Scanner technology has come a long way to digitizing photos and negatives. They come in all shapes and sizes, and price range. Here's a basic course on science of scanning:

When shopping for scanners… When shopping for scanners, two things to keep in mind are features and, of course, price. There's a cornucopia of review sites on scanners that will definitely help you with your choice. In a review, scanners are usually sorted from A to Z, and rated according to features and price. They also indicate where you can avail of equipment being rated.

If you have a PC, you might want to choose from a huge selection provided by product announcements, news and articles in internet. PC Buyer's Guide is one site that offers a wide range of information and sources for flatbed scanners. On other hand, if you're a Mac fanatic, there are plenty of choices too, that support your favorite computer.

The choice of scanner all depends on you and your needs. It may be an antique in typical tech industry. But if it makes good reproductions, and is easy to set up and use, then I believe you found scanner that's right for you.

The jargon of scanning… When looking and comparing features, you might notice that there's an abundance of scanning terms and words. There's a lot of jargon to absorb. Don't be alarmed. The language is easy to learn. You just have to be familiar with most of them and you're on your way to understanding scanner better.

In world of scanners, you just need to be familiar with two measurements: bit or color depth, and resolution. Both have to do with reproduction of colors and grayscale images. However, they refer to different aspects of process.

A scanner is just like a photocopier. The only difference is that, a copier creates a copy to a paper while a scanner transmits scanned object into computer, thus, creating a digital image of any printed material. The transferring of image to paper is done by a printer.

One purpose of scanning is to allow you to edit images. You must have, of course, a printed material of what you want to scan. The scanner will create a copy of it on computer. You can now edit it and print it afterwards. You must always remember that quality of duplicate will never be as good as original. If you want to make a copy closer to original, solution is on correct adjustments of scanner.

Scanning images, whether color or black and white, are always associated with word resolution or dpi. For you to achieve image quality you desire, you should know and understand how these affect your image.