Absolute Beginner's Guide to Digital Photography

Working with Scan Software

Scanning software is simplified image-editing software (see Figure 6.2). To get a good

scan, you might need to adjust the size, brightness, contrast, and overall color bal-

ance of a negative or print before you actually scan it. Fortunately, these basic

adjustments are available in good scanning software.

CHAPTER 6 GETTING YOUR PIX ONSCREEN 73

FIGURE 6.2
Some scanner
plug-ins are just
as advanced as
many image-
editing pro-
grams.

Two types of scanning software come with scanners:

■ Normal. Like ordinary software, you open the scan software, wait for it to

find the scanner, scan the image, and save the image as a file for editing.

■ Plug-in. Many scanners include plug-in software that works in conjunction

with another program. You must open your favorite image-editing software

(Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, iPhoto, and so on), choose File, Import, and

then select the scanner’s plug-in software from a list. Once chosen, the scan-

ner plug-in will hide the image-editing software and display its own interface

and controls. When scanning is complete, the plug-in software will exit,

return to your image-editing program, and display the new scan, ready for

editing.

Scanning is not difficult. The best approach is to practice scanning different types of

prints, different size prints, and negatives (if possible).