Best Scanner Recommendation

[Rolex888]

Hi Everyone,

What kind of scanners do you guys use? My scanner keeps scanning everything fine, but the files are 1.gb or 1.08mb. It's just way too big for email attachments and ebay auctions. What do you all recommend?

[SingleDaddyof2]

Hi Rolex. I have an inexpensive scanner (Memorex MEM 48U) but it works OK for my purposes. I always resize my scanned images but still save the original scans for archive purposes. You may be able to resize an image by highlighting it in Windows explorer, right-click and then choose "Resize" (Windows XP Professional lets me do this but I don't know about other operating systems). Another way is to use an image editing program (see if "resizing an image" is in the help index). I like using Irfanview (freeware) myself because it allows me more control of the desired size and I can change the image format. The simplest solution may be to decrease the "Scaling" setting on your scanner software. I scanned a card at 300 dpi and 100% scaling--the resulting .bmp image is 2.27 MB (very large). I then reduced the scaling to 10%--the resulting .bmp image is now only 9.93 KB (fairly small). Here is a scan of the 9.93 KB image as a .jpg image (same file size). Hope this helps!

[mfweiland]

I have used both a scanner and digital camera. I prefer digital cameras as they give me much more flexibilty in photo capturing and you can buy them very cheap now. Digital cameras have lots of image size control as well. No matter what format or hardware I use I always edit all my pictures in photoshop for size reduction (save for web feature), cropping etc.

[jateeluv]

there are options in your scanning software..to decrease the Resolution (in dpi). The reason your pics are so big is because the Resolution is LARGE. The Resolution is basically the clarity of the scan. The higher the resolution the higher the quality of the scan. Try changing the resolution to 75, 75 (there are two fields to fill). Make sure they are the same number.

[just-for-cards]

Originally posted by jateeluv
there are options in your scanning software..to decrease the Resolution (in dpi). The reason your pics are so big is because the Resolution is LARGE. The Resolution is basically the clarity of the scan. The higher the resolution the higher the quality of the scan. Try changing the resolution to 75, 75 (there are two fields to fill). Make sure they are the same number.

I use 75 myself and it works great. You can put up a full size card at 250 KB and it loads quick.