Using the Scanning Station

These instructions leave out many wonderful details and could be construed as misleading. However, if you follow them blindly you'll get reasonable results much of the time.

  1. Place the item to be scanned face down on the glass bed of the scanner in the same manner as a photocopier. Make sure the edges of the item are parallel to the edges of the glass. Fixing this sort of crookedness after the fact is painful.
  2. Run (by double-clicking) the program Deskscan which should be on the desktop of the Mac.
  3. Click the preview button. After a warm-up and a quick scan you'll see a preview of the scanned image. Adjust the dashed line (by clicking and dragging it) that appears on the image so that it surrounds the area you want to capture.
  4. Click on the field labeled "Type" and select either Black & White Photo (if your image is in black and white) or Millions of Colors (if your image is color).
  5. Click on the field labeled "Path" and select either 72 dpi (if the resulting image is going to be used on a computer screen; e.g. for the web or PowerPoint) or 150 dpi (if you intend to print the image and want the best quality). If you are printing a B&W image on a B&W printer (NOT a color printer) you may (or may not) get slightly better results with 300 dpi; you will certainly get a larger more cumbersome file.
  6. Adjust the Scaling slider by dragging it or clicking the arrows on either end. If you intend to print out the image set the size in inches to match the desired print-out size; leaving room for margins (e.g. 8"x10.5"). If you intend to view the image on a computer use the following table to pick an appropriate size range.

    Type of Image

    Typical Pixel Dimension

    Corresponding Image Size in Inches at 72 dpi

    small "thumbnail"

    72x72

    1"x1"

    compact square picture

    216x216

    3"x3"

    reasonable larger picture

    432x288

    6"x4"

    largest image safe for general web use

    595x295

    8.2"x4.1"

    barely too big for smaller screens

    648x502

    9"x7"

    a very full screen for a standard display

    720x576

    10"x8"
  7. Check the file size in the lower right. Screen-bound images shouldn't be larger than 2 megs (2,000k), and images headed for a printer shouldn't be larger than 6.5 megs (6,500k). If the file is larger than this you chosen incorrectly in the steps above and will end up with a file that's larger (and slower) than you need.
  8. Click the "Final" button. It will ask you for a location to save the file and a name for the file. The default format for the images is TIFF. If you're going to be using this image on a Mac you can change this to PICT. If the image is web-bound you'll need to use another program (e.g. Graphic Converter) to change the format of this image into one of the ones acceptable for web use (gif or jpeg).
  9. Images can be saved to floppy (if they are small enough) or directly to Celeste (you'll need to login first of course). There isn't much room on the hard drive so don't expect to use it as a repository.

Created and Maintained by Sean Fox, sfox@carleton.edu
Last updated: Thursday, 31-Aug-2000 12:26:13 CDT