Site Forum

I just looked through the Site Forum posts for 2016 and couldn't find a thread regarding adding images. Thought we might want to review this, as I have been looking at the Crop Help queue a little more often recently and noticed some issues.

1st - please scan big. Bigger, the better. Easier to crop. And don't allow your scanner to auto crop or set the image size to be 2.5" x 3.5" - if you don't have the card perfect, it will be "incomplete". It's better to not crop off enough that to crop off too much. (Just as in cutting wood, you can always take a little more off, you can never add an inch of wood back on!)

2nd - please remove the cards from sleeves, top loaders, and/or pages. It clouds the image and reduces the quality of the image drastically.

3rd - please make sure your scan is straight and not crooked. One of our top members (Billy Kingsley) has recommended using PhotoScape (freeware) for fixing your images. I downloaded it earlier this year and it's been amazing. Cards sometimes spin on the scanner, and this software can adjust (to a certain extent).

Here are the Image Guidelines: http://www.tradingcarddb.com/ImageGuidelines.cfm

And the FAQ page: http://www.tradingcarddb.com/FAQ.cfm?ITEM=ScanningCards

And even though, it's on the FAQ page, here is Billy's tutorial on using PhotoScape and making the cards look like they do in your hand: http://cardboardhistory.blogspot.com/p/how-to-make-your-scans-look-like-cards.html

Please, follow these tips, and you'll find your scans being posted much quicker. Thank you!

Dan,

Always a good reminder / refresher for all members.  But I will say that I just scanned and uploaded an independent league set and about a third of the cards were poorly cut therefore the images look like a bad scan job when it is actually the card itself.  I also found this when I was scanning all of my older O Pee Chee cards; O Pee Chee were notorious for their poor cutting jobs.  Just saying sometimes it is not the scanner, it is the card itself.  I rather have an image (of decent quality) than no image at all.  As for scanning inside plastic pages, Admin had rejected a member's submissions for exactly that reason.

Bruno

I hear this! My 'wasting time in front of the game' scanning right now is 80s OpeeChee stickers. You think they would have, out of dumb luck at the least, cut one of them straight and centred!

Currenlty, I have been going back over many of my earlier scans and  cropping them correctly. For some reason when I put  these out many years ago, I had a much more difficult time cropping than I do now.  Also, I wanted to bump this back to the top as it is important.

Before I download Photoscape, can anyone tell me if this will allow to me scan/crop those awful  cards with 4 rounded "corners"?

Yes. You can do anything with it. Not a single one of my scans posted has not been edited with photoscape

....and the link to the Photoscape everybody is using IS:    ??????

Thanks, ~BOB~

photoscape.org

Allow Google to be your friend. :) (Or Bing, or maybe even Yahoo...)

http://www.photoscape.org/ps/main/index.php is the home page

http://www.photoscape.org/ps/main/download.php is the page to actually get the application

I had other software before this that could fix colors/brightness and crop, but nothing to adjust for cards that would rotate on the glass. This is the timesaver of the year (decade?).

   I feel somewhat negligent in not adding much of anything to the database. I've pretty much concentrated on: 1] adding my cards (that is endless) to the database.  2] offering and accepting trades as well as sell/buy and of course 3] post suggestions and comments to members. 

   I recently thought about elevating my level past 6 to 7 [or 8 if possible] by scanning needed images. Therefore I remember Billy mentioning Photoscape, and many members downloading it and quite pleased with it. So to keep it simple,  I downloaded it but really a novice in using photo editor programs. I probably wouldn't use a program except for the TCDB, sooooo can anybody give me a quick, brief tutorial using it  tailored for the TCDB.

Thanks, ~BOB~