Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Mountain Lion Edition

Scanners

If you own a scanner, chances are good that you won’t be needing whatever special scanning software came with it. Instead, OS X gives you two programs that can operate any standard scanner: Image Capture and Preview. In fact, the available controls are identical in both programs.

To scan in Image Capture, turn on your scanner and click its name in the left-side list. Put your photos or documents into the scanner.

Note

You can share a scanner on the network, if you like, by turning on Scanner Sharing in System Preferences→Sharing. That’s sort of a weird option, though, for two reasons. First, what do you gain by sitting somewhere else in the building? Do you really want to yell or call up to whoever’s sitting next to the scanner: “OK! Put in the next photo!”?

Second, don’t forget that anyone else on the network will be able to see whatever you’re scanning. Embarrassment may result. You’ve been warned.

Now you have a couple of decisions to make:

• Separate and straighten? If you turn on “Detect separate items” in the Scan Size menu, OS X will perform a nifty little stunt indeed: It will check to see if you’ve put multiple items onto the scanner glass, like several small photos. (It looks for rectangular images surrounded by empty white space, so if the photos are overlapping, this feature won’t work.)

  If it finds multiple items, Image Capture automatically straightens them, compensating for haphazard placement on the glass, and then saves them as individual files.

• Where to file. Use ...