Scanning using the digital photocopiers

You can use the OCE digital photocopiers to scan documents to create either a PDF or TIF file.

Usually we would recommend a PDF for documents. The scan will be black & white - NOT colour. You can scan multi-page documents to a single PDF file.

Use TIF for single images, though we would suggest you then use a simple image manipulation program such as Irfanview (Windows) or "convert" (Linux) to convert any TIFs you create to PNG or JPEG format for storage, or for use in other applications such as Word or Powerpoint. PNG is a lossless format and is much more standardised than TIF, so is a better choice of format for most purposes than TIF. JPEG is best for photographic-type images, but is a "lossy" format. Admittedly, by the time you've scanned a printed document, that probably isn't much of a concern...

You will need to "log in" to the copier using your PIN, then select the "Scan" option from the copier's control panel.

Once you have scanned your document(s), use a web browser to collect your scan files from:
http://scan2.geos.ed.ac.uk/
(Note that this is only accessible from inside the School.)

It will be useful for you to note the time, as the scan files are labelled with a name derived from the time that the scan was made. Note also which copier you used to make your scan, as they are stored separately for each machine.

Scan files are removed overnight by an automated tidying mechanism. We have no way of retrieving "lost" scan files that were not collected in time.