Color scans

There is a wide number of resolutions that you can scan at using this scanner/software combo. The scanner itself has a maximum resolution of 600x1200 dpi. However, you can get up to 9600 dpi through interpolation. When you scan something, the scanner reflects light off of the image and collects the reflected light with a charge coupled device (CCD) and determines what the image is based on all of the reflected signals. When interpolation is used to get a higher resolution, what happens is the software will "fill in" some of the spots that the scanner is not able to scan. This is needed to get the higher resolution if the hardware can't support it. Also, interpolation can be used when increasing the size of a picture, or when scanning from an original that is poor quality.

I first started off by scanning some color stuff. To do this, I scanned a picture that was rich in color to see how accurately the colors were portrayed:

600 dpi	1200 dpi

First, you'll notice a consistent pattern of circles that goes across the image. This is because zooming in on the image that I scanned shows the print quality of the picture. If you took the original and squinted at it from a close distance you can still BARELY make out these same circles that are visible in these scanned pictures. That is good, though, because the scanner is picking up very fine details from the original image. One of the options that we have in the software is to filter out some of this patterning. When done, the image looked like this:

1200 resolution with filtering

You can see the noticeable difference when some of the "noise" is removed, although some of the sharpness of the picture is affected as well. All in all, the color reproduction of the picture is good. At True Color (24-bit), there are enough colors to effectively portray a gradient of colors that is smooth. The more color depth that is used, however, adds more size to the file. The majority of the original versions of these pictures are around the 50 MB mark each. Sheesh!

The second picture I used was not from a magazine:

600 dpi	1200 dpi

The colors in the original picture are pretty accurately represented in the scan. I am appeased by the scanner's ability to pick up color.