4 Creative Ways to Use Your Printer and Scanner

Many personal printers with scanners at home rarely use the scanner part. In addition to printing your digital artwork, documents and photos, the scanner itself can create digital artwork from reality, and here are some great ideas you might want to try.

Scanner Art: An Underappreciated Technology

A flatbed scanner is essentially a very slow camera with a very small focal length and no edge distortion. The way it specializes in capturing a perfectly flat, two-dimensional surface opens up a lot of opportunities for unique creations.

You can play with the movement of the scanner, the shallow depth of field, or even its flat nature. Printing isn't limited to immediate scans either; if you save your scans as images, you can use them as assets for digital art.

Here are some ideas you might want to try for yourself…

1. Create custom digital materials using the scanner

Whether it’s Canva, Photoshop, or digital scrapbooking, it can sometimes be difficult to find the right layer, texture, or object online. If you have an object with the desired texture and want to convert it to digital form, a scanner is the perfect tool.

This smudge and erase technique can be used in many scenarios, such as tire tracks, flowers, leaves, fabrics, etc. There is so much you can do to create custom textures and overlays. A great example of this technique is contemporary artist Joe Boyd as you can see in the video above.

2. Convert your handwriting to font

Your writing style is something unique to you. If you want to convert your handwriting into a font that you can use in print, designs, software, or even as a custom font for your phone, a scanner is a very useful tool to do so.

Compared to taking pictures of your handwriting on your phone, which will cause distorted edges and slanted letters, a scanner is much better suited for this task. For a more detailed guide, see How to Convert Your Handwriting to Font.

You can customize your messages, documents, and many other creative applications where you want to add your personal touch. Our favorite example is writing invitations for a child’s birthday. Your child’s handwriting using one of the fonts will be so cute!

3. Scanning

This may seem like an odd choice of device for photography, but the scanner actually takes pictures. The scanner scans lines across its plane, resulting in an image without edge distortion or a fish-eye effect. Scanning often results in quite surreal images that can confuse the viewer as to how they were taken.

Christian Staebler is one of those artists who uses flatbed scanners to create his images. Christian uses plants, animals and insects to create his natural images; I tried to mix scanning with photography to create some surreal images. This image is called: You are the Monopoly Board.

You can also scan old films and photos, allowing you to use them in your digital photo album. You can perhaps add some distortion while scanning to get a sharper, more abstract scan. There are more ways you can play with this feature, and this is one of the most open ways to play with a flatbed scanner.

4. Convert old newspapers and magazines into art assets

Old magazines often feature bold, eye-catching colors. In contrast, newspapers often feature dull, muted colors; both are ideal for different types of applications.

Cutting up newspapers and magazines to get the colors, letters, shapes, and images you want is a great way to gather assets for your next project. You can use them to add interesting backgrounds or layers to your images like in this example:

Or, just like Joe Boyd again, use magazines as the basis for your artwork. Another way to take advantage of magazine images is to distort some of the images while scanning to create a more intense, surreal scanning effect.

If you think your scanner will only be used for scanning documents and IDs, think again. The next time you hit the scan button, try leaving the lid open and looking around the room for things to scan. You never know when these tricks might come in handy.