Flatbed scanners are designed for purely home use. Such a device was created to solve two paramount issues, the first one - scanning text documents with recognition, and the second - digitizing photographs and other images. Many mid-priced models are equipped with a slide module that allows you to scan all transparent originals; often this is negative and positive film.
If you want to enter a text document into your computer, then just one scanner is not enough: you need a special program for recognizing texts, which will be able to save all received data in a separate text file of the format you need. It is worth noting that FineReader of the Russian company ABBYY is rightly considered one of the priority recognition programs. Many flatbed scanners sold in the CIS countries are equipped with a “lite” version of FineReader Sprint. However, some manufacturers equip them with foreign programs, which, to put it mildly, are very far from FineReader capabilities.
The next task is more difficult. For excellent digitization of color photographs, a matrix, high-quality optics and mechanics are needed; in addition, a lot depends on the driver that the flatbed scanners have. It is good that its modern types have a well-developed graphical user interface, which allows eliminating and correcting individual defects in the original image during the scanning process, including a highly noticeable raster, excessive or insufficient brightness, and color gamma distortions.
Many flatbed scanners are equipped with the simplest graphic editors, which are designed to process any image, and in some cases - even to create photo albums. Fans of drawing or graphically changing photos will have to get acquainted with more powerful packages like AdobePhotoshop or Gimp.
As for the price range, for example, a good Epson A4 flatbed scanner will cost from 100 to 150 conventional units. Models priced from $ 150 to $ 250 are required to satisfy even the most demanding users. Products cheaper than a hundred dollars can be taken only as a budget option, because such tablet scanners are not particularly friendly with graphics.
It is also worth saying that the A3 models are very popular. Such an apparatus can scan up to 60 pages in one-sided mode per minute, or 30 in two-sided. The A3 flatbed scanner is specifically designed to handle a wider format and longer documents. And such a device is often a necessary unit in an office interior. It is an excellent tool for healthcare, financial, legal, insurance and banking organizations. Today, many companies require powerful tools to translate various documents into electronic form. But customers are also interested in reducing time and money costs for processing all documents, and it is the A3 scanner that is ready to solve these problems.