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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: Gurney Date: 13 Nov 11 - 05:20 PM My old Acer scanner will scan anything, photos, negs, colour neg and positives, double-sided... now I can't get a driver for anything after W98. So it has its own dedicated computer. I also have a wee Chinese scanner for 35mm negatives of all sorts, but it is so slow and painstaking. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: Bill D Date: 13 Nov 11 - 12:35 PM For Christmas last year, after a nice craft season, we got a Canon 9000F, and it seems to do a pretty good job. There is software to enhance things even more, but so far its built-in software seems to be adequate. It will do 4 slides at a time, and though I have not done extensive tests, it will allow me to scan stuff I never thought I get to. It also says it has the ability to 'straighten' the curve of a book that won't flatten out totally....but I have not tested that yet. I have a long list of projects for it, and I have my fingers crossed. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: Pete Jennings Date: 13 Nov 11 - 11:59 AM Take special care with old photos on walls. If they're in a frame behind glass make sure that they are not touching the glass before you try to remove them. If they are touching the glass, there is a real danger of the image staying stuck to the glass, i.e. delaminating from the paper base, when they are removed. In this case, it's safer to leave them in the frame and copy them using a camera fitted with a polarizing filter. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: GUEST,Jon Date: 13 Nov 11 - 11:21 AM Oh and while on compression and png, I ran a lot of folkinfo generated ones through optipng yesterday. I'd guess that on average I got about a 40% reduction from my originals. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: GUEST,Jon Date: 13 Nov 11 - 11:03 AM Thanks, John. That, ie. the programs rather than the compression causing losses makes sense. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: GUEST,Jon Date: 13 Nov 11 - 11:00 AM Well I'm now offering the svg format as an alternative to png for the music scores produced at folkinfo but I'm only really interested in it for the web use and its usage with abc. From my perspective, it's a much better conversion process (development versions of abcm2ps can produce this directly rather than having to follow up with ghostscript to produce a png [and then perform other operations on the png eg. a transparent background, trimming, etc.) and I get better quality output (and for those that want to copy/paste it, a graphic that should scale nicely). The downsides are that it isn't as well supported by browsers so I can not simple do away with png and that the svg conversion winds up as a larger file (although they will compress and the Apache web server via mod_deflate (yep it's one of the many uses of deflate mentioned in my previous post) can compress them to serve to browsers that can handle "zipped" content). The only other area I've looked at briefly is for Java rendering (perhaps I could use svg in a web applet sometime) but I was disappointed with the two offerings I tried. I found batik far too slow for my purposes and svg salamander failing to render correctly with some on my files. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: JohnInKansas Date: 13 Nov 11 - 10:51 AM Jon - When you convert the BMP or RAW to PNP a fair amount of file information is discarded. NO PROGRAMS that I've heard of manipulate images in any significant way in any of the common formats. They all convert to the program's "native format," so when you save from the editing program's "native" file back to PNP there's an additional discard of info. You can save and retrieve a pnp without loss, but manipulating it and making a new pnp from the edited file is about the same as saving in a low compression jpg, so far as I can tell. You can copy and paste, and in some uses you can "rescale" to different display sizes. The stored file can be brought back to the "open" form for display; but beyond that there's marginal benefit that I can see. Many of the "lossless" programs use "indexed color" and there's no standard (or consistently used) set of index values for most of them, and if a pnp (or tif) file is moved between programs that use a different set of index colors, there's additional loss - or sloppy display. The way most people misuse their files is the cause of most image degradation, but there are advantages (and disadvantages) to any format you want to pick. PNP is fine. I just don't happen to use it much. TIFF is probably the most misused. You can specify the index values in a tif file, but a given program will assume its own set if the spec is omitted. There are at least a dozen different "tif flavors" and the standard lets you "make your own" so not all tif files can be read by all programs that use another tif - but theoretically they're all "lossless" just like pnp in compression and decompression. The key is to pick one that works for you, but I'd recommend that you avoid insisting that your choice is the only good one. Lossless compression just means that the file you save will come back as the same file you saved. It doesn't mean that it will come back as the same original file you made that file from. John |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: Stilly River Sage Date: 13 Nov 11 - 10:33 AM PNG is smaller than TIFF and Bitmap but isn't lossy like JPG. Does anyone here work with Adobe Illustrator or vector files? I've been wanting to look into that, but wonder about incorporating it into some of my print projects. SRS |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: GUEST,Jon Date: 13 Nov 11 - 10:01 AM Much is made by some of the "lossless compression" claimed for some other foramts like png and tiff, but those just throw away a significant part of the original information the first time you save in that format, Maybe there can be some information in some originals that some of these formats can't store? but as far as I know, png only uses deflate for compression. That (see see zlib here) is widely used for all sorts of applications and does not chuck bits away. