The size of the file will depend upon many factors. The physical size of the document and the amount of intelligence on the document are factors that will affect the resulting file size, unfortunately these factors cannot be changed.

The greater the resolution used to scan the document the larger the scan file and the greater the detail in the scanned image; while, lowering the resolution will reduce the file size and the amount of detail that is captured in the scanned file. For a document of text a resolution of about 200 dpi (dots per inch) is usually considered acceptable. The scanner's optical resolution is adjustable from 75 dpi to 600 dpi.

If you scan the document in color, there are 24 bits of information that is required to represent each dot scanned. If you scan the document using gray scale then there are 8 bits of information that is required to represent each dot scanned and if you use Black and White, there is one bit required to represent each dot scanned. The scanner is capable of scanning in color, gray scale, or black and white. From the above we can see that if the document scanned was one square inch and was scanned at 200 dpi in color. The first row scanned would require 4800 bits of information (24 bits per dot X 200 dots). If the resolution was reduced to 100 dpi, it would take 2400 bits of information for the first row of scanned (24 bits per dot X 100 dots). If the same document was scanned at 100 dpi using the black and white mode the first row scanned would require 100 bits of information (1 bit per dot X 100 dots).

While the size of the document scanned is not adjustable the area scanned is. A scan resolution of 200 dpi implies that one square inch of document will be represented by 200 rows of 200 dots each giving a total of 40,000 dots. The smaller the area that can be scanned and still capture all the information required; the smaller the scan file will be. The scan area on the scanner is adjustable.

To produce the smallest scan file for a given document the setting would be the lowest resolution, in the black and white mode and scanning the smallest area possible. The opposite would produce the largest file; scanned in the highest resolution, in the color mode and scanning the largest area possible.