Since the first flatbed scanner debuted in 1994, the market has seen many innovations. Among the creative service fields, planned investment in both digital cameras and desktop color scanners is at record highs, according to a new report from TrendWatch Graphic Arts.

Although both of these technologies have trickled down to the consumer level, the extent to which the graphic art markets have benefited is less clear. The advent of digital ad delivery has done more to impede the market for scanners among magazine publishers and their printers than has digital photography, the report noted.

At most, only 15 percent of print and prepress firms have ever planned to invest in color scanners in any TWGA survey. Web design, development and production firms say that their preferred scanner investment is in the $500 to $1,000 range. In a similar study conducted last year, 23 percent of print and prepress firms planned to invest in a digital camera, most of them in the $1,001 to $5,000 range.

Between 1998 and 2004, the percentage of catalog publishers who said that they performed their own production scans in-house, rather than outsourcing them, increased from 21 percent to 43 percent. At the same time, the percentage of book publishers saying this increased only 5 percentage points. In winter 2004/2005, more than half of the design and production firms reported that high-resolution digital photography for print work has increased in the past 12 months. The growing focus on new media whose resolution demands are significantly less stringent than those of print will drive the future imaging needs of creative firms, the study noted.