Epson ES-800C Manual

What You

should Know

About Scanning

HAT

You

HOULD

NOW

BOUT

CANNING

If you’re thinking about purchasing a scanner,

you may already know some of the ways they

can add visual interest and variety to all of your

projects. You don’t have to be a graphic artist

to inject extra punch in a special presentation,

newsletter, or brochure. You’ve probably also heard

that by using OCR (optical character recognition)

software, the scanner can create an editable text

file from any hard copy, such as a journal article,

fax, or legal document. But do you really know

how simple it is to use a scanner?

This booklet shows you how easy it is. Inside,

you’ll find the basics of how a scanner works and

see samples of scanned images. Useful tips address

common questions, such as how to determine the

right scanning resolution or make fine adjustments.

’

ISS

HIS

PECIAL

FFER

When you purchase your Epson

scanner, send

a copy of your bill of sale in the envelope provided

in this booklet, and we’ll extend the warranty on

your scanner for an additional year, free of charge.

You receive two years of warranty

coverage with benefits like top-

notch technical support.

CANNER

ECHNOLOGIES

Several types of scanners are available; the list

below summarizes some popular choices.

LATBED

CANNER

Best suited for most business applications, this

scanner looks similar to a desktop photocopier.

You place a document on glass and close the

cover, and the scan head moves underneath it

along the “bed” of the scanner. Originally a gray

scale technology, color models are now just as

affordable, offering the widest range of uses in a

desktop system. A flatbed color scanner is ideal for

virtually all uses, from simple line drawings to

complex full-color illustrations and photographs.

AND

ELD

CANNER

You hold this type of scanner in your hand and

run it over the image. The scan head is limited in

size, usually just four inches wide, so you have to

piece together wider images using your software.

While this is the least expensive of scanner

technologies, you’ll need a steady hand to avoid

distortions caused by shaky movement.

HEETFED

CANNER

Developed specifically for use with OCR

applications, this scanner feeds sheets of paper

into the unit and scans them automatically. You

can get similar results by adding an optional

automatic document feeder (ADF) to your

flatbed scanner.

How

CANNERS

ORK

)

’

All scanners convert areas of light and dark into

digital data for your computer. One of the most

versatile scanners for general office use is the

flatbed scanner. Scanning an image on a flatbed

scanner is a lot like using a photocopier. Here’s

how it works:

You place your document (a photo, book, or any

image that you want to scan) face-down on the

glass and close the cover.

Using the scanner software, you select a few

simple settings to adjust the way the image will

be captured; then you scan the document.

Inside the scanner, a light bar moves over the

image and the reflected light falls on a bed of

photosensitive cells. The cells “read” the image,

interpreting it as a series of tiny dots. Each dot

is called a pixel, or picture element. The carriage

scans one line of pixels at a time.

The software converts the values of each pixel into

data that the computer can understand. When the

entire document is scanned, the resulting image

appears on your monitor.

You can print the image as it appears on-screen

or you can manipulate it with image editing or

graphics software to get the results you want.

ORD

BOUT

OFTWARE

Your scanner hardware works hand in hand with

your software to produce data files. In fact, the

most important aspect of getting great results with

your scanner is understanding a little bit about the

software that creates these files. The rest of this

booklet presents software topics that will help you

to understand the scanning process. You’ll find

that scanning software is used to produce two types

of files: text files, which contain characters and

letters, or image files, which depict some type of

illustration. Text files can be edited with an

ordinary word processing program. Image files

can be manipulated using special software

programs called image editors.

ROM

AGE TO

ILE

-OCRs C

APTURE

EXT

OCR (optical character recognition) programs

decipher hard copy words and covert them into

editable text files, just as if you had typed them

yourself. More powerful programs even recognize

a variety of typestyles and page formats.

Why waste time reentering information to get it on

disk? For businesses with a steady stream of critical

information or any hard copy data that must be

converted to disk, a scanner and an OCR program

can be real time-savers. You can combine infor-

mation from many different sources into com-

prehensive reports, convert old documents to data

files for easy storage, capture information from

trade journals or papers-the list goes on and on.

Even if you usually use your computer for simple

word processing or spreadsheets, you’ll appreciate

the convenience of OCR. To prove it, Epson

includes a leading manufacturer’s OCR Try-Pak

with each of its scanners, so that you can try out

Line art

Line art with shading

OCR for yourself. Scan up to 25 pages with the

Try-Pak. Try it on a fax, have fun with the daily

newspaper, or even that dusty resume you prepared

on the typewriter. If you find you’re hooked, we

offer the full package and documentation at a

considerable discount.

IMAGING PROGRAMS: PICTURE THE RESULTS

You can use imaging programs to capture a wide

variety of artwork, illustrations, and photographs

into image files. Scanned images fall into three

categories: line art, gray scale, and color.

