Scan Your Photos

Your scanner will create digital images from your printed pictures or documents. If you value the quality of the results take a little time and learn the adjustments that are available to you via the scanner driver software. DO NOT be tempted to use the AUTO settings or the scanner buttons until you have entered your preferred settings. We'll get to that a little later.

Eliminate Dust & Lint

This page gives important information about scanner drivers — that is, the software that runs the scanner. But whatever driver you decide to use, do not overlook the need to remove all the dust and lint possible from your pictures before scanning them. Lint-free microfiber dust cloths are good for this chore. Also clean the scanning bed from time to time to eliminate as many defects in your scanned images as possible.

I've noticed that newer equipment is using WIA (Windows Image Acquisition) drivers instead of the TWAIN drivers that were popular not long ago. In this article, I will describe the settings in Canon's ScanGear driver because that's what I have to look at as I write. These are common adjustments, and should be available with all flat-bed scanners image scanners, regardless of manufacturer.

WIA Common Dialog

WIA offers a common dialog which is the same for all compliant scanners. It does not address any special features that are built into scanners by different manufacturers. This is described in detail in Scan it! in my Computer Tips Pages, here's a link.

Canon's ScanGear Driver

If you have a Canon CanoScan scanner ScanGear is installed with the scanner software. ScanGear offers advanced settings for your scanner, and this can be a helpful time saver for those who have a lot of pictures to scan. Actually, they have a suite of applications for your scanning projects. ScanGear loads as from some image editing applications and it also works as a stand-alone program. Adobe, in their infinite wisdom has selected to use the very basic common WIA driver with the maximum resolution of 600 dpi as the only scanner driver available in their $700 flagship imaging program Photoshop — go figure!
I'm going to offer two work-arounds, neither is 100% satisfactory, but they're doable without too much trouble.

1. By Default, Canon's L-shaped menu system is installed in the lower right corner of the Windows Desk Top. The legs can be closed so that you only have a small square with a notch in the upper left corner. Use the little triangles to open these legs if you have closed them. Use Canon's Quick Menu to open ScanGear's settings.
Here you can configure the behavior of ScanGear. Here are my suggestions for basic settings:


Save Settings
• Data Format: Click the Settings button. Set JPEG Image Quality to High.
• Check the box for Create a PDF file that supports keyword search
• PDF Compression: Standard
• Format for Item Detected as Document in Auto Scan: PDF or if you will load it into your favorite OCR program, TIFF.
• Format for Item Detected as Photo in Auto Scan: TIFF
  Then Click OK to close this dialog box.
• Save in: Choose one of the libraries listed in the drop-down list or click Add... and navigate to select a folder of your choice.


Application Settings
Here you will find a list of 5 radio buttons. It's good to have your selections made in advance, so that you can select different radio buttons depending on the purpose of your scan without having to do the rest of the setup of each radio button as used.
• Open with an application
Choose from items in the drop-down list or click Add... and navigate to your choice of image editing programs.
• Send to an application **(This is my choice)** As a Photoshop user, I clicked Add... and navigated to the location of the Photoshop executable file in the Program Files folder to select that. This is the easiest way to get your scanned images into your photo editing software.
• Send to a folder: I have a folder called My Scans, so I chose that.
• Attach to e-mail: My e-mail client program was selected for me.
• Do not start any application This selection leaves it up to you to do something with your images each time you scan something.
• More Functions Button opens the Canon On-Screen Manual for your Canon scanner.


2. Load ScanGear as a stand-alone program from Canon's Quick Menu. Also load Canon's My Image Garden from the same menu. When you are ready to do any needed adjustments to your images drag the ones you wish to work with to the main work area of your image editing program. Then save in the desired format from there. We'll talk about image file formats and some other topics in the image editing section of this site. Awkward? Heavens YES! Why? Perhaps Canon thinks they have provided all the tools you'll need. I still haven't found a Save As... command in any of the Canon software.


3. Download and install the freeware imaging program IrfanView. This program opens ScanGear when you choose Acquire/Batch Scanning from the file menu. The scanned image will appear in the work area. From there save your file in the format of your choice. Tiff is a good choice. You have to work with one image at a time with IrfanView, as it cannot handle more than one image at a time. So, in spite of it's shortcomings, I have found another reason to use this handy little program.

Other Scanners

If you are a Windows user, the future is a WIA compliant scanner of a different brand, the WIA common dialog described above will apply to that scanner. You may also have access to scanning software with advanced features. If so, read the next page on the ScanGear Advanced mode. Image adjustments are pretty common to most scanners and image editing programs. The publishers may use different terms or names, but basically they're pretty similar. So, if you learn one, then others will seem familiar.