SCANNERS are the eyes ot your personal computer.

They allow a PC to convert a drawing

or photograph into code that a graphics or desktop publishing program can use to both display the

image on the sereen and reproduce the image with a graphics printer. Or a scanner can let you con-

vert printed type into editable text with the help of optical character recognition (OCR) software.

The three basic types of scanners differ primarily in the way that the page containing the image

and the scan head that reads the inmage move past each other. In a sheet-fed scanner, mechanical

rollers move the paper past the scan head. In a flatbed scanner, the page is stationary behind a

glass window while the head moves past the page, similar to the way a copying machine works.

Hand-held scanners rely on the human hand to move the scan head.

Each method has its advantages and disadvantages. The flatbed scanner requires a series of

mirrors to keep the image that is picked up by the moving scan head focused on the lens that feeds

the image to a bank of sensors. Because no mirror is perfect, the image undergoes some degrada-

tion each time it is reflected. But the advantage of a flatbed scanner is that it can scan oversized or

thick documents, such as a book. With a sheet-fed scanner, the image is captured more accurately,

but you're limited to scanning single, ordinary-sized sheets.

A hand-held scanner is a compromise. It can scan pages in books, but often the scanning head

is not as wide as that in either a flatbed or a sheet-fed scanner. Most hand-scanner software auto-

matically combines two half-page scans into a single image. The hand-held scanner incorporates

mechanisms to compensate for the unsteadiness of most hands, and it's generally less expensive

than other types of scanners because it doesn't require a mechanism to move the scan head or paper.

A scanner's sophistication lies in its ability to translate an unlimited range of analog voltage

levels into digital values. Some scanners can distinguish between only black and white, useful just

tor text. More precise models can differentiate shades of gray. Color scanners use red, blue, and

green filters to detect the colors in the reflected light.

Regardless of a scanner's sensitivity to gray or how the head and paper move, the operations
of all scanners are basically simple and similar. We'l1l look at two that are representative of the

technologies involved-a flatbed scanner and a hand-held grayscale scanner. We'll also examine

One of the most important reasons for scanning a document-to convert its image into editable

text by using optical character recognition software.