Want to digitize old family photos or hundreds of documents or receipts? Use a scanner

It is an electronic machine that captures text and images from physical documents and converts them to digital formats. These converted digital scans are generally stored on a computer, and can be viewed and edited using computer software. A scanner can be handheld, sheet-fed, overhead and flatbed. It can either be stand-alone or combined with a printer and exist as an all-in-one printer.

The obvious question that few of my peers have put forward is. Do you need a scanner? If you have an all-in-one printer, the most popular printer category, then you already have one and probably don’t need to buy another one. Likewise, if your scanning needs are basic, then consider using your smartphone instead. Once you cleared those two questions and still want to go ahead, the next step is to determine what you intend to scan the most. For objects, an overhead scanner should do the job. They’re similar to the imaging sensor of a smartphone, perched on a stationary stand.

For printed documents, 150 to 200dpi (dot-per-inch) should be enough, something all scanners will easily achieve. Consider sticking to 200dpi if you intend to do optical character recognition. For anything else (photos, graphics, drawings) that require a much higher resolution, consider between 300 and 600dpi. Remember though that the higher the resolution, the longer it will take for the scanner to process the item. A 600dpi scan has 16 times more details than a 150dpi one. The other seldom-mentioned fact is that you can scan even faster by choosing grayscale rather than color. Photo scanners like the V600 have a maximum color depth of 48-bit, so the color palette available is in the millions of billions (2^48) as opposed to billions of colors for 24-bit ones. You get far better color fidelity as a result. But the process takes much longer and the resulting files are far bigger. Having this flexibility is, in my view, important. Note that I am using dpi, not ppi (pixels per inch). DPI, not PPI, is what manufacturers use and we will stick to this.

A few of my peers recommend using sheet-fed scanners for your photos and vehemently disagree with them. Unless your photos are in pristine condition, devoid of dust, all of the same size and neatly aligned, I’d go for a flatbed scanner. Call me old school but I don’t like photos – especially old fragile ones – being machine-handled. Because most of them are originally designed as office document scanners, sheet-fed photo scanners have much lower optical scanning resolutions. They are also more prone to getting dusty due to their open design and will require regular cleaning. As for speed, remember that you can place four standard photos on a flatbed scanner and scan all four in one go. Don’t get me wrong, I think they work great for other types of media but not for photos.

True scanner deals are rare because they are a niche, shrinking market. Every retailer usually aligns with Amazon, the trillion-dollar gorilla of online retailers, down to the nickel. Therefore, the best times to buy scanners would usually be during sales periods (Amazon Prime Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Boxing Day, Amazon Prime Big Deal Days etc).

Amazon figures show that it sold more than 1,000 Canon Canoscan Lide 300 scanners, the best-selling flatbed scanner on the site. In comparison, it sold more than 10,000 HP Deskjet 4155e, the best-selling inkjet printer on Amazon, one which is equipped with a flatbed scanner as well and, ironically, costs far less than the Lide 300 at just $49.99 at the time of writing. Other than having a printer, it also has an automatic document feeder (a feature unheard at this price point) and can scan wirelessly as well, which means you can even scan from your smartphone… speaking of which.

It works great in a lot of use cases where speed pips quality but even with OIS (optical image stabilization), AI features and a much higher resolution, scanner apps can’t really match a flatbed scanner. Reflections, uneven background and light conditions and sub-optimal conditions of the media to be scanned are just some of the reasons why I keep scanner apps for the mundane and the ordinary captures.