Topic: Scanning photos (Read 4401 times)

benn600 · « **on:** July 16, 2007, 02:41:34 pm »

We've got over 30 thousand photos/slides/etc of photographs I need to get scanning in.

Would anyone doing this project recommend buying a nice, moderately priced scanner before hand? We have 3 scanners but one is ancient and the other two were under $100. I was looking at a nice $300 Microtek I think it was. Epson has a nice one at $400. I need to get it ordered asap so it will force me to get started.

GHammer · « **Reply #1 on:** July 18, 2007, 12:06:09 am »

Quote from: benn600 on July 16, 2007, 02:41:34 pm

We've got over 30 thousand photos/slides/etc of photographs I need to get scanning in.

If you have slides and negatives, a slide/negative scanner is the way to go. Much nicer than scanning prints.

KingSparta · « **Reply #2 on:** July 18, 2007, 05:17:52 am »

is there a Auto Scanner?

Mr ChriZ · « **Reply #3 on:** July 18, 2007, 06:03:19 am »

The Canon LIDE scanners are quite good.

JONCAT · « **Reply #4 on:** July 18, 2007, 08:12:33 am »

The model one up from Canon mp600, the mp800?, has a slide/negative scanner built-in. And you can do a simple mod the get CD printing working.

DC

benn600 · « **Reply #5 on:** July 18, 2007, 09:38:41 am »

I'm not interested in printing. Just scanning.

KingSparta · « **Reply #6 on:** July 18, 2007, 10:16:36 am »

none of them are auto scanners with self feed.

i looked at some companies but they want too much money.

benn600 · « **Reply #7 on:** July 18, 2007, 04:04:13 pm »

I'm not after an auto feeder. Where would anyone get the idea that I was after an auto feeder. Did I ever say "auto feeder" anywhere? I didn't even know they half existed...I would want to clean off every photo myself...hmm..

KingSparta · « **Reply #8 on:** July 18, 2007, 04:22:22 pm »

Quote

Where would anyone get the idea that I was after an auto feeder.

I Want One

I Have Too many Pictures

benn600 · « **Reply #9 on:** July 18, 2007, 07:53:17 pm »

It seems like it just wouldn't do a good enough job, though. Oh well, it would be a heck of a lot quicker and easier. I even know some people who want me to scan in a ton of photos/slides for them.

hit_ny · « **Reply #10 on:** July 19, 2007, 06:05:00 am »

Quote from: benn600 on July 18, 2007, 07:53:17 pm

It seems like it just wouldn't do a good enough job, though. Oh well, it would be a heck of a lot quicker and easier. I even know some people who want me to scan in a ton of photos/slides for them.

..yeah much faster, given the amount you have to begin with, provided you triage for same sizes. Might well work out cheaper to do yourself, but once done, the equipment is redundant, as presumably, everything is digital nowadays for you.

Have you given any thought to what format you would save in and resolution ?

..ideas anyone ?

benn600 · « **Reply #11 on:** July 19, 2007, 10:17:11 am »

My aunt has this huge, ongoing project for her town she grew up in. She does it right because she borrows photos from tons of people. She keeps psd files so she has all the information...bmp would work as well.

I personally would be happy with jpg files at 100% and a reasonable resolution. I find it tough to justify more than 3-5 MB per photo considering my nice digital camera only takes about that. Why would ancient photos be more important or better. And besides, I don't anticipate heavy usage. We might look through them once or twice but after that, ... and 30K files, lol.

I need to get going on this...it's just mind boggling how much time it will take.

hit_ny · « **Reply #12 on:** July 19, 2007, 10:50:55 am »

I take it she uses a scanner thats worth a lot more than $400 then

newsposter · « **Reply #13 on:** July 19, 2007, 12:25:14 pm »

Whatevery you do, get VueScan from www.hamrick.com as your software. It's well worth the $80 price.

Much superior to the 'free' stuff that gets bundled with most scanners.

It will even support an older scanner that may not have support under XP or Vista.

Scanner hardware hasn't changed so much the past 5 years. It's the desire of mfgrs to keep selling hardware that drives their decision to issue updated and/or bug-fix drivers. VueScan fixes all of that.

