Scanner Tutorial Part 3-HP Scanner Overview

Lesson 1 Part 5: Scanner Tutorial-HP Scanner

HP Scanner Software Overview-Main Interface
Welcome to the HP Scanner overview. This section is intended to provide a brief introduction to HP's DeskScan II software. The information presented herein is in no way meant to supplant the tutorial information for Part 3 located at ScanTips.Com. So at the conclusion of this overview be sure to retun, or continue as the case may be to the Scanner Tutorial Part 3 for this section.

Below is the general control panel for HP's DeskScan II software. DeskScan II software interface

Inspecting this interface, notice the "Type of Scan Image" selected is Sharp Millions of Colors (color photograph of course), with its destination path or output designated for the screen. The image brightness and contrast are set automatically by the scanner, but available for real time previeew manual adjustment prior to final scan. The Scaling Control bar is currently at an outrageous 343 %, such that the size of the final image if scanned would be 20.21 inches wide by 26.73 inches tall. This is an excellent NON-EXAMPLE of improper scanning techniques. Notice this file size would be over 8.2 MB in size, entirely to large for our vieweing screen! What is visible in the preview window is the cropping rectangle, controlable by click-dragging the mouse as needed.

What follows next is a brief description of the control buttons just underneath the Scaling Control bar.

The Mirror Control Button
This button creates a mirror image of whatever is in the preview window.

The Negative Control Button
This button exchanges the white areas for black and the black areas are exchanged for white. If a color image is visible, the complimentary colors are exchanged.

The Scaling Control Button
This button toggles between Uniform Scaling (displayed above) which maintains proportional scaling between width and height and and Non-Uniform Scaling which allows independent control of both the width and the height of the incoming image. If Non-Uniform scaling were selected above the Scaling control bar displayed would be separated into two independent scale bars, one for width and one for height.

The Lock Control Button
This button will maintain a constant physical image size, holding the width and height dimensions at current settings working in conjunction with the Uniform Scaling Control Panel.

Additionally, the HP DeskScan II software offer extensive built-in help directly accesible from the software "HELP" menu. Below is a snapshot of just a few of the topics explained from the built-in help menus. It should be noted these help menus are not text only but graphically supported as well.

Finally, should the user select tools from the interface above, you will be presented a dropdown menu which allows access to the following tools:

If your using an HP scanner with DeskScan II software, feel free to explore a brief description of these software control tools prior to beginning the Scanner Tutorial Part 3 lesson.