Digital cameras have become very popular in the past year or so. Even I am surprised by the number of people I see packing them around rather than conventional cameras.
They offer some real advantages over conventional cameras and scanners, but there is still something to be said for doing it the old-fashioned way.
For one thing, you can use scanners to digitise older photographs.
Having both a scanner and a camera is arguably more versatile than only having a digital camera. You can produce conventional prints from your camera and digitise items other than photos using your scanner. You have the option to use your scanner for optical character recognition and you do not have to hassle with archiving digital photos.
If you decide that the scanner is the way to go, there are a few things that you can do to get the most out of your system.
Firstly, if you are wondering which machine to buy and it is down to the tangerine iMac or a Windows machine, take the iMac. Many people will tell you there is no longer an advantage to owning a Mac if you plan to use it for digital imaging, but that is simply not true, more so for digital imaging on the consumer level than professional imaging.
While you can get Photoshop for Windows, you cannot get a good colour management system. Colour management on the Mac is something that imaging applications use by default. Windows has an equally sophisticated system, but it is often unavailable in many consumer level products.
