A scanner is a peripheral that reads images and converts them into electronic codes which can be understood by a computer. There are different types.
A flatbed is built like a photocopier and is for use on a desktop; it can capture text, color images and even small 3D objects.
A film scanner is used to scan film negatives or 35 mm slides – pictures on photographic film, mounted in a frame.
A hand-held scanner is small and T-shaped, ideal to capture small pictures and logos.
A pen scanner looks like a pen; you can scan text, figures, barcodes and handwritten numbers.
Barcode scanners read barcodes on the products sold in shops and send the price to the computer in the cash register. Barcodes consist of a series of black and white stripes used to give products a unique identification number.
The resolution of a scanner is measured in dpi or dots per inch. For example, a 1,200 dpi scanner gives detailed images than a 300 dpi scanner.
Most scanners come with Optical Character Recognition software. OCR allows you to scan pages of text and save them into your word processor; they can then be edited.




