A web camera (or webcam) is a real-time camera whose images can be transmitted through a site on the World Wide Web, instant messaging, or a PC video calling application such as SKYPE.

>Web cameras typically take the form of a small camera connected directly to a PC normally via USB. Analog cameras can also sometimes be used, connected to a video capture card and then directly or indirectly to the internet.

A scanner is a device that analyzes an image or an object and converts it to a digital image. Most scanners today are variations of the desktop (or flatbed) scanner.

The flatbed scanner is the most common in offices. Flatbed scanners now tend to use charge-coupled device or Contact Image Sensor as the image sensor, whereas older drum scanners use a photomultiplier tube as the image sensor.

Other types of scanners are planetary scanners, which take photographs of books and documents, and 3D scanners, for producing three-dimensional models of objects, but this type of scanner is considerably more expensive relative to other types of scanners.

Another category of scanner are digital camera scanners which are based on the concept of reprographic cameras. Due to the increasing mega-pixels and new features such as anti-shake, digital cameras become an attractive alternative to regular scanners.

A printer is a device that produces a hard copy of documents stored in electronic form, usually on physical print media such as paper or transparencies.

Many printers are primarily used as computer peripherals, and are permanently attached by a printer cable to a computer which serves as a document source. Other printers, commonly known as network printers, have built-in network interfaces and can serve as a hardcopy device for any user on the network.

In addition, many modern printers can directly interface to electronic media such as memory sticks or memory cards, or to image capture devices such as digital cameras, and scanners; some printers are integrated with a scanning and/or fax machine function.

Printers are designed for short-turnaround print jobs; requiring virtually no setup time to achieve a quality hard copy of a given document.

In contrast, the printing press is designed and optimized for high-volume print jobs such as newspaper print runs printing presses are capable of hundreds of pages per minute or more, and have an incremental cost-per-page which is a fraction of that of printers.

The printing press remains the machine of choice for high-volume, professional publishing. Although , as printers have improved in quality and performance, many jobs which used to be done by professional print shops are now done by users on local printers.