SCANNERS A scanner is the means for transferring your film image of Dots Per Inch (DPI) to a digital form of Pixels (PPI) for use on a computer. It is a machine with nothing more on the outside than an on/off switch and a few connections at the back! It is what happens on the inside that makes the transition work. Which is the One for Me? There are two types of scanners, Film and Flatbed. The flatbed works like a photocopier by lighting and scanning from below and is best suited for prints, documents or artwork. The film scanner is more versatile and correspondingly more expensive. It is used for slide, negative and, in some cases, for APS and works by 'recording' or 'reading' the information on the film as it passes over a fixed sensor light source. Whatever type you choose, it will come with a CD Rom and software package. The CD Rom will be used to copy the drivers and programmes to your computer's hardware. The drivers allow communication between computer and scanner while the software acquires or imports the image from the scanner by means of a 'twain driver' (curiously called 'Thing Without An Interesting Name' or 'Technology Without An Important Name'!). Once your scanner is configured with the computer, the process of transferring the pictures to images can begin. How does it work? The photos or negs are inserted into the scanner and it is at this stage you tell the machine the type of film you are using (negative or positive) and whether you want to produce a colour, black & white or greyscale image. You can then choose the 'sampling rate' (often called Resolution) which determines the picture size and quality and also the speed of the scan. The lowest resolution is 72 dpi, which is adequate for the Web but would be too low for producing decent prints. Too high a resolution would produce a very large file and image size. (see the Computer section) Some models offer a pre-scan facility which allows scanning and cropping the image and minor quality adjustments before committing to a final scan. The image produced on screen can be either printed without saving or saved into memory to be used however you choose - viewed, printed, emailed or put into your own gallery in shutterbutton.com! Always ensure that photographs or negatives are kept clean and dust free in storage or when scanning as the scanning process will record ANY blemishes present. (These can be removed at the 'manipulation' stage but may involve a considerable amount of time.)