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- Scanlight Plus -
- Image Enhancement Software
- Computer Concepts
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-
- Contra to popular belief, the most important part of a scanning
- system is not the scanner itself, although some are better than
- others, it is in fact the software which comes with it. Some
- software scans directly into the program you want (Twain drivers come
- with some scanners now), but most is still a stand alone program.
-
- Most software supplied with a scanner is just scanning software,
- nothing more. A few packages available are actually able to enhance
- the scans, which is particularly important with hand held scanners,
- or if you can't afford expensive photo retouching packages. Computer
- Concepts ScanLight Plus is one such package.
-
- Of course, you don't need to re-touch your scans at all, or you
- could use a paint package such as ProArt 2, or even Paint. You could
- also buy an expensive photo re-touching package. But sometimes you
- just need to make small alterations, which aren't that easy in Paint,
- like darken the image. This is where ScanLight comes into its own.
-
- I could list all of the features, but that would take too long, and
- wouldn't mean very much, so I'll just attempt to touch on some of
- them.
-
- ScanLight has the usual features you'd need, such as rotation and
- scaling of the image. Rotation is probably the most important feature
- you need when you're using a hand held scanner, because more often
- than not you end up scanning at strange angles to fit the whole thing
- in. Scaling, well, say you have a good old A310, with only an 800k
- drive, but 4meg of memory. You can easily create scans up to 2meg in
- size, so how do you save them? You could attempt to Archive it, but
- that's not reliable and you'll probably run out of memory, or you
- could shrink the scan, which makes the physical storage space need
- smaller.
-
- Altering the colour Map of an image is not very easy in Paint, you
- physically have to alter the RGB value of every colour used.
- ScanLight has a graph type display which can be pulled around to
- alter the contrast and brightness of the scan. With this alone, scans
- can look much better.
-
- Another feature of ScanLight is the Enhancement option. This
- alters the scanned image in several possible ways, for example it can
- dither the image for you. There is also a noise remove enhancement,
- which you use when the photo you are scanning from has dust on it.
- The software attempts to work out where the dust is, and corrects the
- image, a great idea, but this doesn't always work.
-
- Overall, if you are looking for a cheap scanner and you want ease
- of use and good quality results, have a good look at ScanLight 256.
- For mono A4, look at the next scanner up, and for colour, look at the
- new Computer Concepts hardware.
-
- Quality - 9 - For high quality colour publishing, you'll need to
- spend a few grand more.
- Easy of Use - 8 - I've seen kids as young as 10 with no computer
- knowledge pick this up with little effort.
- Value - 8 - There are cheaper scanners around, but the software
- isn't as good.
- Overall - 9 - If you want A4, or colour, don't bother. Otherwise
- this is perfect for most uses.
-
- ScanLight comes bundled with all of Computer Concepts scanners and
- a version comes with the Wild Vision cards. For more information,
- speak to your local dealer, or write to Computer Concepts.
-
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