Document Imaging Scanners

A document imaging scanner can be used for many different purposes. If you’re looking to take your office from hard copy to digital then you will need a high quality document imaging scanner.


Some scanners scan directly to PDF format and some directly to a secure FTP server. For personal use there are many affordable scanners that can be used for scanning important documents, family photos, books, prints and other items.

HP has a wide array of scanners for most any office need. HP document scanners are well built and reliable. Check around to see if you can find HP document scanners on sale.  The HP Scanjet N9120, N8460 and scanjet 5000 are popular.

Kodak also produces fine document imaging scanners from home use to heavy production use. The Kodak i730, i610, i1860 and s1740 are all very popular scanners.

Fujitsu and Epson also make very good and reliable document imaging scanners for both home and office use. With a little due diligence you can usually find one of these scanners on sale.

You’ll need to decide what features you want in your document imaging scanner.

Optical resolution is one of the more important features of a scanner and you will want the highest resolution that will fit in to your budget.  At the low end you would probably want a 1200×1200 resolution scanner for personal use. With a low resolution you will not be able to enlarge your scanned documents without them becoming blurry.  The higher the resolution the more you can enlarge without blur.

Bit depth is another important feature of document imaging scanners. A better quality document scanner will have a higher bit depth. A higher bit depth is preferred because it allows for more data to be collected when the scan is made which results in more potential colors during reproduction. As an example a 24 bit color scanner would have three separate color channels of 8 bits each.  The three channels are red, green and blue (RGB). So, there would be 256 shades of red, 256 shades of green, and 256 shades of blue for a total of over 16 million different colors. A document imaging scanner with a high bit depth can scan many millions of different colors which it can then reproduce when you print or use your images.  Obviously, if the scanner only scanned the original document with say 256 colors then that is all the colors your reproduction would have as well.  Also, when manipulating images after they have been scanned it is best to have more data (bits) to work with to avoid distortion or blurring of the image.

Document imaging scanners utilize different connection capabilities. They may use USB, firewire or a parallel port.  USB and firewire are pretty common these days.  Just make sure that the connection is compatible with your computer.

Document imaging scanners may have other features as well. Some have filmstrip adapters for scanning film strips.  Some can scan slides while others are designed to scan large or legal sized documents. If you plan on scanning old photos then you may be interested in a scanner that will restore faded or deteriorated photos.

You will also want to consider what software comes with the scanner and which software it is compatible with. OCR software allows you to scan a text document and then have the software read it and transform it into editable text. Some software will automatically convert your scanned documents into PDF format as well.

So, when you’re looking for a document imaging scanner be sure to everything into consideration and get the scanner that will best fit your needs.