Advice for a noob - scanning black and white pages without getting dots

[Mike Renna]

I am using NAPS2 with a Brother MFC-L2700DW scanner. I want to scan tax documents - black text on a white background. But I get speckles / dots in white areas. Yes, the glass is clean. And if I do a color image, I don;t get the dots - but do get a much larger file size.

Sometimes there's text on the back of the page that I think is 'tricking' it. Is there a way to set things so it knows - really dark area is black. lighter areas are all white?

ie how to make monochrome scans crisper? Black text and lines. And white everywhere else?

THANKS!

[SelfMan]

That's because you are scanning in Black and white mode and not in gray scale. There is always some compromise as the scanner has to use some kind of threshold where it decides to show the pixel or not. Try gray scale.

[Ben Olden-Cooligan]

You can also scan in either color or grayscale, then after the scan, under the "Image" menu, click "Black and White" to convert to pure black & white for a small file size. This window will let you pick the exact white/black threshold and preview the results to make sure it's right.

[Mike Renna]

OOPS - I didn't click on the page. Then I had acccess to the image menu.

THANKS!

Old: I set the scanner to greyscale and scanned. The image icon at the top was greyed out. Is that the image menu you mentioned? If I change the left side from Greyscale to Black & white, I don't see a window to change white / black threshold.

[Ben Olden-Cooligan]

You'll need to click the image to select it, then you can use the menu.