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: JohnInKansas Date: 13 Nov 11 - 09:55 AM A couple of people have asked about scanning "odd sized negatives," and I don't see any response in this thread. All the "negative carriers" provided (or available) for most scanners do is line up the negatives in little slots or pockets to make it easy to get a straight scan. If your platten and the backing pad are really clean you should get the same results just by laying the negatives out on the platten. Since you'll nearly always want quite quite a lot of enlargement when you print from small format negatives, the higher resolutions at which you'll want to scan can make tiny bits of crud look like boulders in the print. Note that the emulsion where the image is recorded is on one side of the film, and some scanners have so little depth of field that it can make a slight difference which side up you lay them down (and you can end up with lots of left-handed pictures), but most scanners won't really care about which side up they are so far as the focus is concerned. Rarely, you might find a scanner that does better if you "scan left handed" and flip them in your image editor when you clean them up to save; but unless you're really fussy you probably won't be able to see the difference. Since "negatives" have inverted colors, turning them into "positives" can be tricky. Some scanners may have "automatic" color inversion programmed in, or you can "invert color" in some general photo programs, but the "red, green and blue" that the program works in may not use exactly the same red green and blue that the film used. Additional color conversion traps appear if the program uses CMYK color space instead of RGB. Additionally, the colors recorded in the film are intended to produce the correct colors when light is transmitted through the film, and the light reflected off the film, as in most scanners, may be different. This difference between transmission color and reflected color may also be visible with color slides. True "negative scanners" should use transmitted light; but usually you can work with the refelcted light scans made by the common kind. If the negatives (or slides) are more than a year old, the fading inherent in most film emulsions probably wipes out any visible effects from the above details though, so try to be happy if you get something that looks good to you. John |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: JohnInKansas Date: 13 Nov 11 - 09:29 AM Bonzo It is true that .jpg recompresses the file each time you do a new save, but good programs allow you to choose the amount of compression used, and if you don't allow too much compression you can keep sufficient of the original picture information through "more saves than you'll live to make." As a practical matter, many scanners allow you to scan at real 1200 dpi or more, but unless you're planning to enlarge to billboard size it's not very practical to do so. Scanning at twice the resolution you're likely to use, and using a low compression, and NEVER RECOMPRESSING the original, you can be confident of keeping what you pick to start with. Opening, and closing a jpg (without saving) doesn't affect what's been stored. Copying and Pasting a file doesn't affect the file. Opening and saving again does. You can, in fact, save a jpg "uncompressed" so there's no loss, although few image programs let you do it that way; but a true uncompressed jpg adds a "JPG file header" so it's larger than a RAW or BMP of the same image. Much is made by some of the "lossless compression" claimed for some other foramts like png and tiff, but those just throw away a significant part of the original information the first time you save in that format, and if you edit the image and make a new save in the same format it's a new "creation" with additional image information discarded, so there's little real advantage of these if you're going to do much manipulation of the images. Managing your files so that you always have an unchanged original is a lot more critical than worrying about what "perfect format" to use, since there isn't a format that's "perfect" for all uses. John |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: Bonzo3legs Date: 13 Nov 11 - 07:27 AM With the "content aware" tool on Photoshop CS5, it is possible to replace unwanted artifacts with whatever surrounds them, realising a cleaner photo. Adobe recently demonstrated their new blurr removal tool which may be on the next version - quite amazing! |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: Bonzo3legs Date: 13 Nov 11 - 05:09 AM The trouble with jpg is that quality is lost, better to save as bitmap. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: GUEST,Jon Date: 13 Nov 11 - 03:23 AM A scanner that supports Linux (sane) did me when we had a batch to do. A simple command line, eg. scanimage --source Transparency Unit --x-resolution=2400 --y-resolution=2400 --film-type Positive Film 1 ImageMagick to get the individual pictures from the scan and make thumbnails. Wrap them up in a little bit of php to and make a couple of "web pages", one to scan and post and the other to browse and most of the job done. The scan page The browse page I think the Windows Epson software would have given me the separate photos but would have been less efficient and had to be done on the laptop (the only Win install I have) where as this php and linux way can be operated from any PC in the house. