• desktop publishing & graphic design - the creation of documents with text and graphics in black and white and color like brochures, newsletters and technical manuals
• optical character recognition (OCR) - the ability to scan documents and have the computer "read" the letters and convert them to word processing documents.

• document imaging - the ability to scan documents and file them in electronic format
• web design - scanning data, photographs and text to create web based information
• photo editing - scanning colored and black and white photographs to improve or change the quality
• scan to e-mail - the ability to scan and e-mail documents instead of using facsimile technology

These capabilities require that you have different features in the scanners that you use. For example you either need a flatbed scanner for photographs or a document feed for high volume document imaging. You may want a scanner that will allow you to capture color images or black and white may be sufficient for OCR. Scanners are available from 2 pages per minute up to 85 pages per minute and scanning resolutions from 300 dots per inch up to 2400 dots per inch.