Make Your Scanner a Great Design and Production Tool Revised

I have several books on scanners and scanning, and I don't think any of them come close to matching this one in the clarity of the text and the illustrations used to make the point. The only drawback I could find was that I do wish the authors would all get together and use the same terms when talking about dpi, spi, lpi, and ppi. It makes it pretty difficult for us right-brain folks to be able to sort it all out. However, I still consider 'Make Your Scanner a Great Design Tool' to be very useful and a worthwhile investment, particularly if you are getting into doing any sort of image-tweaking for optimum results. I have recommended it to several artists who want to scan their work.

I reference this book every time I scan a difficult photo. I think it is an excellent guide for designers, especially those working with small clients who can't afford professional photography. The book has advice on how to work with common "problem photos", which is a great help when you need to get a usable image out of a snapshot with poor lighting.I see the other reviewer's point about too much space being taken up by discussion of various types of scanners. It would have been nice to see less about scanner types no one uses and more space devoted to techniques for improving scans. Still, the information that is there is very useful.The information is directed at print designers, but many of the tips are useful for the Internet in a general sense. It would be nice to see specific advice for online images, but maybe that's for another book. All in all I found it a very valuable resource and have recommended it to several other designers.

I would like to know if there is a scanner out there that you can scan a letter lets say and you can change the wordings, fonts, etc. If there is any body out there that can tell me the answer please let me know.

I recently taught a graduate level course, entitled "Architectural Graphics", at Lawrence Technological University in the School of Architecture. The students used Michael's book as a reference tool related to the course study. The course was an introduction to Desktop Presentation related to Architecture. Most of the students had very little, if any, previous exposure to digital graphics related to architectural presentations. Michael's book proved to be a valuable tool in providing tips on scanning, photo manipulations, and output.Students were required to upgrade their computer systems as well as purchase software for class projects. Typical hardware additions included: Zip Drives, color printers and flatbed scanners. Required course software included Adobe PhotoShop 5.0, PageMaker 6.5, and Macromedia Freehand 7.0 or 8.0. The course was set up as a series of short projects designed to understand digital input via scanning, software image manipulation using PhotoShop, page layout using both PageMaker and Freehand. Students experimented with project output on a variety of inkjet and color laser printers. Both my students and I found this book to be very helpful in all aspects of this course.Additionally, my partners and I have greatly benefited from both editions of this book in our architectural practice over the last five years. We have referred to Michael's book for reference for digital representation of architecture. The basic ability to scan properly is a must for any digital design professional. This book is an excellent source for anyone who wants their presentations to outshine the competition!

I co-authored a competing title (Real World Scanning and Halftones), but I have to say how much I liked the second edition of this title! The book is well-illustrated: the large format is suited towards full pages of illustrations a reader can compare to understand the principles at stake. Each section has clear how-tos with excellent advice.There's some overlap between our book and Michael's, but the approaches are different enough that the two titles taken together make powerful complements.I recommend the book highly to any prepress professionals looking to get a set of guidelines and who would like to make visual comparisons between scans modified with different iterations of the same technique or on different scanning devices.