How to Scan Images on the Color MicroTek Scanner with Adobe PhotoShop Software
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.
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.
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.
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.
How to Scan Text Using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) with OmniPage Pro Software on the MicroTek (Color) Scanner
The software is somewhat tolerant of deviations in how individual letters are supposed to look. However, it is not foolproof. For example, a smudged "a" may not be recognized or a sample of handwriting may feature a number of different characters that are not recognized. The proofreading/recognition function of OmniPage works in the same way that spell checking works in word processing applications. OmniPage will identify what it thinks are questionable character interpretations or misspelled words. Unknown letters will be represented by the tilde (~) character. The "Proofread OCR" window will allow you to edit questionable words by editing the text in the "Change to" section of the window or ignore the word with the "Ignore" button. If OmniPage has any entries in its dictionary that resemble the word in question, the "Suggestions" pop-up menu will be available so you can select one of the suggestions rather than type in every correction.
To skip the proofreading, click the close box in the upper left corner of the "Proofread OCR" window. To bring up this window, select the "Proofread OCR" command under the Edit menu.
This window can perform some editing and other word processing functions such as minor formatting (bold, italics, etc...) as well as setting tabs and margins. However, if you plan to do major work on text that is scanned, you should make only minor modifications in this window and then save the document to be used in a larger, more complex word processing program such as Microsoft Word or WordPerfect.
How to Scan Images on the Black and White Apple OneScanner using Ofoto and Adobe PhotoShop Software
On some occasions, Ofoto will display a box saying it could not detect a scanner. If this happens, turn the scanner off and then on again. The warning box should go away. Some times, however, this is not successful. If the "Prescan" and "Autoscan" buttons are "grayed out", that is unavailable, then Ofoto will not be able to scan since it is not communicating with the scanner. If this continues to happen even after you turn the scanner off and on repeatedly, quit Ofoto, turn off the scanner, restart the PC and then turn the scanner back on after the PC has finished starting up. Your next attempt to run Ofoto should be successful.
Click on the "Prescan" button if you wish to only scan a small portion of what is on the scanning bed. This engages the scanner and starts a quick, low-resolution scan of the entire scanning bed. Once the low-resolution image is in the "Untitled" window, you can use the marquee tool to select exactly what portion of the scanner bed you wish to scan at a higher resolution. The selected area is everything that is included within the moving "marquee" box. Anything within this area will be scanned in-depth, at a 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.
You can also redefine the selected area by clicking the marquee tool, clicking the crosshair pointer outside of the selected area (to cancel it) and then defining a new area by dragging the pointer over the portion of the preview image while holding down the mouse button.
By default, the scanner is set to scan in at a resolution of 72 dots per inch (dpi). If you wish to scan the image at a higher resolution, click the radio button next to "Manual" and then use the Scan DPI and Print DPI pop-up menus to set the higher scanning resolution. 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 Scan DPI and Print DPI settings.
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.
Once you are comfortable with the scan area and the resolution, you can click the "Scan" button. This is not necessary if you clicked the "AutoScan" button earlier.
To save a scanned image into a file, select the "Save" or "Save As" command under the File menu. The default format, PICT, is a common format and will allow you to open the image in Adobe Photoshop.
The Photoshop "Open" command under the File menu will allow you to open the file that you saved in PICT format. Once the file is open you can use the many tools and features of Photoshop to adjust the image to your liking or simply save it to a format that is different than PICT.
If you need to create a GIF file, select the Photoshop "Save As" command under the File menu. Make sure that the image format (accessible via the "Format" pop-up menu in Photoshop's save dialog box) is set to "Compuserve GIF." If you need to save the image in another format, such as JPEG or Windows Bitmap (BMP), then switch the mode of the image, accessible via the Mode menu, from "Bitmap" to "Grayscale."
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.
How to Scan Text Using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) with OmniPage Direct Software on the Apple (Black and White) OneScanner
If you want more control over the process, click on the Options button prior to clicking Scan. One of the options is "Save text to file," which will place the scanned text into a text file instead of directly pasting it into an application.
A good piece of advice is to spell check the pasted text using the spell checking function of a word processing package such a Microsoft Word prior to scanning additional pages. If you need to scan many pages of a document, it is better to check over the scanned text while you have a hard copy on front of you for comparison. A spell check will turn up most of the words where OmniPage identified the wrong letter or placed a tilde instead of a letter.