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The Canon CanoScan LiDE 300 ($69.99) is an entry-level flatbed scanner designed to digitize images and for very gentle doc scanning in properties, house places of work, and small places of work. For the $20 distinction between the LiDE 300 and the Editors’ Alternative Canon CanoScan LiDE 400, although, you surrender half the decision, barely sooner scans, and the power to face the scanner upright to save lots of desk house. If each penny counts and these perks do not matter to you, the LiDE 300 is a wonderfully succesful light-duty machine.
Lean and Straightforward to Use
At 1.7 by 14.5 by 9.9 inches (HWD) and weighing solely 3.6 kilos, the LiDE 300 is small and light-weight. It is also the identical dimension as its LiDE 400 sibling, besides that, as talked about, the latter comes with a kickstand that holds the chassis upright vertically.
Two competing fashions, the Epson Perfection V19 and Perfection V39 ($119.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a brand new window) , are additionally about the identical dimension, weight, and value because the CanoScan fashions, and, just like the LiDE 400, they each include kickstands for holding them in a vertical place. The variations amongst these 4 flatbed scanners are minimal. As talked about, the LiDE 300, with a most decision of two,400 by 2,400dpi, helps solely half the decision than the opposite three fashions’ 4,800 by 4,800dpi.
For many functions, even 2,400dpi is overkill. (Most laptop displays show solely 72dpi, or 96dpi on some high-resolution shows.) The advantage of high-resolution scans, particularly 4,800dpi, is that you may crop away massive sections and have sufficient pixels left to will let you enhance the scale of the remaining space with out degrading its element.
Connectivity on the LiDE 300 (and the opposite three flatbeds mentioned right here) consists of USB 2.0 for each energy and information. There is no networking, no cell connectivity, and no peer-to-peer protocols, although you possibly can scan to the cloud by having the LiDE 300 dump your scans right into a folder in your laptop to your favourite cloud service.
As with most scanners, be they flatbed or sheet-feed doc machines, with the LiDE 300 you possibly can scan from both the panel on the face of the chassis or from a number of of the software program utilities on the CD-ROM that comes within the field. The LiDE 300’s management panel consists of 4 buttons. Every one initiates a scan, and when it finishes, the scanner tells the software program on the host laptop what to do subsequent, as follows:
- PDF saves the scan to a PDF file primarily based on parameters you set with IJ Scan Utility. (I will focus on that in a second.)
- Auto Scan determines the kind of merchandise on the scanner glass after which scans and saves it to the suitable file format. Textual content paperwork, for instance, are transformed to PDF or one of many different textual content doc codecs, primarily based on the settings in Scan Utility, and pictures are saved as JPEGs or one other supported graphics format.
- Copy sends the scan to the printer designated in Scan Utility.
- Ship pushes the scan to a chosen e mail tackle or utility. You would possibly, as an example, need to ship scanned pictures to a photo-editing program for tweaking.
Lastly, along with scanning paper-thin media, the LiDE 300’s lid will be adjusted to carry thicker objects, similar to books and magazines, as proven right here…
It is All Concerning the Software program
All of the LiDE 300 actually does is, in a way, take an image of the merchandise on the scanner mattress. What occurs subsequent is determined by the bundled software program. The disc that comes within the field consists of Linux, macOS, and Home windows variations of the next utilities:
- CanoScan LiDE 300 Coloration Picture Scanner Driver: That is the driving force that connects the scanner to your laptop.
- IJ Scan Utility: This scanning interface permits you to outline each side of your scan, from decision and file kind to vacation spot, similar to e mail, the cloud, or a folder on the pc.
- ScanGear MP Driver: That is one other scanner interface much like Scan Utility, however with a wider vary of choices, particularly for scanning pictures.
