General Forum

I wrote up an illustrated tutorial on how to make your scans look like the cards do in hand. Tired of washed out scans, or scans where the scanner has put what seems like a grayish film on each scan? Read this post and see how to fix it in under a minute. http://cardboardhistory.blogspot.com/p/how-to-make-your-scans-look-like-cards.html (It takes me literally 3 seconds to fix those problems)

Cool, Thanks for the info! Let's see if I can do better than this... lol

Excellent info! Thanks.

The part about fixing the crooked scans could save me a lot of re-scanning. I swear, I even line up the card using another card, and the thing still scans crooked. It's one of the reasons I haven't contributed more scans to the site. Believe me, I have a ton of stuff that doesn't have scans yet. Thanks Billy!

Edit: It's more like an addendum - I downloaded the software. And the first thing I tried was the "rotate arbitrary" function. Perfect! No more re-scans! Billy, you rock!!

Thanks for the info Billy.  I bookmarked the page and downloaded the software.  Probably won't get to try it out until this weekend because of work.  I don't have a lot of time to scan so I'm always looking for ways that I can get more done in less time so to speak.

I use Photo! Editor.  Does pretty much the same thing

I received a new HP scanner a few months back due to the fact the old HP printer on it crapped out.   This scanner is not 100% square and it is a pain getting a good scan.  If I had any talent  I would rig up a cardboard jig of some sort and just drop it in.   But I am too lazy and untalented.

My editor of choice is Paint Shop Pro, mostly because that is what I got used to using at work.  It has a wonderful tool for straigtening the scans.  You align a line with a feature of the card (usually the edge of the card, but I've also used lines or boundaries in the card design) and it rotates the image to make that line horizontal or vertical, whichever is closer.  It can be adjusted to .01 of a degree.  Now that I've gotten proficient with the tool, I don't settle for scans that are crooked by more than half a pixel, and it doesn't matter one bit how crooked the initial scan was.  Cards that are not cut straight or square are still frustrating, but that's another story.

 I have, however, given up on trying to make the colors look 'perfect'.  I had a batch of scans that I took the time to get the brightness and contrast just right, but when I viewed them on another machine they were way off.  So if you have any specific suggestions of how I can make my scans look "right" on ALL screens, I'm open to suggestions.

-Tom

And therein lies the rub...your contrast is set to this and mine to that...my monitor is set to gaming and yours to theater...I'm on a Mac and you're on a PC...his brightness is 100 and hers is 50...if it were only that simple for us to all see the same image the same way.

Not to mention that a newer LED scanner gives a very different raw image than an older scanner. I prefer the older scanners but mine is LED. The older scanners that warm up produce a truer white IMHO.

It is a great start though. This site needs more how to guides and probably a wiki of some sort. Basing everything off of the Permissions section is asking a lot. If someone could master scanning chrome and foil and share their success with the rest of us we would be grateful. I edit my scans with Photoshop only because I get it free from work.

NJDevils, sounds like it might need a calibration performed.

NJDevils wrote: I received a new HP scanner a few months back due to the fact the old HP printer on it crapped out.   This scanner is not 100% square and it is a pain getting a good scan.  If I had any talent  I would rig up a cardboard jig of some sort and just drop it in.   But I am too lazy and untalented.