Fine Art's New Friend: Colortrac Flatbed 24120

Artists who want to archive or reproduce their original paintings or drawings without having to feed them through the rollers of a conventional wide-format scanner may want to seek out printmakers equipped with a Colortrac Flatbed 24120 large-format scanner from ACTion Imaging Solutions. With an optical resolution of 600 dpi and maximum resolution of 3600 dpi, the scanner can capture the subtle details of a watercolor or the depth of an oil painting. It can also detect the faded fine print on historic documents and maps.

The Colortrac Flatbed 24120 can handle opaque or translucent documents up to 24 x 36 in. in size. Originals can be scanned either one at a time or in batches. Oversized originals can be scanned in sections, then seamlessly merged with the software's “Image Join” command.

The FB24120 includes ScanWorks software for image viewing and editing and CopyWorks software for outputting scanned images on large-format printers from Hewlett-Packard, Epson, Encad, Canon and others. Software options include Preditor raster editor for high-speed viewing and editing of large drawings and ACTion Indexing software for capturing index data from engineering drawings.

The origins of the Colortrac flatbed can be traced back to the Artisan flatbeds developed by Tangent Imaging Systems in the mid-1990s and used by many art galleries and the Library of Congress to archive historical maps and documents.

The UK-based company Colortrac Ltd began trading as ACTion Imaging Solutions in 1999, after it acquired Tangent Imaging Systems and ANAtech, another maker of wide-format scanners.

The Colortrac Flatbed 24120 is distributed through Paradigm Imaging Group in Costa Mesa, CA. Paradigm Imaging is not only a large-format service bureau, but also a developer of integrated large-format scanning and document-management systems for various business requirements. (ACTion Imaging Solutions: 888-221-7226, www.action-imaging.com; Paradigm Imaging Group: 714-432-7226, www.scantopia.com)