Matt · « **Reply #14 on:** July 19, 2007, 04:50:41 pm »

Media Center can acquire from a scanner. Click "Camera" in the Action Window.

benn600 · « **Reply #15 on:** July 19, 2007, 05:20:59 pm »

Obviously I wouldn't use anything other than Photoshop--even Photoshop Elements. There's a reason it's known as the best image software.

KingSparta · « **Reply #16 on:** July 19, 2007, 05:53:10 pm »

Quote from: Matt on July 19, 2007, 04:50:41 pm

Media Center can acquire from a scanner. Click "Camera" in the Action Window.

Yes, but it does not crop the image so you are left with a huge image of your scanner cover, and the picture.

it also does not have any image enhancements like

1. Auto Correct
a, Dust and scrach removal
b. restore faded color
2. No Red Eye
3. Lighten/darken
4. Sharpen
5. Color Adjustments

Etc...

JimH · « **Reply #17 on:** July 19, 2007, 06:37:29 pm »

Right click on the image after it's imported and choose Edit Image.

benn600 · « **Reply #18 on:** July 19, 2007, 06:48:00 pm »

Of course in my experience, even though auto adjustments make the picture look nicer, it is not necessarily a good idea at all. The point is to save as close to the original document as possible. I was thinking of auto correction because the pictures look MUCH better. However, I did realize that I was losing a lot of originality...just like auto adjusting the volume on CD tracks for FLAC storage--you're defeating the purpose of storing the full quality version.

KingSparta · « **Reply #19 on:** July 19, 2007, 07:04:50 pm »

Jim I tried that, i found the edit image in MC12 harder to use than other programs that have auto crop (like CPIC, Pain Shop Pro, etc...), and they also allow the user to then resize the crop on all 4 sides.

Quote

The point is to save as close to the original document as possible.

It depends on the picture.

I have some images not saved on Kodak film, and they were taken over 25 years ago, they have turned colors. The scan program that came with my HP Office Jet Pro L7780 on these images does a good job when correcting these images. The other images are fine and need no correction so auto correction can be turned off if the user wishes.

I don't have Photoshop and i am sure it is better, but i also don't have a chest of gold to drag down to best buy for it. I am lucky my wife did not yell at me when i bought a new chair to set in.

skeeterfood · « **Reply #20 on:** July 19, 2007, 07:59:00 pm »

I've never used them, but http://www.scanmyphotos.com/ seems like a pretty good deal if you're not looking for fine art quality. They scan at 300dpi for their bulk scans. I was going to use them for a family reunion slide show, but not enough people sent me photos, so it was easier to just use my Cannon MP600. BTW, the MP600 does a great job for on-screen or DVD slide show sized scans and it has a very nice feature that lets you scan multiple small photos at one time and auto-crops them and saves them as separate files.

-John

marko · « **Reply #21 on:** July 20, 2007, 04:40:05 am »

Quote from: Matt on July 19, 2007, 04:50:41 pm

Media Center can acquire from a scanner. Click "Camera" in the Action Window.

Custom, sequential filenaming options are also conspicuous by their abscence.

I've still to test it, but the "action window > cancel acquire > action window is broken" is allegedly fixed now. Apart from that, here are some more scanning things:

Quote from: marko

The introduction of the Now() function has caused me to revisit a subject from my still maintained, but not often posted, wish list.

When acquiring from scanner (using the 'Camera' feature in the action window)

The progress window header reads "acquiring from camera"

There are no options to control what's going on. The drop down menu lists the clipboard, my Epson 4490, and a "generic scanner"
I choose the 4490, and the scanner fires into action and scans the image. The problem for me here is that the resulting image includes the entire bed of the scanner...

If I use the "Get from scanner" function to associate art with an audio file, the scanner's twain interface launches with nice MC skinning, and the scanned image is automatically cropped to include just the image, not the entire bed of the scanner. It seems odd that using the scanner options available under "Acquire" in the the action window doesn't work in the same way.

If I use the Cancel button on the twain dialogue, MC doesn't recognise this and it kind of breaks the action window functionality until MC is restarted.

It would seem that we can only use now() in the path options. It does not work when used as a filename for scanned images.
This is why I asked about time tokens in the Now() thread.
The information must be included in the raw data, because if I just use \now()\ in the path, different folders are created. Each of these folders come from seperate scans all made inside 40 seconds...

