Read and follow the directions for your scanner to produce high quality scanned reproductions. An important final decision involves which format to save your scanned image in. TIFF and EPS formats are generally used for printing and GIF and JPEG formats for the web. For more information, see Creating Print Graphics and Creating Web Graphics.

Scanned images consist of rows and columns of dots. Scanners have a default format that your scanned objects will be saved in. My scanner's (Visioneer PaperPort) default is listed as PaperPort Files (.max).

The two most common formats used for printing are TIFF or EPS.  For vector-based objects (objects created in Illustrator or Freehand), save your graphics as EPS. For bitmapped graphics and scans, save your graphics as TIFF. 

The two most common formats used for the web are GIF and JPEG. GIF uses 256 colors and includes data compression, and is the most common used format. JPEG uses millions of colors and supports lossy compression. JPEG generally produces a better quality scanned image than GIF, but the document size will be larger. PhotoShop allows you to convert to different graphic formats after they have been saved using a scanner. (For more information about graphics, see Graphics and for more information about compression, see Creating Web Graphics).