HAND HELD SCANNERS 

                           A Second Look

                           by Peter Goed


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    Some time ago (about 18 months) I wrote a review in MegaDisc about the
  C Limited (since out of business) hand held scanner.  At the time I gave
  it a real thumbs down and just put this $500+ item in a drawer and
  forgot about it.  Recently I have found a need to use it and hence
  report on my re-discovery.

    In April this year I opened a Desktop Publishing business in Redcliffe
  (QLD) [Ed: See "DTP_Business" in ARTICLES for info on how to contact
  Peter].  One of the first jobs I got, involved the reproduction of
  a company logo onto a new letterhead.  The easy way would have been to
  just make a Bromide of it (like a photo) and paste this onto the master
  to make the printing plate from but as usual there was a catch, the
  quality of the original that I was supplied was absolutely atrocious.
  What to do?  Scan it in and touch it up.

    Out comes the largely unused hand held scanner and hook it up, do a
  few trial runs to familiarise myself with it and then scan in the logo.
  Ok this is a cinch and the output to screen at 300 dots per inch looks
  ok in 2 colour high resolution.  Using the inbuilt paint program Diamond
  Paint, I proceeded to touch up the logo and clean it up for printout.
  This sounds simple but can take up a lot of time for small returns.

    Having successfully resurrected the logo and saved it to hard disk as
  an IFF file it was time to load up PageStream and import it as a
  graphic.  The best way to bring it in is as a Graphic Window and then
  clip the area that is required and transfer that to your working page,
  resizing it in the process to fit your allotted space.

    Having done this I then created the letterhead to suit the logo and
  printed it out.  All being well, I placed the scanner back in the drawer
  and thought little more about it.

    Since then I have had occasion to use it for similar purposes on many
  occasions and really don't know why I had such low thoughts about it in
  the first place.  I suspect that my expectation of a good job on Grey
  Scale 400 DPI was unjustly founded and that as a black and white
  importer of logos etc., into the computer there is really no other way.
  As they say Horses for Courses and this term certainly applies to Hand
  Held Scanners.  The job that they do well is two colour (black and
  white) scanning into your computer but for Grey Scale (256 colour)
  they are hopeless.

    Recently there have been numerous adverts for hand held scanners
  purporting to do a good job on grey scale pictures at high resolutions.
  If you are thinking of buying one, then let me caution you to see
  exactly how it handles this job, not only on screen but also onto the
  finished job, output to a printer that has at least 300 dot per inch
  resolution.  My suggestion is that if you are happy with its
  reproduction, then by all means buy it, but if you have any doubts, then
  think again and spend your hard earned dollars on a better and more
  worthwhile item.



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