IJ Scan Utility is basically a frontend that gives entry to a number of features—Auto Scan, Doc Scan, Picture Scan, Customized Scan, Sew Scan, and OCR, or optical character recognition, for changing scanned textual content to editable textual content—in a single place, making these choices simple to search out and configure…
Clicking the Settings button opens a robust backend for configuring every perform…
ScanGear means that you can select from two consumer interfaces (Primary or Superior) primarily based in your consolation stage. Within the following picture, for instance, I’m scanning a number of pictures without delay. ScanGear, in flip, detects every picture’s autonomy, permitting me to save lots of every one as a separate file…
The ScanGear software program will increase the LiDE 300’s performance considerably. For instance, ScanGear is TWAIN-compliant, making it able to working inside many different TWAIN-ready third-party applications, together with Microsoft Phrase and PowerPoint, Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Photoshop (proven under), and most different image-editing and -enhancing functions.
When Bulk Scanning Is not an Difficulty
If it’s essential to scan and save piles of textual content paperwork for doc administration, archiving, and so forth, the LiDE 300 just isn’t a good selection. Since there isn’t any automated doc feeder, the pace at which you scan is extremely depending on how briskly you possibly can swap pages from the scanner mattress.
See How We Take a look at Scanners
Canon charges the LiDE 300 at 10 seconds per 8.5-by-11-inch web page and 5 seconds per 4-by-6-inch photograph. Its sibling, the LiDE 400, is rated at 8 seconds for 8.5-by-11-inch pages and 4 seconds for snapshots. These numbers put the LiDE 300’s ranking at 6ppm, offered the human working the scanner is able to swapping out the pages in zero seconds. That, in fact, is inconceivable.
Throughout my exams, the very best I may do was about 3.5ppm to 4.5ppm. To do this, I needed to sit poised, able to take off the present web page and lay on the brand new one—utterly monopolizing my time and a focus. Clearly, if it’s essential to scan textual content paperwork on this scanner, they need to be each quick and rare. In any other case, it is best to use a machine extra appropriate to the duty, similar to, maybe, Epson’s DS-1630 Flatbed Coloration Doc Scanner or the flatbed-with-ADF atop your all-in-one printer.
Terrific-Wanting Pictures
Picture scanners ought to, in fact, reproduce images and paintings as near the unique as attainable, and hopefully with minimal fussing round with the settings. The excellent news is that at the moment’s entry-level scanners and supporting software program are adept at choosing up particular person colours and element. Throughout my exams, I generally needed to modify distinction, hue, and different settings, however the LiDE 300’s scans of my pictures principally got here out near the originals. The built-in filters, similar to Auto Mud & Scratch Discount, Fading Correction, and some others, did a superb job of correcting minor cases of a majority of these points. (An issue for Mac and Linux customers, although, is that many of those filters usually are not accessible to them.)
The LiDE 300 did a superb job general of scanning and changing my textual content paperwork to editable textual content, however, as was my expertise throughout my exams of the LiDE 400, the IJ Scan Utility’s OCR prowess may have been somewhat extra correct. Whereas its rating of 6 factors with out errors on the Arial web page was superb, its 10-point mistake-free exhibiting on the Instances New Roman check web page was not as spectacular.
To check this additional, as I did with its LiDE 400 sibling, slightly than having Scan Utility ship the font-page scans to its personal OCR engine, I set it to ship to Adobe Acrobat DC. Lo and behold, the Instances New Roman web page, too, transformed error-free down to six factors, which is an effective indication that the scanner itself pictures precisely.
One or the Different
When the choice comes down to picking extra performance over saving a couple of bucks, I am often for selecting the extra options—particularly when the additional expense is simply $20. The LiDE 400 provides you that nifty kickstand for liberating up desk house. It additionally affords twice the decision, and an additional button (End) on the entrance of the machine that makes scanning to multipage PDFs simpler than on its LiDE 300 sibling.
In any other case, the whole lot else is similar. And, sure, I get that for budget-strapped college students and others, particularly those that simply do not scan typically, that $20 might be extra properly spent elsewhere. Both CanoScan mannequin will work simply effective in low-volume scanning environments.
The Backside Line
For an occasional-use {photograph} and doc scanner, the entry-level flatbed CanoScan LiDE 300 is an effective worth, however its LiDE 400 sibling is simply $20 extra and comes with invaluable extras.
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