The settings that matter
- Resolution: 200 to 300 dpi. Enough for small print; beyond that you only add megabytes, because fax pages are rendered at about 110 dpi anyway.
- Mode: black and white or grey. Colour can increase file size and is discarded during fax preparation.
- Output: PDF. One file for the whole document keeps the page order fixed.
- Deskew and auto-crop: on. A straight page is easier to read after the contrast is flattened.
Scan the whole document in one pass
Use the document feeder if you have one, and scan every page in the order the recipient should read them. One PDF is easier to check than nine images, and it avoids the classic mistake of faxing page three twice and never faxing page four.
Check the scan before you fax it
Open the PDF and look at the worst page, not the first. Is the smallest text still sharp? Are the edges complete, or has auto-crop eaten a margin? Is there a black strip where the lid did not close? Fix those now: nothing downstream can recover detail that the scanner did not capture.
Keep it under the limits
faxB2B takes up to five files of 5 MB each and 20 pages per fax. A long colour scan can exceed the file limit; the same document scanned in black and white usually does not. If it still does, the browser compressor will trim the structure and metadata, and split a longer document if the recipient accepts separate parts and your plan has enough pages.
What scanning does not do
A basic scan is a picture. Some scanner apps add a searchable text layer, but faxB2B does not add text recognition when preparing fax pages. If the recipient needs searchable text, send them the original file another way and use the fax only where a fax is required.