(Shelly Cashman Series) Gary B. Shelly, H. Albert Napier, Ollie N. Rivers-Web design_ introductory concepts and techniques -Cengage Learning (2008)

140 Chapter 5 Typography and Images
Scanners
@SOURCE
Scanners
For more information
about the scanner computer
input devices, visit
the Web Design Chapter 5
Online Companion page
(scsite.com/web3e/ch5/)
and then click Scanners in
the @Source links.
A second method to create your own Web page images is to use a scanner to save a
copy of an image on your computer’s hard drive. A scanner (Figure 5-9) is a computer input
device that reads printed text or images or objects and then translates the results into a file
that a computer can use, such as an image file. Three commonly used scanners — flatbed,
sheet-fed, and drum — handle the item to be scanned in different ways.
With a flatbed scanner, the image to be scanned is placed face down on a glass
surface, and a scanning mechanism passes under it. A sheet-fed scanner pulls the object
to be scanned into its stationary scanning mechanism. A drum scanner rotates the object
to be scanned around its stationary scanning mechanism. Drum scanners are typically very
expensive and are used primarily by large graphic design and advertising firms. A flatbed
scanner is the most commonly used.
Figure 5-9 A scanner is an input device that reads printed text or graphics
and then translates the results into a file that a computer can use.
When you scan images, you should do the following:
• Scan photos and illustrations at approximately the size at which they will be displayed
on your Web pages unless you plan to edit them. If so, scan the image a little larger to
make it easier to manipulate, and then resize it appropriately when you save it.
• Scan illustrations at 256 colors. Scan photos at higher color settings such as thousands
or millions of colors.
• Save scanned images in Tagged Image File Format (TIFF), a standard file format
for scanning and storage, which can be edited and saved multiple times without
losing quality. When saved in this format, the images are your source files that later
must be converted into one of three image file formats for use on the Web. You
learn more about image file formats later in this chapter.
Screen Capture Software and Illustration Software
Screen capture software, such as SnagIt ® (Figure 5-10), !Quick Screen Capture ® ,
and FullShot ® , is used to create an image of computer screen contents. Computer screen
captures, also called screen shots, are used in print media (like the computer screen