Checklist: HP Scanjet 3970
plugged with a power cord and a USB cord plugged into a Macintosh computer.
Launch HP Scan
Pro software.
This software is found in the Macintosh HD / Applications /
Hewlett-Packard folder. (You may drag the icon to your dock for future use.)
Place material on the scanner
click New Scan button
Select your image by dragging the
marquee around it. Adjust as
appropriate.
Note the rotation tools on the
toolbar.
Select Output Type / choose appropriate output
Millions of Colors = pictures, color graphs and maps
Gray Scale = newspaper pictures,
graphs (loses color; if you are going to copy this anyway)
Black/White Bitmap = text, black and white graphs and maps
Color makes the largest files,
Black/White makes the smallest.
Look at file size at the
bottom. If it says KB, the file is
fairly small. If it is over 1 or 2 MB,
it’s a pretty big file and you should consider the resolution.
You can set the Resolution to what
you want – the Auto choice is probably a good place to start. Note the change in file size when you change
the resolution. If you are displaying it
on a computer screen, you can keep it low (150 or even 72)
Select Accept and choose appropriate format from the pop-up selections at
the bottom of the Save dialog window.
JPEG (.jpg) = universal, picture
format, may be compressed at different levels, internet standard. Most commonly used.
PNG (.png)
= Ping files are the default image file for some programs such as
Macromedia. Similar to
jpegs.
GIF (.gif) = universal format, used
for graphics with limited number of colors, internet standard. Files are usually quite small.
TIFF (.tif)
= universal format used for high-quality pictures, also used for black and
white documents. For photos, files are
usually quite large.
PICT = Macintosh format. Not a good idea to use for cross-platform
applications.
PDF (.pdf)
= Adobe Acrobat. Expects
you to view it with Acrobat Reader.
For this scanner program, I would
recommend jpeg for most color images, and gif for grayscale and black and white
documents.
Note that you can
click on Options and select Image Quality for JPEGs. Depending on which level you choose, the file
size can vary by a factor of 10 or more.
For display on the computer, I usually use Medium for JPEGs.
Note that you should include an
extension if you plan to use the image on a Dell computer.
OCR – if you
select Text File for your destination in the upper right of the first screen,
it will run it through an optical character recognition program and convert it
to text. (Without
formatting though…) If it asks to
register IRIS, click Skip.
I usually open a Word document and
then Insert / Picture / From File to put the image into the document.
Resize : by dragging on the handles at the
corners of the image.
Crop : use Crop tool from the tool
selection
Click on the Dog to place the
picture (Format Picture / Layout on the Mac; look in the tool bar on the Dell)