Click here to see the index of Craig's columns.

QUESTION:

I'm ready to buy a flat bed scanner so I can preserve some of my older photographs. I also intend to email the images as well as create a personal web site. One scanner specification confuses me and that is when scanner companies refer to a scanner's number of "bits." Is this an important purchasing consideration or just another marketing ploy?

ANSWER:

The number of bits is one of the most important scanner specifications. Peripheral specifications are not all created equal. You will find that it's usually one or two that clearly define a peripheral's ability and quality. For example, speed is considered to be a modem's most important specification. Dots-per-inch (dpi) defines a laser printer's quality of output. Dots-per-inch is also important to color printers but also important are the number of colors it can reproduce. Newer photo quality color printers for example, have light cyan and light magenta ink tanks added to their primary colors of cyan, yellow, magenta and black. Six color printers yield smoother gradients and flesh tones. It turns out that with slight variations, these same two specifications are also the most important to scanners.

A scanner's optical resolution is basically the dpi, or how fine a surface area can be mechanically "seen" by a scanner's image sensor. As with printers, the higher the dpi, the better. Assuming a standard page size of 8.5 by 11, a good consumer scanner resolution should be no less than 600 by 1200 dpi. Don't be fooled by an "interpolated" resolution dpi which uses a mathematical formula to increase the optical specification.

The other most important scanner specification is its bit depth. The number of colors that can be detected is directly proportional to the number of bits used to represent a color. So a higher number of bits yields a more accurate color scan. Most of us have been happy with 24 bit scanners because they can see up to 16.7 billion colors. But newer 42 bit models that can capture a breathtaking 4.3 trillion colors are now available. With all these extra bits, programmers need to do less guessing in reproducing color accuracy, especially in an image's highlight and shadow areas where things can get a bit murky. Results from a 42 bit scan yield richly saturated images and smooth gradients.

Microtek has just introduced two new 42 bit flat bed scanners, the 3600 ($89.99) and 3700 ($119.99). Both are USB and work with Windows and Macintosh computers. The included ScanWizard 5 application automatically detects the edges of whatever you are scanning, crops the scan to fit and determines if it is a document, photograph, magazine or other kind of image. You can even fine tune ScanWizard's preview or override any part of it to your specifications. The 3700 also includes a 35MM film adapter if you wish to scan in slides or film strips. Plus the 3700 sports three buttons on the front panel. Press Scan to perform a scan, Copy scans and send the image directly to any printer, Email scans and then places the image in an email using any of the popular email programs such as Microsoft Outlook and also works with America Online. Both scanners come with a variety of image editing and OCR programs.

www.microtekusa.com