At 12:19 AM 3/04/2021 -0600, you wrote: I think it is a combination of habit, and marketting/customer expectations. People intuitively expect the white backing, and for many scanning tasks it is preferable. Yet for scanning anything printed on both sides of thin paper, it's a real problem. I have a sheet of matt black plastic, and some black velvet cloth for this. The plastic is easier to use, but the velvet works better for really thin paper with a lot of visual bleed through. The more light absorbent the better. If I ever find a sheet of 'vanta black' (new light absorbent substance, very close to 100%, look it up) I'll be using that. That's not the only 'strange & unfortunate lack' in typical scanners. Another is that the raised plastic bezel goes all the way round the glass, rather than having at least one of the glass long sides be flat right to the edge, with the scanner sensor also going very close to the edge. This is needed for scanning sheets larger than the bed, and also very essential for scanning pages of books that are too thick to allow getting any page flat on the typical scanner bed. There are special 'edge scanners' that allow this - draping the book over the side of the scanner, so one page can be fully flat on the glass. They cost _much_ more than normal scanners. And yet the actual construction has very little that would cost more to manufacture. Construction is just arranged a little differently. The higher cost is another case of 'marketting.' Guy