You can scan images, such as photographs and drawings, into a computer. You can then use the scanned images in documents, presentations and Web pages or e-mail the images to friends and family members. Most scanners come with image editing software, which allows you to change the appearance of a scanned image, such as removing red-eye from a photograph.

You can scan documents to store them electronically on your computer. You can then quickly access documents on your computer and e-mail them to friends and colleagues. Most scanners come with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software, which places scanned text into a document that you can edit in a word processor.