.
  8. Once you click on scan after following all the above steps your scanner would go ahead and scan your document and open the resulting scan in the designated software depending on your selection made at step 7.
  9. There are some advance features under "Advanced" in the menu bar which can be explored by the user depending on his/her interests.
  10. For additional help you can visit http://www.scantips.com/ . For help regarding HP Precisionscan Pro software you can visit http://www.scantips.com/hp6200.html

Tips:

  1. Images scanned at a lower resolution produce smaller files, which load faster, are easier to edit and conserve disk space.
  2. Scanning software designed to improve your scanner’s resolution is useful for graphics and for photographs lacking detail.

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