Scanning Figures

My scanner (an HP LaserJet 3380 all-in-one) is attached to my Windows XP machine. Here is how I obtain half-way decent scanned figures into PostScript format (which I need for a variety of reasons):

• Scan into a Word document (Insert / Picture / from scanner)
  • Select a customized scan
  • Set the resolution to maximum (600 dpi in my case)
  • Set for black and white, when possible
  • Darken brightness to -20 or so
  • Do not trust scan rectangle to be accurate in the scan preview
• Save the Word document (.doc) as a Web document (.html)
  This creates both .png and .jpg of the scanned images.
• Edit the .png files in gimp to crop, etc., then save in place.
• Convert to eps using the pnm tools, e.g.,

  pnmtops image005.png > image005.eps
  

  Note: Saving as eps in gimp gives bad results. There are also many, many other ways to get bad results (blurry, noisy PS images). There are probably ways to get better results as well. Please send me email if you know!