General Forum

Now I just have to remember... when scanning 8 cards at once, be sure to "save as" instead of "save" after cropping each card. It beats having to rescan the cards. LOL

Congrats! I make copies of the image...check out the tutorial in my signature, it explains how I've been doing it. I can do both sides of a nine card scan in about a minute and a half if I put my mind to it (a major rarity, lol!)

I'm a slow poke ........... one card at a time, front then back. Not good at multiples so stick with the individual method. LOL Oh and congrats on Rookie status.

Rookie Scanning mistakes, volume 372:

I've made tons of mistakes while scanning/cropping. I have also tried several methods of scanning: in pages, out of pages, 8 at a time (horizontal, because 9 doesn't fit), 6 at a time, 4 at a time, 2 at a time, and singles. I've saved, saved as, made copies, and overwritten really nicely partially rotated and cropped scans that hadn't been uploaded yet (and therefore needed to be rescanned. I've had some that were off the scanning area, and didn't realize it until after I went to "fix" it and had to rescan. Before finally breaking down and downloading Photoscape, I had "guide" cards on the scanner bed to align the card to be scanned (so they would be straight and not look like some the monstrosities we see on here).

Method that seems to work best for me after about 4 years of scanning for this site:

1. Lay single card on scanner bed.
2. Scan it - full page - with lid closed (to get white background)
3. Open up the image in Photoscape
4. Crop with about a half inch of white around it
5. Use the "leveling" tool to get it squared up
6. Crop to the edges of the card
7. Make any necessary brightness corrections to ensure image looks like the card in-hand
8. Save file (no need to worry about Save As)

This is what is working best for me after all the different attempts at "saving time" by scanning multiples. Turns out, that the scanner only takes a couple seconds to scan a full page, but the time is really being taken in the alignment and cropping process. So, scanning more than one image at atime sves me no time, in fact it takes extra time to "save as" because then I have to type in a name for the image. I don't save my scans (Billy), so I don't care what the names are once they've been uploaded because I just delete them. I honestly don't know how fast (or slow) this method is. All I know is it goes quicker overall (less mistakes, less rescans, less typing of filenames [if any], and because my scanning software auto-names the files with a number in sequence of the scans, as long as I scan front before back, the files show up in order when I go to upload them, unlike when I name a card with front or back [or f and b]).

As I always say, try several methods of your own and see what works best for you. I was one of the holdouts of downloading "free" software because I was unsure of what it would do to my system. I now have installed Photoscape on several machines, and can assure you (if you get it from a reliable source) that it will not load your machine with adware or anything else. It really is a great piece of software and it is completely free. [And I have nothing to do with the company that puts it out.] Happy scanning!

After a while of putting it off, I downloaded Photoscape about a month ago.  I tried doing the 9 cards at a time, but found it took me even longer than to just do one card at a time lined up on the scanner.  I was spending a ton of time rotating the card and I really was having a tough time deciding if the card was straight or not each time.  

I am now one at a time, crop using the scan program (it has a grey tint to the crop area making it a lot easier to see the card edges than the one in photoscape) and then I use Photoscape to adjust the contrast and darken.  I found this to be much much faster than doing 9 at a time.  

I should have been using Photoscape a long time ago because the images look WAY better after the adjustment.  I actually don't have any cards left to scan right now though, but I am sure that will change soon.  

I could type what Dan did word for word except for one ........... Photoscape. I was already using Google's program Picasa 3. Sound so much alike it hurts. Other than that all literally identical.

I'm old school. I use Ulead Photoimpact. Super easy to use.

awesome points

Oh yes. One card at a time. Wouldn't dream of trying to crop multiple cards. Way beyond my pay grade. And I'm a "playmaker."

v3