Scanners and the software that runs them, come in many different models, versions and price ranges. There are scanners available for less than $50 and scanners that cost more than $50,000. I’m not going to tell you what scanner to buy or how to shop for one, but you can use these principles to help guide your decision if you will be purchasing one.

Throughout this presentation I will be showing examples of various scanner software that I have used on different scanners. Even though each program appears to be different, they all have the same functions -- you just have to figure out exactly what each function is called in that particular software program and how the functions are organized in the menu structure.

The difference in scanners is pretty much based on how well they can scan your image or how much information they gather into the image file -- which affects the cost. Less expensive ones won’t do as good a job of scanning your image as those that cost upwards of $50,000. But anymore you can get pretty decent results for presentations and posters from fairly inexpensive models. Often the software that is bundled with the scanner will work in conjunction with an image editing program such as Photoshop. This makes it convenient to then edit the scan since it is already open in that program.