Scanning Your Artwork

Tips for scanning

One of the most common mistakes people make when scanning their artwork, is to scan the entire bed of the scanner. If you are scanning a small picture and it does not fill the scanner bed, you are able to select a particular area you would like to scan. This reduces the file size and will scan much quicker.

The step by step below shows the process. Your scanning interface may look different but the principles are universal.

Scanning interface	Scanned Image
Scanning a photo - if you don't select the photo in the scanner you will produce a scan of the photo and the entire bed of the scanner, as shown above.
Scanning interface with photo selected (dotted border)	Scanned Image
Most scanning software enables you to select where your photo / artwork is within the scanner bed. Usually you can draw a rectangle with your mouse around the artwork. If you select your photo you will produce a larger, better quality scan plus you wont have such a large file size and wont need to crop. If you are unable to select the image area prior to scanning, don't worry you can always crop later.
Once you have ascanned your image save it in a memorable place such as My Documents, before saving this scanned image please read the file types section.