Objective The objective of this section is to get you right into the scanning interface.
Scanning Most scanners today are "TWAIN" compatible. The term is a lot of "mumbo jumbo" for the software interface you need to scan an image. Adobe Photoshop supports this "TWAIN" interface. This is good because it means you can access your scanner from within Photoshop. However you will seldom see the same TWAIN interface from any 2 models of scanners. But don't worry. Although they seldom look the same, the same elements are almost always there. So lets get ready to start scanning an image. Find a 4 x 5 photograph to scan.

Note: you must turn on your scanner before turning on your computer. So if you did not do this shut down your computer, turn on the scanner and restart your computer now.

  1. Place your photo face down on the glass in the scanner

  2. Start Adobe Photoshop

  3. To open the scanning interface go to "File/Acquire/TWAIN" (or TWAIN32 if you are using Windows 95/NT)

    The following graphic is an example of the TWAIN scanning interface for a UMAX or Envisions scanner. Remember I said your scanning interface may not look exactly like this but it will contain many of the same elements.

  4. Select the following image settings:
    • Select color (True Color RGB) or gray scale (Black and White Photo) from the drop down menu.
    • Select the "Preview" button to bring a thumbnail (low-resolution) image into your scanning interface.
    • Select 72 dpi (or 144 dpi if you plan to enlarge the image) from the drop down window.
    • Adjust brightness and contrast (with the lower 2 slide bars). The default is usually good enough but some photos need a little adjustment.
    • Select image area to be scanned by clicking your mouse on the top left corner of the thumbnail image and dragging to the bottom right corner. If you completed this process correctly you will see little dashed lines call "marching ants" moving around the thumbnail image.

  5. You are now ready to select the "Scan" button

  6. When it is done scanning (the scanner stopped making noise) close the scanning software interface by clicking on the in the top right hand corner of your scanning interface.

    If you followed the above steps correctly you should see the photo you just scanned in the Photoshop window.

Note: At this point I recommend you "Save" the scanned image as a TIFF image. That way if you over edit the image you can always go back to the original.

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