Resolution of a photocopier

  • Thread starter Thread starter il barbi
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il barbi

I compared a photocopy of an A4 b/w document with a print of
it obtained from a scanning at 240 dpi, while the photocopy
is better. Now I wonder what is the actual resolution of a
photocopier, someone can help?
il barbi
 
il said:
I compared a photocopy of an A4 b/w document with a print of
it obtained from a scanning at 240 dpi, while the photocopy
is better. Now I wonder what is the actual resolution of a
photocopier, someone can help?
Click to expand...

10 years ago when I worked for a small company, I acquired a small, cheap,
used photocopier for the company and I remember that it claimed 300 lines
per inch and produced "very nice" results. The fancy Canon here at my
current employer (unknown vintage) claims to be "high resolution" at 1200
lpi - too much for usual copies but it can do 1000% magnification.
 
I compared a photocopy of an A4 b/w document with a print of
it obtained from a scanning at 240 dpi, while the photocopy
is better. Now I wonder what is the actual resolution of a
photocopier, someone can help?
Click to expand...

A photocopier is probably analog, instead of a digital scanner. Any dpi
rating on an actual photocopier is probably about the digital laser
printer portion, not about the analog scanning portion.

If scanning a digital image with a scanner, in line art mode (black and
white mode, meaning without any grayscale), then:
200 dpi is fax quality, readable, but not great.
300 dpi line art is better, fair quality, often good enough.
600 dpi is excellent quality if for better original quality.
For commerical prepress, line art might be 800 or 1000 dpi.

Depends on the quality of the original also. Some original documents
are not good enough quality themselves (like say a newspaper) to warrant
scanning at much more than 300 dpi. Try more resolution, and see if it
helps.

For scanning in grayscale or color mode, then 240 or 300 dpi is very
reasonable, but lineart needs more (specifically, the printer can make
use of more if it is line art mode).
 
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