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: JohnInKansas Date: 12 Nov 11 - 01:51 PM This thread is a bit old, but I didn't find "the other one" where there was some additional discussion of scanning from books. A recent search for some stuff on current scanner models turned up evidence that there really is an apparently decent "book scanner" now on the market that might be of interest to anyone faced with doing a significant amount of such scanning, although it's rather expensive compared to simpler flatbeds. Take a look at the review of the Plustek OpticBook 4800 if it might be something you'd need fairly often. Additionally, I should revise my "review" of the HP8500 that I mentioned at 24 Nov 09 - 12:26 AM. The "scanner part" failed completely (within warranty) and was replaced by HP, but very soon after that the scanner functions "went dead" (no longer under warranty, of course). About three months later it resumed the ability to scan stuff, but apparently with some dead pixels in the scan bar that make incredibly ugly lines, top to bottom, on all scans. It also had developed a tendency to jam when running the originals through the automatic feeder, and every jam damages - usually destroys - the original page, since there's no way to disengage the drive rollers and picking out pieces against the force of the feed rollers is the only way to clear most jams. It is still an excellent printer, and makes color ink-jet prints cheaper than my mono laser printer; but it's useless as a scanner. For my document archiving, I've gone to an Epson GT-S50 with single-sided document feed that's a little faster, and also comes with software to scan direct to pdf. In the very rare case of a jam, the entire drive opens up so you just lift the original out. The ABBY OCR software that came with it seems to do a slightly better job than the Nuance kit with the HP, although I haven't really done a serious error count on either. It has some "software problems," and doesn't do a "photo quality" job of rendering colors in all cases, but it's been extremely helpful in getting rid of > 1300 gallons of paper shreds from the documents I've run through it (so far). I'm currently considering the need for a new flatbed scanner, since the cats have broken several pieces off our existing Canon (mostly lids and paper guides, but I don't use it much much for printing). The reviewers indicate lots of different scanners available, but for the most part don't mention much of anything about color accuracy, scan rates, or other factors I'd like to know about. Unfortunately, the manufacturer's specs are mostly lies, so you have to "trust and assume" and place the order until you can try out what you get. John |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: Tinker Date: 24 Nov 09 - 11:16 PM Okay I know I'm am really low tech, but I simply scan a sheet of four photos as a jpg. and then use save 3 additional copies and crop and save so I have one of each. I use Picassa and it goes quickly. I can also go back and copy and crop at a later time. Kathy |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: Bill D Date: 24 Nov 09 - 06:31 PM Kevin... years ago I saw a scanner with one large slot for inserting the plastic film carrier, but with several different carriers with different size openings for different size film. I have no idea what is available now, as 35mm is all I used. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 24 Nov 09 - 06:27 PM But surely "Tech" threads go above the line, with the music? |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 24 Nov 09 - 06:17 PM What I want is some way of scanning film negatives that aren't 35mm or 110. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: Stilly River Sage Date: 24 Nov 09 - 05:16 PM Many free blogs give you up to 10 gig of space. If you save your photos at a web size resolution you can put up a sample directly loaded to the blog, or you could link to them from other online free storage sites (Picasa, Flickr, etc.). Most of them seem to offer 10 gig of free space right now. SRS |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: danensis Date: 24 Nov 09 - 10:10 AM I have an Epson 4940. Digital ICE is still superior to the Canon offering. Dust and scratch removal is quite important when dealing with old photos. John |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: Sandra in Sydney Date: 24 Nov 09 - 04:54 AM Joe, I also use My Opera - totally free & 1GB of space - on Kat's recommendation. info here sandra |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: GUEST,Bert Date: 24 Nov 09 - 02:39 AM I have a Canon scanner at the moment. I have used others and they all seem to be pretty good, especially with photos. I use Paint shop pro as and editor which is somewhat similar to Photoshop. I only use PSP 'cos it was the first one I used. They each have their pros and cons. You can get your own website of your own for about 100 bucks a year. I use Startlogic which gives me loads of space. They have several different options to choose from. I believe that most major hosts are pretty competitive, so look around. