Chapter 1: Scanning Text and Images

What is Scanning?

Scanning is the first step toward putting a document into an electronic format. Through scanning we are able to take the printed document and digitize its contents so we can work with the text and images to prepare the document for presentation and publication on the Internet.

Before you begin, be aware that we use the term "images" to refer to two different items. The first is the product of a scanned document. For instance, the item you place on the scanner is the printed document, but the picture you produce on screen once you have scanned the document is the image.

The second item we call an image is almost anything within a document that is not text; this term includes photographs, drawings, pictures, maps, graphs, charts and so forth.