Poor scan quality in dell AIO 924

You are ahead of me.  I am unable to figure out how to scan a document that I want to fax.  Where can I find out how to do this.  The manual talks about the All In One Center but I don't have that.  I only have the Fax Wizard.  Thanks in advance to anyone who can be of assistance!  Lois

Hi Lois -- yes, I believe the All In One Center is what you need to use to scan faxes with the 924. If this software is installed correctly, you should be able to load it by going to the start menu and selecting "All Programs" ... "Dell Printers" ... "Dell Photo AIO Printer 924" ...  "Dell All-In-One Center".  If this doesn't work, you should probably try reinstalling your printer software. To do this, just take the CD labeled "Drivers and Utilities -- Dell Photo All-In-One Printer 924" that came with your printer and stick it in your computer's CD drive, and folllow the prompts.

Hope that helps.  PS:- When you get your scanner working properly, if you happen to be scanning some photographs I would be very interested to know what quality to get. Henry.

From your example that I looked at I can't see the grain you are talking about. But I copy my photos on my 922 with perfect results. I have even copied 5x7 inch drugstore prints and printed them to 8x10 with perfect results. A lot of the secret to getting good copies, are the prints you are copying. They should be glossy finish and high resolution. If it is not glossy you will pick up the pattern of the matte finish and it will look like strange grain. However, your copy will normally not look as good as you original. There are many variables that will affect the quality of the finished print. If you take a small 4x6 print and make an 8x10 from it, you will get 4 times the grain no matter what resolution or paper you use.

Also to the person that doesn't have an all in one center, It should have been on the disc that came with the printer and should have been loaded with the printer driver.

Hi William_the_scot -- thanks for your reply. I don't think what I'm seeing is ordinary grain from the original photo. Normal grain would be random-looking, and be less noticable at lower resolutions. However, the distortion that my scanner produces looks like a strange cross-hatching pattern, and is just as noticable at lower resolutions like 72dpi.

With the hope that someone will be able to see what I'm talking about, I've included comparisons with scans performed with another device (in fact, done by holding the print in my hand and shooting it with a digital camera).

The pictures on the left were scanned with my Dell 924, at 300 dpi and 72dpi respectively. To my eyes, these two left images suffer from an annoying pattern of fine lines and speckles. The shots on the right show that these problems do not exist on the actual print.

I see what you mean. It is not grain and probably is not from the surface of the photo being copied. When you print digital photos (not scanned) how do your finished prints look? When you printed the scanned photos did you print on glossy photo paper or some other paper? Also scan a photo horizontally and then print it vertically does the pattern show up vert or horiz?. This would help to determine whether it is the fault of the scanning or the printing. The only times I have had similar looking patterns on mine (not scanned) is when I use paper which is not made for photos or poor photo paper.

Exact same problems here. I guess that's what it best can do. Really disgusting though; my many years old and cheap scanner gives much, much better quality. :(