----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >in use? Do any of these have Irish (or failing that UK, failing that >European) offices or distributors? Etc. LaserScan is (was, I haven't followed it for years) a Brit company with a lot of commericial activity. We have a Calcomp scanner which is OEMed from an American company VIDAR, which I think is OEM for many scanning companies. The scanning software that came with it operates under windows, works OK but is a bit unnatural to use. It's stated resolution is 1200 dpi, but I was told that this is interoplated, real resolution is around 400-600 dpi. It is a greyscale scanner. Color ones are damned expensive. The vectorizing software I think is the key. We have CadCore which is primarily CAD software, so you pay for a lot of junk that you rarely if ever need. I believe CadCore is the guts of ArcScan in Arc/Info. In any case, raw CadCore is also very! un-natural to use! Its from Hitachi, if that gives you any hint. File size is important to consider, a 250-dpi color TIFF will get as big as 10-20 mb for one A3 or A1 image. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul Hastings [log in to unmask] Director Environmental Information Center Thailand Environmental Institute