Why You Need a Wide-Format Scanner By Jeffrey Steele Without a wide-format scanner, you could be turning away business. That’s because growing numbers of companies are in need of wide-format scan services. They range from architects, engineers and contractors to manufacturing companies, oil and gas utilities, grade schools and federal, state and municipal governments, to name just a few. Given image quality improvements and scanner price reductions, this may be the best time ever to reap added profit through wide-format scanning. “There are a few ways print providers can get business if they have a scanner,” said Chip Hollingsworth, technical services manager for Paradigm Imaging in Costa Mesa, CA. Paradigm is a distributor of large-format scanners for Colortrac, Graphtec, and Kurabo. “Lots of times people will have paper originals and need to get scanned documents from them,” Hollingsworth said. “In addition to architectural and engineering documents needing scanning, there is courtroom work. Lawyers need to create exhibits for court trials, which may involve taking an image, blowing it up, printing and mounting it on an easel.” Scanning services also can be provided to artists. A painter, for example, might sell a painting for $5,000, later offering limited prints of the work for $500 each. “For artists running galleries, this is a business opportunity allowing them to go further from a revenue standpoint,” Hollingsworth said. “When scanning artwork, you need a flatbed scanner, such as a Kurabo 24-by-36-inch flatbed scanner.” The scanning of maps used by those working in geographical information systems and land management is yet another demand area, said Greg Kockler, technical segment Americas product manager with HP in San Diego. Oil and gas utilities are in need of scanning services, especially in this age of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking.” And elementary schools, in particular, require scanning to produce the education graphics that adorn classrooms, Kockler reported. Which opportunity is best for any one PSP will depend on where that shop focuses its business efforts, Hollingsworth reported. “They can do scanning as a service for a municipality or a manufacturer, and compete against various scanning services,” he said. “They may need to add some value-added benefit in the form of indexing originals or preparing a data base of data from the prints. That‘s something they can also charge for. But by adding those benefits, they can attract more business and better compete with scanning services.” Evolving Technology Scanning technology has evolved since the days when CCD (Charged-Coupled Device) and CIS (Contact Image Sensor) provided very different costs and quality. Traditionally, the former involved a CCD chip-and-lens architecture, in which a single lens covered a chip with many pixels, Hollingsworth said. CIS technology, by contrast, uses many smaller lenses instead of one larger one. “Arranged in a line, in some kind of package or sensor, you can gang up several of those individual sensors to stitch together pixels,” he said. The CCD technology was considered superior in scanning color and artwork, while CIS technology was far less expensive, Hollingsworth said. “But over time, the CIS technology has come along and is much better in doing color and artwork-type stuff, he added. Colortrac has come out with a single-sensor array, which is still CIS technology, but in one sensor unit the width of the scanner. The benefit is that the physical arrangement makes it possible for you to avoid the issues of stitching the pixels...You have fewer stitching issues, so you have a more accurate image. Also, the CIS scanners have typically increased the optical resolution, resulting in a higher-quality image.” “They may need to add some value-added benefit in the form of indexing originals or preparing a data base of data from the prints. By adding those benefits, they can attract more business and better compete with scanning services.” CCD technology still exists, and continues to be considered a bit better than CIS technology in terms of the color gamut captured. That makes it a better option for very high-quality artwork. But the evolution of CIS technology, and its improvement in scanning color, has led to its taking a larger percentage of market share from CCD over 38 Wide-Format Imaging | April 2015 MyPRINTResource.com
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