How to Do Everything with Your Scanner

How to Do Everything with Your Scanner

by Jill Gilbert
How to Do Everything with Your Scanner

How to Do Everything with Your Scanner

by Jill Gilbert

eBook

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Overview

Another volume in the popular, solutions-packed HTDE series. You'll learn to get the most out of your scanner, and do cool things like scan photos, negatives, and documents. What's more, you can then add your scanned images to Web pages, e-mails, and greeting cards. Also includes details on color correction, photo editing, and scanner repair tips.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780072228137
Publisher: McGraw Hill LLC
Publication date: 08/24/2001
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 385
File size: 15 MB
Note: This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Jill Gilbert (River Hills, WI) has written 10 computer books, including MGI PhotoSuite 4 for Dummies, PC Anywhere for Dummies and The Online Investing Bible. She’s teaches tax and computer classes at a local college.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: What You Can Do with Your Scanner

How To...

  • Figure out what projects you can use your scanner for

  • Survey the tools and capabilities associated with scanning

  • Set project goals for yourself and your scanner

  • Start learning what you need to know to accomplish different projects
A scanner shares the lure of most items that drop in price enough to be accessible to the home consumer and small-business market. Unlike a VCR or a widescreen television, however, a scanner is a creative tool. It's a means to an end, allowing you to transform a bunch of family photos mildewing in a shoebox to digitally organized albums and images posted on websites. It can allow you to add a high-tech flair to your correspondence, presentations, and just about any other communication that has a visual component. This chapter gives you an overview of some of what you can accomplish with your scanner.

Scanners Transform Paper Images into Digital Ones

Scanners are relatively inexpensive, yet powerful, imaging devices. Perhaps you wonder what's so great about the capability to scan photos, especially if you can use your office copier for free.

A scanner is much more than a device that allows you to make copies. A scanner allows you to transform what appears on a piece of paper to a digital image that can be stored and edited on your computer.

Why Scanned Images Are Better than Paper Ones

The photos that capture your most precious memories can be made a lot more poignant when you convert them to digital images. Business graphics, logos, and visual presentations can work ever so much more effectively if they, too, are captured in a digital format. For starters, scanned images can be manipulated, edited, stored, emailed, and posted on the Web.

You Can Touch-Up and Correct a Scanned Image

Taking a photo can be a maddening process. Kids don't sit still, and adults blink at the wrong time. Even if everyone does cooperate, there's that horrific red-eye effect that ruins many a perfect portrait. Scanning is a benevolent technology that allows you to correct the unfortunate flaws that otherwise ruin a perfectly captured memory.

For example, PhotoSuite and PhotoDeluxe, two image-editing programs commonly included with scanners, both allow you to correct the red-eye effect with a click of your mouse. Other tools allow you to correct blurry images, and fix flaws such as a milk mustache or an awkwardly hanging tree branch. For example, Figures 1-1 and 1-2 illustrate how this technology can be used to air-brush the braces on the model's teeth and smooth her uncombed hair....

...You can use scanning technology to compensate for bad lighting at the time you took the photo. Most image-editing programs have features that allow you to correct a digital image to compensate for under- and overexposure. Figure 1-3 shows a photo with both under- and overexposed areas. For examples, areas where the sun is reflecting off a rock and behind the subject are overexposed (too light) while the majority of the photo appears underexposed (too dark). Figure 1-4 shows the same photograph after the tools in the PhotoSuite 4 program have been used to correct the effects of both the under- and overexposure. The PhotoSuite Enhance feature simultaneously adjusts all the light and dark areas of the photo to achieve the optimum effect with literally a single mouse click....

...Colors in a scanned photo can also be corrected. Have you ever taken a photo where the lighting makes everyone appear jaundiced? Or had a photo turn a reddish color from poor developing? Once you've scanned the off-color photo, you can apply simple-to-use color-correction tools, like the ones shown in Figure 1-5....

Note
Chapter 10 tells you which image-editing tools to use for specific tasks.

You Can Cut and Crop a Scanned Image

There's a lot to worry about when you take a photo-the subject, the lighting, the background, and so on-and just when you get everyone perfectly positioned against the sunset beach, some unwanted passerby plunks down in the background with a beach umbrella. The ability to crop an image can solve this problem. You might 'imply be able to crop out that umbrella....

Table of Contents

Part I: The Basics of Scanning Chapter 1: What You Can Do with Your Scanner Chapter 2: How Scanning Technology Works Chapter 3: Selecting the Right Scanner Chapter 4: Install Your Scanner and Inventory Your Hardware Part II: The Techniques of Scanning and Editing Chapter 5: The Basics for Your First Scan Chapter 6: Scanning Techniques for Different Types of Images Chapter 7: Troubleshooting Tips and Tricks Chapter 8: Formats for Saving and Storing Files Chapter 9: Selecting the Right Image-Editing Program Chapter 10: Which Photo-Editing Tools Are Useful for Specific Tasks Part III: Practical Uses for Your Scanner Chapter 11: Scanning Instant Images: JoyCam, i-Zone, and Other Polaroid Products203 Chapter 12: Scanning Negatives and Slides Chapter 13: Scanning Text Documents Using OCR Software Part IV: Additional Scanning Projects Chapter 14: Basic Scanning Projects for Home Hobbyists Chapter 15: Making Works of Art and Fun from Scanned Photos Chapter 16: Communicating Through Scanned Photos Chapter 17: Adding Scanned Images to Your Web Pages and Email
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