Scanning the Canon CanoScan LiDE 20 - Scanner Features
(Page 5 of 7 )
In the image above, you can see the only three buttons located on the scanner itself. They are located on the front where the scanner opens. I wasn’t very pleased with the location of the buttons. Don’t get me wrong, the buttons look good where they are, but there is a space just above the buttons where you're supposed to put your fingers to open the lid. It is all too easy to hit one of those buttons and thereby launch a varying sequence of events. Like I said it’s a small gripe but something those of us with big clumsy fingers might want to keep in mind when attempting to scan something with the LiDE 20.
Now why did I say “varying sequence of events,” rather than just one event for each button? Well if you look at the image above, you can see small depictions of a scanner, a printer, and a piece of mail (signifying email) from left to right respectively. If you look really closely you might be able to make out the words next to each button, again from left to right, SCAN, COPY, and EMAIL. What makes it varying is the Canoscan Toolbox software that you use to run the scanner as seen below.
The green “buttons” are actually moveable icons that represent the three buttons on the scanner. The blue icons signify what the task you would like the software to do when that button is pushed. In my setup I have the copy button (the one that looks like a printer) set above the blue icon that says Copy. That is the default setting for that particular button. When it is pressed it automatically scans whatever you have on the glass and then sends it straight to a printer connected to your computer. As you can see I have the email button assigned to the blue icon labeled as Scan-2. I have done this because having it set to the default email icon means that when you push that button it scans your image and launches your email program and sets the image up to be sent out to someone. I will rarely if ever use it in that way so I changed it to suit my needs. Any of the blue icons, when clicked, will show the following window so that you can customize the function.
On the first drop down your only choice is Platen which is referring to the glass of the scanner as your source. The second is the scan mode which gives you the choices:
- Black & White
- Grayscale
- Color (magazine)
- Color (photos)
- Color (multi-scan)
- Color (auto-crop)
Most of these are self-explanatory. Auto-crop automatically crops your picture so you don’t have to. Multi-scan is supposed to enable you to put several images on the platen, then separate the images and save them as different files. I couldn’t get this to work no matter what I tried.
The second drop down menu gives you options for the image quality which allows you to change the dots per square inch (dpi). Those options are as follows.
- 75dpi
- 150dpi
- 300dpi
- 600dpi
File name is pretty obvious, so the next drop down is file type and you can choose from bmp, .jpg, or .tiff, which is worst to best quality and file size, respectively. Directly below that is where you can direct the image to be saved. My Pictures is the default.
The next section (which some of you may instantly recognize as the symbol for PhotoShop 7) is where you can tell the CanoScan ToolBox which program you would like to associate with that file. Arcsoft Photobase is the software that comes with this scanner, but it pales in comparison to the features offered in Photoshop. It also works well with various Microsoft photo editors, as well as the more popular titles from Corel.
Next: Test Scans >>
More Peripherals Articles
More By Cyd
