SCANNER

A scanner is an electronic device that scans printed or handwritten text documents, images, or a particular object to convert them into a digital file format. Most of the scanners use CCD, (charge-coupled device) or CIS, (Contact Image Sensor) as the image sensors. The common types of scanners we see today are flatbed scanners, handheld scanners, sheetfed scanners, etc.

Flatbed Scanner
A flatbed scanner is made up of a glass pane and a moving optical CIS or CCD array. The pane is illuminated with the help of bright light planted underneath it. The image which is to be scanned is then placed on the glass pane. The sensor and the source of light move across the glass pane to scan the document and produce its digital copy.

Sheetfed Scanner
In sheetfed scanners, the document that is supposed to be scanned is fed into the horizontal or vertical slot provided in the scanner. The vital components of sheetfed scanner are the sheet-feeder, scanning module and calibration sheet. Such scanners are most often used to scan single page documents. It can't be used to scan thicker objects, like books, which turns out to be its major drawback.

Handheld Scanner
A handheld scanner is a small manual scanning device which is moved over the object that need to be scanned. For instance, if a document needs to be scanned, the handheld scanner has to be dragged over the document. Using a handheld scanner can prove to be a cumbersome task, as the hand needs to be steady all the time. Slight movement of the hand can lead to distortion of the image. One of the most utilized handheld scanner is the barcode scanner, typically used in shopping stores to valuate goods.

Photo Scanner
Photo scanners are mostly used to scan photographs. High resolution and color depth are the most vital requirements for scanning photographs, and photo scanner provides the same. If the motive of buying a scanner is to digitize film negatives and slides, then the photo scanner is the best option. They are specially designed to work on slides and negatives. The in-built software in some photo scanners can also help in cleaning old photographs.

Film Scanner
A film scanner is utilized to scan photographic films directly into a computer. The photographer has direct control over certain aspects, such as cropping, ratio of original image on the film, etc. Some film scanners have specialized software through which it is possible to minimize scratches and improve color quality. Low-end film scanners most often accept 35 mm film strips while the high-end scanners have interchangeable film loaders which can accept 35 mm strips or 120 mm ones, or individual slides.

Portable Scanners
Being small in size, portable scanners can be easily carried with oneself anywhere. Some scanners are as small as your PDAs, hence, can be easily carried in the pockets. Such scanners are useful for text document scanning. The drawback of these scanners is their limitation as far as resolution is concerned. They cannot be used for scanning photographs or other such applications which require high resolution scanning. CONCLUSION These were the different types of scanners being widely used today. Over the last few years, these machines have become an important element of computer technology, wherein vast amount of data is required to be converted to digital format everyday

Scanner / Optical Scanner A scanner is an input device for computer. It can scan any printed document with text as well as images. It will : Read any printed paper or picture, Convert text or images into digital form Saves this converted digital file into computer storage for later use Uses Of Optical Scanners You can scan your documents or pictures to: Store into computer memory. To save lot of effort and time because if you type the whole text on printed page, it will take effort as well as time). Show image or text on computer screen or on a multimedia projector's screen. In addition, you can send this scanned document or image to your friends all over the world with the help of Internet & Email. You can publish the scanned documents or images on your website or blog. You can apply online and send the scanned images of your academic documents in any part of the world within minutes. If your scanner supports OCR - Optical Character Recognition, you can scan a page with printed text and save it in an editable computer file. You can change or add more contents in this scanned file. Types Of Optical Scanners There are different types of scanners: 1. Flat Bed Scanner A flatbed scanner is the most common type of optical scanners used to scan printed text and images and save into computer storage as a digital file. It works on the principle of a photo copier machine. We pickup the cover of the scanner and place the printed page on the glass surface of the scanner. Now we will instruct scanner through computer software to start scanning. The scanner will scan with the help of light and save the digital file into computer storage. If you have an OCR scanner, you can save your text into editable form. This will save a lot of hard work and time to enter text by keyboard too. It is widely used in offices, schools, colleges, universities and homes for common scanning needs. If a book is very rare or difficult to find, we can scan its all pages one by one. Later on we can take prints of these scanned pages through a color printer. 2. Sheet Fed Scanner A sheet fed scanner works like a fax machine mechanism. In a sheet fed scanner, pages are entered into scanner like a fax machine. Advantages of Sheet Fed Scanner A feet shed scanner is relatively smaller in size. It is more portable. It takes less space. Disadvantages Of Sheet Fed Scanner It requires separate pages to scan. But, it cannot scan a book because of its binding. It can scan normal papers with normal thickness only. 3. Hand Held Scanner Hand Held scanner is a small, light weight scanner and portable scanner. It is used to scan small amount of data like short articles from news papers. It is held in hand and is moved over the text page or image slowly and smoothly from start to end. Its scan quality may be lower than flat bed or sheet fed scanner but it can used to capture small amounts of text or small images, quickly. SkyPix Hand held Scanner This is a portable, cordless hand held scanner that is used to scan and save important documents, letters, or pictures. It records scanned documents in its memory card. you can transfer these scanned documents on yor computer for later use. You can scan and save important news from the news papers or interesting articles from magazines. 4. Drum Scanners

Drum scanners are used by the Publishers to scan images with details. Drum scanners use photomultiplier tube technology. In drum scanners, the document to be scanned is mounted on a glass cylinder. At the center of the cylinder is a sensor that splits light bounced from the document into three beams. Each beam is sent through a color filter into a photomultiplier tube where the light is changed into an electrical signal. And in this way a complete image with immense details can be obtained. Drum scanners are widely used in publishing industry.