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More of a pointless rant than a question.....but maybe someone has a better system.

I'm scanning some cards for the '91 Topps Desert Storm "Glossy" set. The cards are actually really nice for an extremely overproduced and inexpensive set. They are much like other Tiffany sets from Topps; thick white card stock; high gloss; and, in the case of this set, a watermark on the card back. All-in-all, a well produced set of cards.

My scanning issue concerns the watermark on the back. Here's a scan of the back of a card done by Billy. BTW...I consider Billy to be one of best scanners on TCDB. His scans are routinely perfect. And my apologies to the other "Top 10" point members...but I think he's "best in class".

Notice the "Desert Storm" watermark on the back. Billy did a good job of reproducing the watermark in this scan. I initially thought the colors were a little over saturated because the reds and blues of the non-watermark elements are a little too intense. Not a big deal, it's still a great scan. Then I scanned one. This is what I got with my scanner set to 300 DPI and default "photo" settings.

I was not able to reproduce the watermark. The blues, reds and white of the card stock are pretty accurate in my scan. However, without the watermark, it is not an accurate depiction of the card in hand. Now I thought I understand why Billy's scan appears just a little over saturated (again, not being critical...Billy is the scan master IMHO). I then went into GiMP, my image editing software, and tried to reproduce what Billy was able to achieve. I couldn't do it no matter what I did. Then I went all-in and tried to reproduce an accurate image in Nikon Capture NX2 (a lot more power than GiMP but more difficult to use). Still couldn't do it. 

I played with my limited scanner settings until finally I was able to reproduce an accurate image. Unfortunately, I have to scan at 1200 DPI which takes about 4 minutes per scan. Then I have to resize the image because they are nearly 3MB in size.   A lot of time to get to this:

Is there an easier way? Anyone have experience with watermarks? 

BTW...Nigel Taylor was also able to reproduce the watermark for the UK set, but I think that set is on different paper stock.

Just a thought, send them to Billy.

Joshua, that's funny.....even funnier because I actually thought about it.

I was just reading about that scanner. It's one of PC Mag's "10 best" for 2018. I think I'm adding a new scanner to my Christmas list. It will either be the Epson V550 or V39.

I'm currently using a cheap HP all-in-one and it is just not up to the task.

i love my V550

I appreciate all the praise. I've been offline most of the day and this is a pleasent thing to come on to. I suggest adjusting the colors in PhotoScape as I discuss in the post linked in my signature. The washout problem you are having is commonplace, it occurs on every scan. Fixing it is a literal two second, two click process in PhotoScape.

My scanning software has a setting (checkbox) for "Descreening" - when I put a check in that box, it takes the scanner much longer to scan, but the colors and images are close to perfect. Very little PhotoScape needed (except to rotate).

Billy...I'm afraid that for me it is not a post-processing issue.  I even used my Nikon software to try and manipulate the image. My scanner is not picking up the background image at 300 dpi. The other colors are perfect and card-in-hand looks exactly like the card on my screen....except the darn background. Bumping my scanning resolution to 1200 dpi works....but is super slow. My scanner has very little software support and limited options for scan settings other than dpi.

Both CAD and Dan mention scanner settings and I remember being able to manipulate the settings on scanners I've had in the past. Can't do that with the one I have now. It's more of a printer that also scans. I think I need a dedicated scanner before I continue.

Plus if you take a look at this thread, I would like some kind of resolution before I continue uploading scans. I already spent a weekend submitting IRs to remove incorrect images from this set. I don't want to do it again. So I'm going to stop uploading images to the Desert Storm set for the time being.