What Scanner?

[George Beck]

Hello Everyone

I am in the market for a new scanner to use with a Laser and mostly Corel Draw. I was wondering if you have any preference. What should I look for for to get high quality scans? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

George

[Mike Null]

George

The only scanner I use any more is the one in my HP all in one.

I think the scanner is a vastly over rated piece of equipment given the versatility of digital cameras and the improvement in drawing software tracing programs.

I do engraving for a livlihood and I doubt that I use a scanner a half dozen times a year.

[Darren Null]

Same as. I've got a reasonably competent scanner (stick to a recognised brand name and pay $100 and they're all much of a muchness), but I haven't had it out of the box since I got my camera (Canon EOS 400D (there's a 450D out now with a few improvements- and lots of other competent DSLRs in the $300+ range)).

The tricky bit with documents is to photograph them square-on, but it's not critical, as you can crop to the document shape and CTRL-drag the corners to the corner of the image. In Photoshop. Forgot that bit.

[Doug Bergstrom]

Depending on the type of work you are doing a quality scanner, $1,000, is great and has value over a digital camera and can do some things they cannot. If you are looking at an inexpensive all in one or less than $1,000 scanner buy a digital camera you will be happier.
Scanners are better in the area of D-max, OCR for forms work, descreening of photos and artwork.

[Darren Null]

Actually, you can OCR with a camera. But you need a tripod and a strategically placed rest for the book. With a camera remote-control for the shutter it's MUCH faster than a scanner for multi-page documents. Setting up carefully, then *plink* *turn* *plink* *turn* *plink* *turn* etc.

The 2 problems a camera has that a scanner doesn't is
1) Angle (correctable fairly easily)
2) Lens curvature (correctable to some extent by standing further away and using telephoto; using extra lighting on the subject if necessary to compensate). But you're not easily going to get rid of lens curvature 100% unless you strap a silly lens on and stand miles away.

[John Noell]

I am doing photo cut-outs and use a scanner a lot. Take the supplied photo, scan it in, trace bitmap in Corel, make a boundary, and cut along the boundary. Guess it depends on what you do with your laser. Reaching over to the scanner rght next to the monitor is easier than getting out the camera, setting up a tripod, correcting the angles in Photoshop, etc. (BTW - I use to do tech copy work. A flat-field corrected lens from 12-24" with virtually NO distortion, and a copy table with lights on both sides. Worked great. No cheap digital can match it.)

[Jerry Hay]

I have a Epson scanner an a Dell all in one I use which ever one that is closer to me at the time. I like the Epson better but there really is no difference. Most engraving that i do in marble is not over 300 dpi so but an off the shelf scanner from walmart and that will do just fine.

[Kevin L. Waldron]

Microtek scanner is a great scanner and it comes with quality software (Silverfast Laucher). (Yes I have a high dollar Canon Digitial camera.)

There is no comparison in what you can do with a scanner and good software. I regularly inlarge from 8"x11" files to 24" x 34" with this software with litle or know loss of pixels it is able to interpolate the needed data and it automatically saves the file and opens in Adobe Photoshop then you have that power to change things. You can also do color separtion on the scanner with this software and it allows several color pal. to be used. If you are going to do any CLTT work it makes life really simple in managing colors or changing them at a pixel level.

A camera can't touch the quality if you need that kind of enlargement capability. The scanner will also do negative, film, or x-rays and you can scan up to 11 x 17 with model that I have.

Kevin

[Doug Bergstrom]

I agree with the Microtek Scanner. We use an Agfa Duoscan which works very well but currently the microtek scanner is one of the best on the market.

[Bill Cunningham]

I have a epson now, but for years I used a Sharp JPX330, 50 pin SCSI interface, it weighed about 50 lbs, but was built like a tank.. It cost me about $800-$1000 at Costco, had it for about 15 years before it died.. The Epson works well, and has a built in film and slide scanner but weighs about 5 lbs, and feels cheap compared to old Sharp!

[Doug Griffith]

I've dealt with many scanners and the software is a MAJOR part of the process. Some is great, some works, and some is just plain crappy. I would look at the different features such as the ability to crop, scale, zoom, rotate, set DPI, etc... It is best to do as much as possible prior to bringing the image into your image editing program so pixel interpolation is kept down. Or scan at high resolution and downsample when finished manipulating.

Take note of the true hardware resolution of the scanner and not the interpolated resolution of the software. If the scanner is to be used only for laser work, you don't care about the bells and whistles that come with a scan/print/fax multifunction machine. There's just more to break. Look into a high resolution tabloid sized scanner instead.

Also, if there is a plugin for your editing software or if you have to use their software and then import.

[Martin Reynolds]

I picked up a Mustel 11x17 scanner for about $180. I am mostly interested in dimensional accuracy, it's way better than my Epson and Canon cheapies.

I've been surprised at the quality of this device.