Line art includes all drawings made up of black

and white only, with no gray tones. Both of the

illustrations on the left are examples of line art,

even though the artist has used lines that look like

shading in the second one.

Gray scale (also called monochrome or contin-

uous tone) refers to images such as black and

white photographs that contain various shades of

gray in addition to black and white. You can also

scan a color photograph as gray scale if you

want to print it in black and white.

For color reading, the scanner divides the various

colors in the image into three primary colors: red,

green, and blue. Epson’s powerful 24-bit color

scanners devote 8 bits/pixel to each of the three

colors, so the scanner can represent over 16

million colors.

Use color scanning for color photographs or other

originals which will be printed or presented in color.

ESOLUTION

Resolution determines how many pixels, or dots,

are used for scanning and reproducing an image.

As the resolution value increases, the scanner

reads and reproduces the image in finer detail.

You might hear resolution described in terms of

dots per inch (dpi), or pixels per inch (ppi).

The best resolution setting really depends on the

type of image you are scanning and the printing

method. The table below shows optimum

scanning resolutions for most needs.

Output Device

Line Art

Gray Scale Color

Black and white 300-400 75

printer

Electronic color 300-400 150-200

printer

150-200

Printing press/ 400-800 150-200 150-200

imagesetter

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Remember that the higher the resolution, the

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larger the resulting image file. An 8 l/2 x 11-inch

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color photo scanned at 300 dpi requires 25MB!

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memory; they take longer to process, to print, or

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to transmit by modem; and they are more difficult

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to save to a disk for sending to a service bureau or

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printing company. Selecting the lowest possible

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resolution that gives acceptable quality keeps file

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sizes manageable.

200

6@/133

line screen

600

dpi/133

line screen

You’ll also notice that if you scan a color image at

600 dpi, the printed result is not much different

from what it is if you scan the same image at 200

dpi, because all printers and printing presses

reproduce the image as a series of dots and have

their own maximum resolution.

Here are two images, one scanned at 200 dpi, one

at 600 dpi, output on the same device. Can you tell

the difference?

An easy way to determine the best resolution for

your intended output is to find out the lines per

inch (lpi) capability of your printer and multiply

it by 1.5. For example, a typical magazine printing

press prints at 133 lines per inch. To tailor your

scanned image for the best possible results

on this press, you multiply the lines per inch

(133) by 1.5:

133 x 1.5 = 199.5

In this example, the resulting number (200) is the

optimum resolution for the scan. (If you regularly

use a service bureau to print your scanned materials,

you can also ask the printer for the lpi of his

particular printing press and to suggest resolutions.)

ELECTING A

RINTING

ETHOD

Black and white laser printer

Electronic color printer

Printing press

You can print scanned images on a variety of

devices. Here are three of the most common:

Black and white printers (laser, ink jet, or dot

matrix) like those used in most offices produce

good to excellent text and line art but are not

as good for gray-scale images. You might use these

printers to reproduce photographs in newsletters

or informal reports that don’t require the highest

quality. The example to the left shows a typical

photograph printed by a laser printer.

Electronic color printers use laser, ink jet, or other

technologies to produce color or gray scale images

that range in quality from coarsely patterned to

nearly photographic (often called continuous

tone). Electronic color printers work well for

small quantities of color images or for proofs of

images you’ll later print on a printing press. The

image to the left was printed on an electronic

color printer.

Printing presses can produce high quality and

high volume work, You scan and edit your images

and then send the files to a service bureau or

printing company, which uses a high resolution

imagesetter such as the Linotronic

™

300 for high

quality text and gray-scale images. For full-color

images, you scan in color and then use your

image editing software to produce the color

separation files that are necessary for printing

color on a printing press.

Note: All three images on this page were scanned

with an Epson scanner.

HAT IS

NTERPOLATION

Each flatbed scanner has a maximum optical

resolution based on the physical number of light

sensors in the bed. For example, a 400 dpi scanner

has 400 sensors per horizontal inch. Despite

this maximum value, many scanners can use a

process called interpolation to achieve higher

resolutions. Interpolation allows the software to

make an educated guess based on mathematical

probability to determine the value of pixels it can’t

see and then insert these values in the final image.

Interpolation can be especially useful to improve

the jagged appearance in some line drawings, as

shown in the samples on the left.

300 dpi

Epson scanners use interpolation to double

the scanner’s native resolution, so our 300 dpi

scanners achieve apparent resolutions of up to 600

dpi, and our 400 dpi scanners attain resolutions of

up to 800 dpi. By using the enlargement feature,

which goes up to 200% on most programs, you

can even “stretch” the apparent resolution on a

400 dpi scanner to 1600 dpi.

600 dpi, using interpolation

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