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Make sure that the Microtek scanner is on. The power switch is along
the
back side of the scanner, in the right hand corner.
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Place your image onto the scanner face-down on the glass. For best
results, place the upper left corner of the image in the corner of
the glass
marked with a diagonal red arrow.
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Select the "Adobe Photoshop 4.0.1" command from the Applications
section of the menu that drops down under the Apple in the upper
left
corner of the display.
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Highlight the "Import" command under the Photoshop File menu. The
"Import" command should cascade to a secondary pull-down menu. On
this menu, select the "Twain Acquire" command.
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The ScanWizard software will engage the scanner and will place a
control
window entitled "Preview" on the screen. Adobe Photoshop will still
be
running but all functions will be disabled (all menus will be
"grayed") until
the scanning is completed. The Apple multifinder will not work
either, so
you must scan an image or select the "Quit" command under the
Scanner
menu in order to return to Photoshop or any other applications you
may be
running. If an image or a portion of an image is already on this
section of
the window when you begin, do not worry. It is a leftover from the
previous
user and will be wiped out when you begin to scan.
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By default, the ScanWizard software will select the entire scanning
bed as
a candidate for scanning. This is indicated by the moving "marquee"
line
that surrounds the representation of the scanning bed that makes up
the left
side of the "Preview" window. If someone has scanned anything
recently
on the scanner, an image may already be visible in the "Preview"
window
and a different sized marquee box may be visible. Do not worry if
this is the
case as the leftover image will not affect your scanning.
You can begin scanning right away by clicking on the "Scan" button.
However, you may save time and frustration by reading the next three
steps
before clicking the "Scan" button.
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Click on the "Preview" button. This engages the scanner and starts a
quick,
low-resolution scan of the entire scanning bed. Once the
low-resolution
image is on the left side of the window, you can use the marquee tool
to
select exactly what portion of the scanner bed you wish to scan at a
higher
resolution. Scanning the entire scanner bed at a high resolution is
possible
(by clicking "Scan" at step #6). However, this is usually a waste of
time
since the scanner scans portions of the bed that have nothing on them
or
sections of the document on the bed that you do not wish to digitize.
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After the preview scan, the entire scanning bed will be selected.
To narrow down what you actually want to scan and convert to a digital image,
you
have to adjust the target portion of the scanning bed by resizing and
moving the selected area.
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The selected area is everything that is included within the moving
marquee
box. Anything within this area will be scanned in-depth, at a much
higher
resolution when you click on the "Scan" button. Narrowing down the
size
of this area is done by positioning the mouse cursor over a border of
the
moving marquee box until the mouse pointer turns into a two-headed
arrow. Then, hold down the mouse button and move the mouse back and
forth to adjust the size of the selected area. You may have to
adjust all four
sides in order to resize the scanning area.
You can also move the selected area over parts of the preview image
by
positioning the mouse cursor within the selected area until the
pointer turns
to a four-headed arrow, holding down the mouse button and then moving
the mouse so that the marquee box moves.
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To check what resolution the scanner is set for, look on the
"Settings"
window. If the "Settings" window is not visible, select the "Show
Settings
Window" command under the "Preview" window's View menu. The
default
resolution for the ScanWizard utility is 72 dots per inch (dpi).
To
adjust the
resolution of your scan, edit the number in the "Resolution" box on
the
"Settings window.
72 dpi is the accepted resolution for any image that is being
scanned
for
on-screen viewing, such as an image for a World Wide Web page.
Placing
a higher resolution scan on the Web will work. However, most browser
programs will display a high-resolution scan at a larger size than
most other
images. So if you scan a 5-inch by 5-inch picture at 144 dpi,
anyone
viewing the image on Netscape or Microsoft Internet Explorer will see
the
image as a 10-inch by 10-inch graphic. Large, high-resolution images
take
a long time to load, are troublesome to edit and print and usually
dominate
a World Wide Web page. Keep these factors in mind before adjusting
the
"Resolution" setting on the "Preview" window.
Other resolutions you may consider are 300 and 600 since
these
correspond to the print quality of many commercially available
printers. Be
wary, however, of scanning an image at higher resolution since the
resulting image file could be so large that it is difficult to
transfer and has a
greater than average chance of crashing a graphics program or maxing
out
the memory on a printer.
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Once you are comfortable with the scan area and the resolution, you
can
click the "Scan" button. The scanner will take some time to position
itself
and then scan the portion of the scan bed that you selected. A
larger
scanning area and higher resolution will both contribute to the time
it takes
to finish the scan.
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Once the scan is finished, the ScanWizard utility will automatically
place
the digitized image into a Photoshop window. In order to save this
image,
select the "Save" or "Save As" command under the Photoshop File
menu.
For Word Wide Web images, select the "Save As" command and make sure
that the image format (accessible via the "Format" pop-up menu in
Photoshop's save dialog box) is set to either "Compuserve GIF" or
"JPEG."
In order to save a GIF image, you have to first set the "Mode"
command,
under the Image menu, to Indexed Color. You should also set
the
Image menu to Indexed Color if you need to save an image in
Windows
Bitmap (BMP) format.
Make sure that you use the correct file naming protocol for whatever
files
that you create. For example, a GIF file for World Wide Web
consuption
should be named filename.gif. You cannot have spaces in
the name and
the file has to have the ".gif" extension. The same goes
for a file
saved in
JPEG format except that you have to use the ".jpg"
extension. For a
Windows Bitmap file, make sure to end the file name with a
".bmp"
extension. You may also want to restrict any file name that will be
used in
Windows to the classic "eight dot three" standard (a file name with
no
spaces and a maximum of eight characters plus a three character
extension). Although Microsoft claims that Windows 95 and Windows NT
can handle long file names, at the system level all files are
assigned
eight-dot-three names. So it may make your file management easier to
create these types of file names for any files destined for use on a
Windows
PC.
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ScanWizard will automatically quit after Photoshop has the image. If
you
want to rescan a portion of your image or select a different area,
you may
not need to do a preview scan again. If you wish to rescan a portion
of an
image during the same sitting, ScanWizard will present the preview
image
for you again the next time you select the "Twain Acquire" command.