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: JohnInKansas Date: 24 Nov 09 - 12:26 AM You can place as many photos as will fit on a flatbed scanner. If the scanner has a TWAIN driver, you should be able to scan direct to Photoshop or Photoshop Elements using File|Import. With most TWAIN drivers, you can preview and select individual photos and the scanner will scan each selection separately, and save them as separate images. With a scanner that only lets you make a full platen scan, it's easy to clip out the individual shots in Photoshop or Elements. When placing multiple photos on the platen, it's difficult to keep them all accurately "squared up." Hint, for Photoshop Elements (and probably for Photoshop), is to open the "Info" toolbar, select a "line tool" and draw a line along what should be a horizontal or vertical. As long as you hold the mouse button down, the Info window will show an Angle (A) that you can read - but note that the angle disappears when you let go of the mouse button. Ctl-Z will delete the line you drew. Then Use Image|Rotate |Custom, type the correction angle in to rotate right or left as needed. You'll probably want to crop after you finish straightening. There is an automatic Image|Rotate|Straighten and Crop, but it makes lots of mistakes. Use Ctl-Z to undo - frequently, if you try to rely on it. If you scan a full platen and need to separate the pics, use Edit|Cut and then File|New from Clipboard. The new image will be "off the base layer" so you can't save it as .jpg until you do an Image|Flatten, since PSE can't save multi-layer .jpgs. For the last pic from the platten, just use Crop. The Hint when cutting out individual pics is to set the background color "a little off" so that the area where you cut from shows in a distinctive color. (The setting doesn't affect the color of the pic you cut out, or of the remaining pics.) This makes it a lot easier to keep track of where you are, and is especially helpful when you pull the staples out of a pamphlet and scan two page (or multi-page) "sheets" and need to separate the individual pages to put them in order. (Select any drawing or paint tool and hit D to return to default foreground/background color.) My newest multipurpose (HP OfficeJet Pro 8500 Premier) has an automatic document feed that lets you flop down up to 35 or so sheets and it will scan them all directly into a single .pdf document (with pretty good OCR conversion); but it "hard defaults" to 200 dpi which isn't really good enough for photos, especially if you might want any enlargement. You can override the resolution, but it whines about it and has to be reset for each "job." It's intended for record archiving, and my purpose in getting it was that things that go through the document feed will scan pages that are "legal size" - both sides automatically if you like, even though the "plate" only handles Letter/A4 size as a flat scanner. (The document feed will handle pages of mixed lengths in a single document, but they need to be close to the same width to feed well.) There are "large platform" flat scanners but ones I've identified are relatively expensive (for what they do), take up a lot of desk space, and/or are sometimes limited to "record keeping" resolutions. Even the ones that claim high resolution often will only scan "itty bitty selections" at those higher settings due to internal memory limits. For printing photos back at "same size" a scan resolution of 300 dpi is probably good enough, but you'll want finer scans if you might want enlargements, or if you may need to do much cropping. If you intend to use higher resolutions, you'll probably want a dedicated (external USB?) hard drive (or at least a separate folder on a large drive) to assemble the collection. File sizes can be very large. PSE allows you to select the amount of compression when you save a .jpg. At high resolution/low compression (level 8) you're unlikely to see image degradation with a reasonable number of edits/re-saves; but of course you should always keep the original intact. You can go to "level 12" but a level 12 .jpg (zero compression) usually has a larger file size than a .psd since the .jpg "header" has to be added. Also note that many scanners set to scan "black and white" will save only as indexed color or bitmapped images that many editing programs can't save as .jpg files (.tiff is a common default). I generally scan everything as "color" and if necessary for a later use convert a copy to grayscale after scanning; but your equipment will determine whether that's your best practice. John |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: Stilly River Sage Date: 23 Nov 09 - 10:06 PM I wouldn't waste my time using a digital camera to photograph old photos. You have to have it on a copy stand to be sure the focal plane is correct, and no matter how you have a digital camera set, the outcome, once you dissect that mess of images, they're going to be lower resolution and you're dealing with the peculiarities of an extra lens (the camera's). It's also more bother to load them out of the camera and adjust/crop them apart than it is to scan them directly into something like Photoshop and into a durable format. I sincerely doubt that the Library of Congress would recommend that camera method over that of a good flatbed scanner. If this were the case, the Special Collections folks at the library where I work (and they regularly scan images for me) would be buying cameras. But they're not, they're buying bigger and better scanners and sophisticated software to work with the output. FWIW SRS |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: GUEST Date: 23 Nov 09 - 09:52 PM Use a digital camera. Use a photo-editor to crop mal-adjustment.,,,wobble Determine the histogram - all should be consistant....consider "American Memory" broadcasts. Process through historgram profile...to correct change in color values... Most MAC 10+ include this. LABEL - the jpg!!! Date, numerical, and