CompTIA A+® Certification All-In-One For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

6.1. Understanding Scanners

In this section, you find out about different types of scanners. I also show you how to scan a photo in Windows XP and how to save the photo as a file on the computer.

A few years back, scanners were very popular because they were one of the only ways to get your photos into a digital format. Maybe you wanted to use the computer to alter the photo or to send it to a relative via e-mail. To do any of these actions, you had to use a scanner, which would copy the photo as a digital image that could be saved on your computer.

Many different types of scanners have been manufactured over the years, and you need to be familiar with the different types of scanners for the A+ Certification exam. They are

• Flatbed: The flatbed scanner is the most popular scanner today. With a flatbed scanner, you lift the cover of the scanner and place the photo on the flat sheet of glass (a platen). A scan head then moves beneath the picture, scanning the image by using a piece of technology called a charge-coupled device (CCD). Figure 6-1 shows a flatbed scanner.

• Handheld: A handheld scanner is great where it is impossible to place the object to be scanned on a flatbed scanner. To use a handheld scanner, you move the scanner over the object that you want to scan.

• Sheetfeed: A sheetfeed scanner acts very much like a fax machine in the sense that the scan head is stationary. You insert the paper object to be scanned, and the feeder passes the paper over the scan head. This scanner ...