(no subject)

[deckardcanine]

I took chirpasee's advice and bought a scanner today, specifically a CanoScan LiDE 60. I didn't feel like waiting for shipping or getting something clunky, so I settled for an $80 purchase. It took no time to get in working order.

I had trouble understanding one feature of the accompanying program: what did the Final Scan do that the Preview didn't? My folks thought it clear, but they got impatient trying to explain. Their metaphors kept involving intermedia transmissions, like looking thru a camera lens before taking a picture ("More like taking a picture before taking a picture," I objected). Now I guess it converts the image file to a more workable format, which takes longer to make and thus calls for a plainer file until you're sure you see what you want to edit.

Comments

[zaimoni.livejournal.com]

Pretty much.

Think about it this way: do you really want to take 15 minutes on a high-res scan before knowing the paper is aligned properly?

That's why Preview is much faster than Final.

[deckardcanine.livejournal.com]

On my machine, there's actually not that big a time difference.

[zaimoni.livejournal.com]

At what resolution? 600cpi is pretty much the minimum if you want to read pages from a book you've scanned.

[zaimoni.livejournal.com]

600 dots per inch (dpi), of course.

[richardf8]

Preview is very low resolution, sufficient for getting stuff lined up and cropped before you do the "real" scan which takes place at the stated resolution.

The LiDE 60 is a very nice scanner, I've had it's predecessor, the LBP 60 for about 5 years and it has werved me well on everything from OCR to WebComicking.

[billis.livejournal.com]

Most of them have got a feature where you fore go the preview, and have it scan at the single punch of a button.

If you were going to scan art in that you were sending to a commercial printer digitally, you would need that input at 1300 or higher, which definitely has a noticeable wait time.
Another thing about the preview is you can select-out areas of the scanner bed that art outside of what you want scanned, but would otherwise be used by the scanner to determine base contrast levels.