Best Flatbed Scanners - Flatbed Scanner Reviews

A scanner can be used to archive old photos, if you want to preserve memories or convert film negatives into digital images. Negatives are hard to see, so it is better to digitize them. The best flatbed scanners are made by companies such as Epson, Canon and Hewlett Packard. You can read reviews of the flatbed scanners in magazines, such as PC World and PC Magazine.

Criteria for Choosing a Flatbed Scanner

The resolution of the flatbed scanner, which measures the number of pixels in the image, is an important factor when looking at the specifications of the scanner. The optical resolution is a better measure of than the maximum resolution. The higher the optical resolution, measured in dots per inch, the better the clarity and detail you will get in your photos.

Another important factor to look for is the bit depth, which is a count of the number of colors in the image. An 8-bit scanner has 256 colors, a 24-bit scanner has 17 million colors, a 36-bit scanner has 69 billion colors, and a 48-bit scanner has 281 trillion colors.

New charge-coupled device (CCD) scanners use high-luminance white LED lamps, instead of mercury-filled cathode fluorescent lamps as a light source. This has many advantages. First, the scanner has no warm-up time, so it is ready to scan immediately, and you don't have to wait after the power is turned on. Second, the scanner consumes less power, and third, it is more environment-friendly because it doesn't contain any mercury. The scanner can also use a reflective or Film Adapter Unit (FAU) light source.

Flatbed scanners can scan up to 8 slides or 4 35mm filmstrips of 6 frames each. Batch scanning shouldn't take a lot of time, especially if you use automatic file naming. The scanner can come with an auto-film loader in the top into which you can feed a filmstrip. When you insert a filmstrip, the individual negatives will pop up on your screen. On average, you should choose only one out of five photos from a filmstrip.

The scanner has 4 quick-access buttons, for one-touch scanning, copying, creating e-mail attachments and creating PDFs. The scanner also has user-programmable buttons. The copy button scans the document and sends it to the printer which prints out a copy. There is a photo-film button that scans the image and puts it in a image-organization software. An image-editing program such as Adobe Photoshop can crop an image or flip it, if it is upside down.

A flatbed scanner can scan in black-and-white mode, grayscale mode, color mode and dual mode. The scanner allows light to pass through the object and captures the object on the bed. You have to line up the image on the bed, and close the lid before scanning. You will see the image preview in the software. There are trays for slides and negatives, and there may be a transparency adapter or unit.

A flatbed scanner may be optimized for optical character recognition (OCR), so that handwritten text is converted into a document that can be opened by a word processor, so you can search or edit text. The scanner has a slim, lightweight body and takes up very little space. The scanner has a hinged lid that opens in 90 or 180 degrees. The scanner can have no thickness limit, so it can even scan mags. The scanner can be used in portrait, landscape and vertical positions.

You can buy one multifunction machine that can do many tasks, such as printing, scanning and photocopying. Buying such an all-in-one machine is cheaper than buying separate machines for each of these functions. However, the combo machine may not print as well as a separate printer, or scan as well as a separate scanner.

The scanner may have a color restoration feature that brings faded and discolored photos back to life. The scanner may have a digital dust removal function, and a backlight correction feature. According to flatbed scanner reviews by PC World, the best scanner is the Canon CanoScan LiDE 200. The best flatbed scanner picked by the PC Magazine Editors' Choice is the Epson Perfection V300 Photo.