Importing & digitizing images from peripherals

When you install Photoshop, it recognizes peripherals with drivers that can be used to import images. You can also import PDF files for editing. If you click the File-->Import command you will see a list that may include your scanner, digital camera, etc.

For best results, use compressed air to clean dust from the scanner bed before you start scanning

If you have a scanner connected to your workstation, try scanning a photograph from it.  The Twain support window that opens up depends on the type of scanner.

The image below shows the scanning window for an Epson scanner, which may differ from the scanner software on your computer. To see the image in the scanner window on the right, you may have to press the preview button.

The photo is in the middle of the scanner window to ensure that the best part of the scanner lens does the scan. If the photo is slightly askew, you can open the scanner lid and straighten it out, straighten it with the scanner crop as in Figure 2, or select the image and use the Edit-->Transform-->Rotate command to straighten it in Photoshop.

The image above shows that:

• The Image Type is set to Color Photo. Clicking the Image Type button provides more options for defining the numbers of colors that will be included in the scanned image. The scan can also be set to other types of images, such as grayscale or line drawings.
• The destination button and associated dropdown list provide configurations for the type of printers you might use to print scanned images.
  
• Unsharp mask will sharpen up the contrasting edges in your image. The Photoshop Unsharp Mask filter gives better results, so you should use it instead.
  
• You can increase or decrease the scale of the scanned image by sliding the Scale slider.
• The Resolution is set to 150 DPI (dots-per-inch, also known as PPI or pixels-per-inch), which yields an image that is 840 K (kilobytes).
  
• Scanning at a DPI more than 72 is a good practice, even though your final image for the Web will be 72 DPI.  Later, if you decide that you want to enlarge some part of the image, you can enlarge the dimensions and lower the DPI without losing any pixels in the image, which yields a better quality image. Scanning resolution involves some trade offs, since higher resolution yields larger images, which require longer processing times.
  
• Scanning software has tools to adjust the image scan, in this case just below the Scale slider. Since you will be altering the image in Photoshop, you can ignore these adjustments to color and contrast and take care of these tasks with much more powerful Photoshop tools.
  
• mouse and dragging the mouse to draw a rectangle around the part of the image you want to scan. The current black outline around the iguana will scan an image that is 2.93 inches by 4.35 inches according to the Target windows on the left. If the image is not cropped in this scanner dialog box, the blank areas of the screen are included in the scan, which yields a very large file.
  
• Once the Scan button is pressed, the document is scanned into Photoshop. It appears as an untitled document, ready to be saved with a meaningful name.