subject. Record an audio explanation of the photos - by the superior - or whomever a living source is. The intensity of an "old school" scanner might age a photo 50 years....and at 35 years you might be viewing color change in the originals. Consult the Library of Congress - for archive advise. LOC will take submissions if you meet their guidelines... |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: Stilly River Sage Date: 23 Nov 09 - 09:49 PM How old are they, how many people are in the photos, are they recognizable, and where will you post them? There is a "rule of three or more" that tends to come into play, when you have a group, if you're not naming them, that you can run it without permission. But this is a pretty squishy "rule." If you know you have someone who hates to have their photo taken, then I'd say play it safe and avoid posting any photos where they are recognizable. SRS |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: Stilly River Sage Date: 23 Nov 09 - 09:46 PM I just pulled out three random photos and ran them through to be sure I was describing it right. They're two old photos of me, and one of my daughter at age three. Now that I've solved the mystery of the scanner, I need to solve the mystery of the 30 or so extra pounds between then and now. . . Software is the strength of many scanners, but this Canon one is faster and much quieter than the older one. If you have photos you value and a lot of work to do, prorating the cost of the new scanner amongst all of those photos makes it a reasonable expense, especially when compared to having them professionally scanned. I will add, though, that if you want to do something important with these photos then you should scan them as tiff (best) or PNG (not quite as large as a tiff) or some other durable file, versus jpg, which are "lossy." And not as a GIF, which is stable, but doesn't use very many colors. SRS |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: Joe Offer Date: 23 Nov 09 - 09:46 PM Oh, and the other question is - can we post photos of our guests without asking permission? We have asked permission off and on, but I don't know that I can tie old photos and old permission slips together. As far as I can tell, most of our guests are thrilled to be in our pictures, because our founder and other photographers make them look so good. -Joe- |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: Stilly River Sage Date: 23 Nov 09 - 09:42 PM Bill, We cross posted. I used to have to separate them digitally, but not any more. My scanner software does it for me. This is a great time saver. SRS |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: Bill D Date: 23 Nov 09 - 09:41 PM So... I see there IS a trick..if you have certain scanners. I wonder if ours will do anything like that...hmmmm |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: Bill D Date: 23 Nov 09 - 09:39 PM You can put 4 at a time on the scanner, but you'll have to separate them digitally with a program to get individual jpegs.(unless someone knows a trick) Not really hard, but takes time. As for websites, look at SRS' thread...and maybe MyOpera Here's my pages there... Bill's MyOpera I almost forget it's there at times. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: Stilly River Sage Date: 23 Nov 09 - 09:39 PM Joe, I use a Canon scanner (Canoscan 4400F) that I love for this kind of work. It is a regular-size scanning bed, but as many photos as I can put down edge-to edge, I can use the "multi-crop" feature that is in the software that comes with it. It lets you outline as many of the individual photos as you want, and then when you tell it to scan, it works on each one and stacks them up in your processing software (I use Photoshop). I had an HP before it was slow and not as responsive, often times crashing and not working until I restarted the computer. It may just have been that scanner, but once burned, etc. so I looked for something affordable and different. As you know, when a technology has been around for a while it gets less expensive, so this Canon cost just under $100 when my old HP cost probably between $150 and $200. I know that Rapaire bought the same model about a year ago, and though he was able to order it, I think they had discontinued this model. Chances are good that the newer models of the Canon scanners work in a similar way and will have this software. The trick, with whatever scanner you use, is to use the "Professional" or "Advanced," whatever setting is there that lets you adjust and control the outcome. No point in scanning and letting the machine choose if you can do some tweaking and work on the color balance or reduce discoloration from time, etc. SRS |
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Subject: Tech: Efficient Photo Scanning From: Joe Offer Date: 23 Nov 09 - 09:18 PM I work as a volunteer at a women's center in the poor part of Sacramento. The nun who founded the certer is a gifted photographer, and there are (now aging) photographs all over our walls. Today I discovered two bookcases full of photo albums and boxes of photos, and the plan is to have volunteers scan all those photos. Can anybody give advice on how to efficiently scan lots and lots of 4x6 photos? Can I put four on the scanner bed and scan all at once, and get separate JPEG's? Next question - is there a scrapbook Website or somewhere else that I can display these photos more artistically than I can at the usual photo sites? I could create Web pages for that, but it would be nice to have something more artistic than I can manage and if I didn't flood our (free) Website space with too many photos. -Joe- |
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