Windows 98 Installation & Configuration Handbook

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Configuring Scanners


by Rod Tidrow

Finding the Right Scanner

While joysticks, mouse devices, tape backup drives, and modems are relatively commonplace among computers running Windows, scanners and digital cameras are not likely to be found attached to an average Windows workstation. There are many reasons for this trend, including the high price tags that were attached to such peripherals in the past. But now that prices for this hardware are dropping, and demand for faxing and document storage is rising, you may be considering the purchase of a scanner.

Finding the right scanner for you and your work is not a difficult task, but can be frustrating at times. Scanners come in several different types: flatbed, sheet-fed, hand-held, and card scanner. The latter, card scanner, has been adapted for single photo scanning as well.

If you're in the market for a scanner, you should consider some of the following buying tips:

Installing Scanner Hardware

Most scanner hardware is connected to your computer through a separate interface board (usually a SCSI card); however, some hand-held scanners and flatbed scanners can connect to your computer's parallel port. If you have to install a scanner adapter into your computer, turn your computer off and perform the following steps.


TIP: If your adapter has dip switches or jumpers that are used to configure the adapter, write down the current settings before you install the adapter.
1. Install the scanner adapter board into your computer. Follow the manufacturer's installations guidelines closely.

2.
Restart your computer.

3.
Run the Add New Hardware Wizard as detailed in Chapter 5, "Installing and Configuring New Hardware and Software." If your scanner is not detected automatically by Windows, you need to specify the Imaging Device type or Other Devices type to manually install your scanner. If your scanner connects to a SCSI port, you'll need to make sure that port is installed and configured first. Then connect your scanner to the port and install the drivers necessary for your scanner. See how to install hardware in Chapter 5.

If the Add New Hardware Wizard cannot automatically detect your scanner board, you have two options:


NOTE: If you are installing a hand-held scanner or a flatbed scanner that connects to your computer's parallel port, you may not need to run any hardware installation procedures. Check your installation manuals regarding this matter. You may only need to install software that works with your scanner.


TROUBLESHOOTING: After I installed my scanner, I can't seem to scan anything into my word processor. What's wrong? If you are not using the scanning software, you won't be able to scan anything into your word processor. If you are trying to scan text from a document into the word processor, you will need to use special software that uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to actually convert the image into text data. This software may have been shipped with your scanner; you should review the operation of the OCR software and its usage for scanning into word processing documents.

Installing and Configuring Scanner Software

Scanner software communicates with the hardware through a Windows device driver. The device driver controls the way the scanner works when capturing an image. The scanner software is usually written by the manufacturer of the scanning hardware, because each scanner has various capabilities and resolutions.

Some common controls that the scanner software manages include

Proprietary Solutions

Since the scanning software is so closely linked to the scanner hardware, you may not have any choice but to use the software that was provided by the manufacturer to perform your scanning. If you have purchased a brand-name scanner with a good reputation, the software that is delivered will probably be mature and reliable and may even be a 32-bit Windows 98 program. The features included in this software will probably be what you are looking for, plus some additional features that may be new to you.

To install your scanning software, follow the instructions provided in your scanner's installation manual. This procedure is typically very quick because there are few options to most scanning software. Once your software is installed, you will be able to start scanning images into your computer.

Scanning Software Example

To give you an idea of some of the functions that are available through scanning software, let's take a look at the iPhotoPlus scanning software.

Figure 30.1 shows the iPhotoPlus software's main screen. On the left side of the screen are the main controls for configuring the operation of the scanner, while the right side of the screen shows a preview image of the scanner.

FIG. 30.1 iPhotoPlus' software lets you preview the images you are scanning.

When scanning an image, it is common for the scanning software to offer a preview mode for cropping an image. The preview mode will perform a fast scan of the entire scanning bed to allow you to see where your image is positioned in the scanner. Once you can see where the entire image is, you can choose the portion you want to scan at a higher quality. Looking back to Figure 30.1, notice that the entire scanning area is represented by the box on the right side of the screen.

Once you have completed the preview scan, you can crop the image to the desired size. This will prevent the scanner from scanning in blank space which not only makes your image look poor, but also requires more hard drive space to store and much longer time to scan.

Take the example of a business card. If you walked up to a photocopy machine and placed the card on the machine, you would end up with an 8 1/2 by 11-inch piece of paper with a business card located somewhere on the page. What you really wanted was a copy of the business card, not a copy of the photocopy machine's cover.

If you placed that same business card on a scanner, you could view the preview scan and crop only the business card by drawing a box around that part of the scanning area. When the scanner digitizes that image, it will only include the part of the scanning area you cropped. Again, this saves time and disk space while giving you the image you want.

In addition to the cropping features, another important feature includes the scanning mode in which your image is captured. Since images may be used for many different purposes, you may have to change the scanning mode from time to time. Some images you will only view on the computer screen, so these images should match the number of colors your video mode can support. Other images will be included in word processing or spreadsheet documents, which will be printed in black and white. Still others may be advertising images that are being sent to a high-quality color printer for proofing. Each of these images has different quality needs that your software should handle.

The iPhotoPlus software provides an image quality selection that allows you to use one of several preset image settings or create your own.

There are many other features that the iPhotoPlus software provides, including automatic contrast and brightness correction, multiple file format support, multiple size settings, and image scaling. But this is not a review of the iPhotoPlus software, it is simply a benchmark against which you can measure other scanning software.

Once you scan the image, you can view and manipulate it in the iPhotoPlus window (see Figure 30.2). Some of the manipulation tasks you can perform include resizing, retouching, enhancing, and changing color depths. Depending on the software you get with your scanner, you may or may not have these same features.


TROUBLESHOOTING: I bought a scanner to do OCR, but I never thought I'd have to do so much re-typing. Why can't the computer do a better job at reading the documents into my word processor? It sounds like your expectations were a little too high for this technology. While some OCR software can read text with 99.7 percent accuracy, that still means you could have between 5 to 10 errors on a "good" page and many more on a page with illegible writing or poor text quality. OCR is wonderful technology, but don't expect it to replace your secretaries anytime soon.

FIG. 30.2 With iPhotoPlus, you can scan an image and then manipulate it into a final digital image.

Scanning Tips

Once you have your scanner working, take some time to get comfortable with it. Although the quality of the scanner and the features of your scanning software determine much of how your finished scanned image looks, you can follow these guidelines to improve your scans:


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