MEGATRON

You must calibrate your scanner before use. Calibration adjusts the light levels for the image sensor in your scanner. Read your manual and find the calibrate function in your software, feed in the included white calibration card or a white piece of paper when prompted to. You may need to clean your scanner, refer to the manual for this operation. The feed rollers may be slipping if your original document is laminated or thick, gently push the document to assist the feeder. You might be scanning your original up-side-down, make sure the original document is face up when scanning.

USB, Universal Serial Bus, is the Plug and Play* peripheral connection. The USB interface is faster than EPP (enhanced parallel port), and has better compatibility with PCs or other peripherals.

Plug and Play (PnP) is an industry-wide hardware standard for add-in hardware that requires the hardware to be able to identify itself, on demand, in a standard fashion. Plug and Play uses both hardware (a Plug and Play BIOS) and software (a Plug and Play-compatible operating system to do the install).

Image Types - For a computer to represent image information in a digital format, the computer uses units of picture elements know as "pixels". For easy classification, images can be categorized into single-bit, grayscale, or color.

Single-bit - Single-bit images are the simplest of the image types, using just one bit of data to record each pixel. Single-bit images come in two types:
line art, and halftone.

Line art includes anything that is black and white, such as a pencil or ink sketch. Line art may also include one-color images, such as mechanical blueprints.

Halftones are reproductions of images that give the illusion of gray but only because the black and white dots (or pixels) comprising the image are arranged in such a way as to fool the eye to see gray. This is because when the halftone is printed, dark areas are represented by many dots coming together, while lighter areas are those with fewer dots. Examples of halftone images are the pictures you see in a newspaper.

Grayscale - Grayscale images contain more than just black and white, and include actual shades of gray. In a grayscale image, each dot or pixel has more bits of information encoded in it, allowing more shades to be shown. For instance, 4 bits can reproduce up to 16 shades of gray, 8 bits can reproduce up to 256 shades of gray, and 12 bits can reproduce up to 4,096 shades of gray.

Color - Color images contain the most complex image information. Most modern color scanners are at least 24-bit, meaning that they collect 8 bits of information about each of the primary scanning colors: red, blue, and green. A 24-bit unit can theoretically capture over 16 million different colors, though in practice the number is usually quite smaller.

This is near-photographic quality, and is therefore commonly referred to as "true color" scanning. Although 30-bit and 36-bit is offered, very few graphics software packages are capable of handling images with more than 24 bits; the additional bits are still worth having. When a software program opens a 30-bit or 36-bit image, it can use the extra data to correct for noise in the scanning process and other problems that hurt the quality of the scan.

Resolution - An important feature of a scanner is resolution, which is the amount of detail recorded by the scanner. Resolution is measured in dots per inch (dpi). The greater the dpi number, the higher the resolution.

Optical resolution - this is the amount of information that a scanner's optics can sample or "see" as the CCD moves vertically across the image. A 24-bit scanner, for example, typically has an optical resolution of 300 dpi, while 30-bit or 36-bit scanners typically have optical resolutions of at least 600 dpi.

Interpolated resolution - Interpolated resolution is accomplished in software by surrounding pixels already seen by the scanner with new pixels that are mathematical averages of the original pixels. Interpolation can be helpful when enlarging images to retain clarity, or when scanning black-white images or fine line art to produce smoother lines.

In the case of resolution more isn't necessarily better…optical resolution will always be the best resolution. Higher-resolution scans will take up more hard disk space and require more RAM memory. A color scan set at 9600 dpi could easily take up over 4 Gigabytes in size. When you hear a manufacturer saying they have 9600dpi understand that they are most likely referring to interpolated resolution and not optical resolution.

Depending on the scanning resolution and the size of the scanning area, scanning color images may create very large files, Large files mean slower scanning speeds, degraded performance within image processing programs and more valuable disk space to store. Therefore, in order to reduce the size of image files, you should always select a proper resolution and scan only the necessary part of the image.

The following is the chart for file sizes of 24-bit images.

All graphic image file formats fall into two categories, either Bitmap formats or Vector formats.

Vector formats use mathematical formulas to recreate graphics. If the graphic is a circle, the file format will have the location of the circle's center, it's radius and other pertinent information such as what color to draw the circle. Vector formats are easily scalable without creating jagged edges, but they are only suitable for simple drawings with a few colors. Scanners do not use victor file formats.

Bitmap formats store the actual color of each dot in the image. They are more suitable for scanned images due to the large number of colors and complex tonal variations in a photograph. A disadvantage to Bitmap formats is that they create large files that take lots of drive space to store. This problem is overcome by several bitmap file formats which compress the data prior to storage on the disk.

Most scanning programs use the *.TIF file format as their default. *.TIF files use compression but it does not shrink the file sizes significantly unless the image is black and white (scanned in Line Art mode).

Another popular file format is the *.BMP file. This is the format Microsoft uses for Windows Wallpaper. If you want to use your own photos as Wallpaper, save them in the Windows directory in the *.BMP format

The two most popular bitmap file formats today are *.GIF and *.JPG. Both of these formats are popular on the Internet because of their high compression ratios.

*.GIF compression uses an algorithm similar to ZIP files. It also reduces the number of colors in the image. A scanned image can have up to 16.7 million colors. A *GIF file reduces this down to a maximum of 256 colors. With appropriate utilities, you can reduce this even further to 16 colors. This would not be a good choice with a photograph, yet should be considered for simple graphics.

*.JPG does not reduce color depth. It merely uses compression algorithms similar to ZIP files. This is the most popular format for scanned images on the Internet and for sending photos as attachments to e-mail.

Scaling changes image size. However, as the size increases, the quality of the image will reduce. Choosing the proper scanning resolution will give you the best results in preserving the quality while enlarging the image.

To manipulate the best image: Scan the image at the size you want to print it or larger, then if necessary, scale it down to the desired size.

• Pentium 100MHz or higher processor
• 32 MB RAM or above
• VGA or Super VGA
• Windows® 98, Me, 2000 or XP supporting USB function
• 50 MB free hard disk space or more
• An available USB port
• CD-ROM

If your computer works in Windows 2000 you may test your scanner as follows:

On the desktop of Windows 2000, enter Control Panel, Manage Tool, Computer Manage, Equipment Manage. Plug in (or out) the USB cable with scanner and/or computer. If "Image Scanner" appears (or disappears) on the screen, that indicates connecting scanner with computer via USB cable is valid and you can read the driver detailed information to check if you correctly installed the scanner driver.

If your computer works Windows 98 you may test your scanner as follows:

On the desktop of Windows 98, enter Control panel, System, Equipment Manage. Plug in (or out) the USB cable with scanner and/or computer. If "ImageScanner" appears (or disappears) on the screen that indicates connecting scanner with computer via USB cable is valid and you can read the detailed driver information to check if you correctly installed the scanner driver.