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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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