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Geek Culture / Scanners

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Robin
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Joined: 22nd Feb 2003
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 11th Oct 2004 20:24 Edited at: 11th Oct 2004 20:25
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Hi
I was given a flatbed scanner the other day (for free) but I have a few problems - I've never had a scanner before so I don't really know too much about it, but anyway there are two things:

1) When I scan nothing, I get this:

Is that normal? Shouldn't it be plain white?
I have noticed the glass seems to be very dirty - I tried cleaning it with window spray and a soft cloth, which got some of it off, but the glass still seems to be 'tarnished'. I took a photograph of it (Below) which kind of shows it. It seems some of the dirt is on the inside of the glass - should i try taking the glass out and cleaning it, or is there some special thing I should use/do to clean it?


2) The scanner makes a heck of a lot of noise - is this normal? (As I said, I've never had a scanner before ) It kind of sounds like an electric drill - a kind of rattling noise lol


Thanks in advance for any help/advice

Robin

http://www.thegameszone.tk | robin@thegameszone.tk
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Richard Davey
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Joined: 30th Apr 2002
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Posted: 11th Oct 2004 20:36
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What make / model is it?

"I am not young enough to know everything."
- Oscar Wilde
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Wiggett
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Location: Australia
Posted: 11th Oct 2004 23:46 Edited at: 11th Oct 2004 23:48
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it doestn matter
when you scan you shouldnt get plain white, what it's scanning is the paper thing at the back of the lid, it's not exactly white, and the scanner scans the light reflecting off it. which is why when you scan a page you dont get black text on a whit ebackground, you will get blackish text on a peice of multiwhitetoned colours. which is poop if you wanna use the magic wand selector in photoshop etc. but really that first scan looks normal. also that screen doe slook dirty, might wanna wipe it up some.


http://www.angelfire.com/wizard2/unpotkf
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Van B
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Location: Sunnyvale
Posted: 11th Oct 2004 23:55
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It looks like it can do with a good clean - however they're very sensitive bit's of kit, so if your planning on opening it - see if it has a scanner lock on it, so the scanner head won't move or become misaligned. Anything on the glass at all will affect the scan quality, so give it a clean inside if your brave and clean the glass with an alcohol based cleaner, a screen wipe, or a CD wipe should do the trick.

One small tip - when scanning a monochrome page, like pure text - don't convert down to monochrome right away. What to do is convert down to 16 colours, then do a colour replace to get all your text black, and all your paper white - you don't want those little specs, it's much easier to deal with the light greys that you'd end up with.

Another small tip - when scanning a printed page, like from a magazine, scan at an angle - don't try and scan from a print perfectly, rotate it a little then fix it later in your art package. If you line it up nicely, you end up with interference from the original print scanlines, and it's a bitch to get rid of.


Van-B


Muhahahahaha.
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Robin
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Posted: 13th Oct 2004 23:51
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Thanks for the replies
The scanner is a 'Plustek OpticPro 4831P' - I think it's quite old
Thanks for the tips robx and VanB - I'll bear those in mind
Robin

http://www.thegameszone.tk | robin@thegameszone.tk
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BatVink
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Posted: 14th Oct 2004 00:13
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Quote: "Another small tip - when scanning a printed page, like from a magazine, scan at an angle "


Handy tip, I'm surprised I've never heard that before. Committed to memory.

BatVink
http://biglaugh.co.uk/catalog AMD 3000+ Barton, 512Mb Ram, 120 Gig Drive space, GeForce 5200 FX 128 Mb, Asus A7N8X Mobo.
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