How2Day: Types of Picture Scanners

A flatbed scanner is the most common home picture scanner. Thomas Northcut/Photodisc/Getty Images
You can use a scanner to create digital copies of your pictures and upload them as files to your computer. From there, you can edit, share and post your pictures on the Internet for other people to view. There are different kinds of picture scanners that you can use with your computer, depending on the size of the picture you want to scan and the image quality desired.

These are the most common types of picture scanners used to import pictures. Often, these scanners connect to your computer through a USB port. Flatbed scanners are a little larger than a sheet of paper, flat and rectangular in shape. Similar to a traditional copy machine, you lift the door of the scanner and place your picture face down on the scanning glass. The scanner runs a light over your picture and creates a copy of the picture as a file on your computer.

A photo scanner is smaller in size to accommodate photo images, similar to a miniature flatbed scanner. This scanner focuses on creating high-quality digital images from your photos, though you can scan other types of pictures on it, too. Photo scanners often come with photo adjustment software and can also turn photo negatives and slides into digital files on your computer.

These scanners are built to scan multiple documents of pictures very quickly. They have a sheet feeding tray where you place a stack of pictures, and the pictures will automatically be fed through and scanned into a digital image. These scanners are geared more toward scanning a large number of documents at one time and may not produce a high resolution scanned image as a result.

Drum scanners are very large scanners that produce a high-quality digital image. These scanners work very slowly, require knowledge and skill to use, and are also the most costly scanners to purchase. Because of this, they are geared toward high-end business scanning and printing.

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