Aspect ratio
From Paperless Office
Aspect ratio refers to the height to width of some form of display.
- Portrait - Portrait aspect ratio is when something is taller than it is wide. A typical piece of 8.5x11 paper or book are examples of the portrait aspect ratio.
- Landscape - Landscape is the aspect ratio where something is wider than it is tall. Typical monitors and televisions are examples of landscape aspect ratio devices.
- 4 by 3 - This is the aspect ratio of older televisions. They are landscape, but only slightly wider than they are tall.
- Widescreen - Most newer monitors and televisions are considered wide screen with an aspect ratio closer to 16 by 9.
Unfortunately most of our paper is in portrait aspect ratio while most of monitors are landscape. This means that viewing scanned images on a a monitor is a suboptimal experience--you can't use the entire resolution of your monitor to view a scanned image.
Many modern monitors are designed to rotate on their side. Widescreen monitors rotated on their side are particularly suited for viewing a page of scanned text.
