Re: Scanning problems

[Peter Schoch <pschoch@NAC.NET>]

I have a few suggestions/questions.  Not knowing how literate you are
with the technology, ignore anything that might be insulting...

1)  Have you checked the type of file to which you are saving the
images?  GIF files, even with color should not be that large.  If your
scanner will not save  in this format, save it a BMP and call it up in
MS-Paint (or something comparable).  Then use the Save As... feature to
save it in the GIF format.

2)  If you've tried that, save the file, then call it up in a graphics
editor and reduce the number of colors.  Yes, this is a two step process
and time consuming, but it will work.

3)  Use the shades of grey option, and then recolor where needed.  Yes,
this is a two step process and time consuming, but it will work.

4)  Try using a different scanning software.  The more robust packages
will allow you to do what you want to do.

As to the multiple document scanning, think Xerox.  Their copying
machines will now do color scanning direct to a network.  As a matter of
fact, the only systems I've seen to do multiple page automatic scanning
are via copying technology that has been adapted.

Peter Schoch
SCCC
pschoch@nac.net

Leigh Palmer wrote:
> Please let me bother the group with a mundane problem. I don't know
> enough about the technology to speak intelligently, so what I have
> to say below may be garbled. If you can help me, please be patient.
>
> I would like to post my lecture transparencies to the web for my
> students' benefit. A problem arises when I use color; the files are
> too large when I scan them in mindlessly using the software that
> came with my scanner. It will handle "line-art", presumably one-bit
> intensity resolution, or "gray scale", presumably eight-bit, or
> "color RGB", presumably 24-bit (or maybe even 32). For my purpose it
> would be both adequate and desirable to have four-bit color.
>
> I could conceivably obtain this result by making color separations
> of my scans, reducing each to one-bit resolution, and recombining
> the results, or using color filters and line art, and doing three
> scans, or putting it in Photoshop and performing tricks I don't know
> about, etc. What I want to know is how can I do it *most easily*.
> This is a production requirement and there are two or more of us in
> the Department who have the same problem. Our technician has limited
> time to devote to scanning our transparencies.
>
> This brings me to our second problem. Is there a product out there
> that will take a bunch of transparencies in a document feeder and
> and scan them in? We haven't found one. We can get the money to buy
> hardware and software. Both are cheaper than technicians' time. One
> more complication - we are all Mac folk. The technician would like
> to be able to do this on his own computer, but there we may have to
> bend, I realize, and we have other machines (Windows and unix).
>
> Well, those are our problems, and they should be common problems for
> physics teachers, so I hope someone out there has been clever enough
> to solve them and will share the solution with the rest of us.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Leigh