If the tokens were available via formatdate(), we could make [filename (friendly)] type formats for folder names at least, and development willing, file names too.
If it came to pass that acquiring from scanner via the action window (which to me, could well be a popular past-time), were to start using the twain interface it would be nice if MC would also support the twain feature that allows multiple photos to be scanned at one time.

thanks for reading,
-marko.

Alex B · « **Reply #22 on:** July 20, 2007, 05:30:18 am »

I too have the same situation. I have several thousand 35mm slides that I need to scan. I have a 10-year old 2700 dpi Polaroid film scanner, but it is not as good as the latest models. Possibly I should buy a new 35 mm film scanner while they still exist. However, since I am not using 35 mm film anymore perhaps a high end flatbed would be a better choice. It could be used for other tasks too.

Here are a few scanner review links that I have recently checked out:

http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/scanners_page.htm
http://www.imaging-resource.com/SCAN1.HTM
http://www.popphoto.com/digitalscanners/

KingSparta · « **Reply #23 on:** July 20, 2007, 05:37:20 am »

Quote

it has a very nice feature that lets you scan multiple small photos at one time and auto-crops them and saves them as separate files.

That is a nice option

dcwebman · « **Reply #24 on:** July 20, 2007, 09:27:23 am »

Quote from: skeeterfood on July 19, 2007, 07:59:00 pm

I've never used them, but http://www.scanmyphotos.com/ seems like a pretty good deal if you're not looking for fine art quality.

Thanks for that info. I have decided I'm going totally digital because I'm getting tired of lugging about 10 photo albums around whenever I move and then finding a place to store them. The price they charge is pretty cheap considering the amount of time it would take me to scan all mine.

KingSparta · « **Reply #25 on:** July 20, 2007, 01:35:27 pm »

Quote

I have decided I'm going totally digital

I had the same thought, but My wife would not fit into my scanner

marko · « **Reply #26 on:** July 20, 2007, 02:33:32 pm »

Now that's funny!!!

KingSparta · « **Reply #27 on:** July 20, 2007, 03:07:39 pm »

I found a program "VueScan" that will pull my picture from my Document feeder and scan it, not working too good however. It scans one image and then stops, so not working as i would like.

I would like a program to batch scan photoes from my document feeder.

Any Ideas?

hit_ny · « **Reply #28 on:** July 20, 2007, 03:13:38 pm »

Quote from: newsposter on July 19, 2007, 12:25:14 pm

Whatevery you do, get VueScan from www.hamrick.com as your software. It's well worth the $80 price.

Much superior to the 'free' stuff that gets bundled with most scanners.

It will even support an older scanner that may not have support under XP or Vista.

Scanner hardware hasn't changed so much the past 5 years. It's the desire of mfgrs to keep selling hardware that drives their decision to issue updated and/or bug-fix drivers. VueScan fixes all of that.

we got a resident expert here

KingSparta · « **Reply #29 on:** July 20, 2007, 05:50:27 pm »

VueScan works in batch mode using the document feeder but the image has streaks thru it no matter of the settings.

it also does not auto adjust the image to make sure the picture is straight, and then crop the image properly.

anyone else have a suggestion?

JimH · « **Reply #30 on:** July 20, 2007, 06:24:05 pm »

Does it have streaks when you scan with another program?

KingSparta · « **Reply #31 on:** July 20, 2007, 07:12:12 pm »

it only has streaks when using the document feeder with that program, when using from flatbed it works fine.

this could be one of the few areas where MC can improve (scanning photos) so users can add, clean, adjust there images and send them to Pix01.com

P.S.

My contractor is almost done with my new computer room (next week sometime). the room is 12 feet by 16 feet had to knock down a wall. Also the door was a bit small to get my new suede couch (a pull out bed) so we had to rip the door and the door frame out today Put the couch in and install a new door and frame, and a french european door knob. I guess i should have picked a smaller couch.

KingSparta · « **Reply #32 on:** July 22, 2007, 08:17:12 am »

I just found Out The HP Scanning Software Will Allow Me To Scan A Flatbed Full of Images And Save Them As Individual Files.

INTERACT FORUM

Author Topic: Scanning photos (Read 4401 times)

JONCAT