Smartphones have replaced scanners for common tasks. But if you need digital copies of old photos, slides or negatives or a scan of high-quality paper, phones still can’t match specialized equipment.
How to set up your scanner
If you have not already done so, connect your scanner to your computer or network. If you don’t know how to do that, read how to add a printer on Windows 10 or Windows 11 first – even though they are different types of devices, the process is basically the same.
Most scanners can be controlled with special software from the manufacturer or with the universal applications that come with Windows. Windows 11 is often a pain for older scanners, especially if they are part of an all-in-one printer. If Windows Scan or Windows Fax and Scan does not detect your scanner, try manually downloading and installing drivers from the manufacturer.
Remark: The user interface (UI) of Windows 11 is different from that of Windows 10, but the differences in this case are small and mainly cosmetic. Don’t worry if there are some differences: the important parts are identical.
Configure your scanner
There are a few important options available to you when you set up your scan settings. By choosing the right settings, you can save time and storage space.
Points per inch (DPI)
The most important option is the dots per inch or DPI setting. DPI determines the resolution of the image created when you scan something. For example, if your scanner has an area of 8.5 x 11 inches and you scan a document at 200 DPI, the resulting image will have a resolution of 1700×2200. If you scan the same document at 600 DPI, it will have a resolution of 5100×6600. The higher the DPI, the larger the image. Higher DPI settings also result in slower scans.
If you’re scanning old film negatives, slides, high-quality prints, or artwork, you probably want to go as high as possible to extract all the available detail. By using a higher DPI, the image can be blown up to larger sizes without becoming noticeably grainy. More is generally better, but there comes a point where you don’t really gain anything by jacking up the DPI.
Here is an example of a photorealistic drawing of a pig on an 8.5 x 11 inch piece of paper. For context, the pig drawing is only about an inch long.
The first image is a scan of the pig at 200 DPI. The outline and features of the pig are clearly visible.
The image below is the exact same pig, but scanned at 1200 DPI. The outline and shape are visible, but you can also clearly see more details about how a ballpoint pen puts ink on a piece of paper.
There’s not much point in increasing the DPI if you’re only scanning text documents – all you’re doing is revealing details about how the ink got into the paper and generating unnecessarily large images.
Full size text is just as readable at 200 DPI as it is at 1200, and at a small fraction of the file size – The 200 DPI scan had a size of 57.5 kilobytes, the 1200 DPI scan a size of 1.6 megabytes. That’s fine if you’re just archiving a lot of documents, as storage is cheaper than ever before, but whether you upload them to the web can matter.
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Color
When scanning, you can choose from three basic color format options: color, grayscale, and black and white. Here’s what those terms mean practically.
- Black and white: All color and hue information is removed — all colors or shades of gray are converted to black.
- grayscale: All color information is removed, but shadow information is preserved. If you have light blue on the page, it will change to light gray. If your document is dark green, it will be dark gray.
- Color: All color and shade information is preserved.
Otherwise, black and white scans have the smallest file size and color scans have the largest file size. Grayscale scans fall in the middle.
Black and white works fine if you’re only scanning text documents – it can even help if you’re scanning faded text with poor contrast. All documents containing images should be scanned in grayscale or color depending on your needs. Grayscale images take up less space, so if you don’t care about color, use grayscale.
When in doubt, scan in color. You can always convert a scanned image to grayscale or black and white later, but adding color to grayscale images is significantly more difficult and requires an artistic eye to get it right.
File format
There are dozens of image formats, but Windows Scan and Windows Fax and Scan only give you a handful. Which one you use really depends on your needs, but here are a few things to consider.
PNGs and JPEGs are basically universally supported – it’s very unusual to come across an application or website that doesn’t accept either format. PNGs are losslessly compressed, meaning they must maintain a higher quality than JPEGs, which are lossy. JPEGs are usually slightly smaller than PNGs.
TIFFs are an extremely versatile image format. TIFFs can use lossless or lossy compression and support tagging for easy organization. TIFFs are often stored uncompressed, so the files are usually larger than PNGs or JPEGs, but their quality is as good as it gets.
PDFs are document files that can contain images, texts, and more. PDFs, such as JPEGs and PNGs, are universally supported – any browser can open one, and there are a number of more specialized programs available that can open and edit them. Adobe Acrobat is the most comprehensive choice available, especially if you pay for a subscription. Acrobat also features built-in Optical Character Recognition (OCR), which can convert the image of a scanned document into an editable text file.
Remark: You can perform OCR on any image file you want, not just PDFs – there are a few free applications out there that can do it. Microsoft’s OneNote has the feature built in.
If you’re not sure which format to use, use a TIFF or PNG. They can be easily converted to one of the other formats if you decide you need or want something different.
RELATED: How does file compression work?
Scan with Windows Scan
Windows Scan is the latest scanning software from Microsoft. You can download it directly from the Microsoft Store. Click “Install” and wait for it to finish, then click “Open”.
If you previously installed it but didn’t open it, click the Start button and type “Scan” in the search bar, then click “Scan” in the results.
Remark: Windows Scan is arguably the “Best Match”. If so, you can just press Enter to launch it.
Windows Scan has a very minimalistic user interface, which is common for applications designed for Windows 10 and Windows 11. The only setting readily available is an option to change the file type. Click “Show more” to display more options.
You can change your color options, scan resolution, file type, and save location. Keep in mind that increasing your DPI settings will slow down your scan and result in larger files.
Adjust the settings to your liking and then click ‘Scan’. If you want to have an idea of what the image will look like without actually saving it, you can click on ‘Preview’.
Windows Scan remembers your settings between scans and even between restarts.
Scan with Windows Fax and Scan
Windows Fax and Scan has been around for a long time. It was first released with Windows Vista and has been included in every version of Windows since. The user interface (UI) has not aged gracefully, but the program itself remains fully functional.
Click Start, type ‘Fax and Scan’ in the search bar and press Enter or click ‘Open’.
If you plan to scan many items, consider setting up a custom scan profile. It saves you time because you don’t have to adjust the scan settings every time you open the program. Click on ‘Tools’ and then on ‘Scan Settings’.
Click “Add” in the popup.
The window that appears contains all the options you can change in a scan profile. Customize it to your liking, name it something descriptive, then click “Save Profile.” Also close the previous window.
You are ready to start scanning. Place the thing you want to scan on the scanner bed, then click ‘New Scan’.
There are a number of options available in this window. Customize them to your liking or select a pre-made profile and then click ‘Scan’.
The scan will take longer as you increase your DPI setting. Be prepared to spend some time next to your scanner if you scan a lot of high-resolution documents. Once you scan something, it will appear in a list in the center right of the Fax & Scan window.
Scanned images are saved in “C:Users(YourUserName)DocumentsScanned Documents” by default. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to change where the scanned documents are saved, but you can set a symbolic link, which is almost as good.
Despite being significantly older, Windows Fax and Scan has more options available than Windows Scan. The only real advantage Windows Scan has is the ability to change where images are saved. Windows Scan can also have problems with older scanners, even if you have special drivers installed. In that case, try Windows Fax and Scan.