Legal Size Scanner thread. 48 48

[DavidTheDavid]

have you tried scanning with the lid up? preferably in a dark room

 

I've tried with my 8300, with lid up but not room dark. I'll dry darkened room to see if that makes a difference. Lid up has not reduced glare for me.

[VintageComics]

Flipping the book upside down will also change the way the glare looks.

 

For whatever reason, it's the way the light moves along the book while it's scanning that creates the glare, and sometimes changing direction makes it look better.

 

You generally get what you pay for and for an affordable scanner there are going to be some drawbacks compared to a much more expensive scanner.

 

 

[Indrid_Cold]

A couple years back I bought an inexpensive Epson Perfection v30.

Unfortunagely It cannot do legal size, so I have to scan the slab twice to get the whole thing, then merge the 2 images using photoshop.

But I only do a handful of slab scans a month max, so its no big deal.

The good thing is that this scanner is the CCD image sensor type so it has no problem focusing on the comic. I believe the CIS image sensor types have more issues with blur and glare due to the slabs inner and outter wells.

 

Here is an example of my cheapo scanner , lid up, in a dark room.

I probably used photoshop to knock down the brightness a couple of clicks, and upped the contrast a few clicks.

Label looks a bit out of focus, but no glare on the comic.

At some point I may spring for a legal size scanner with a CCD image sensor so I don't have to deal with image splicing

 

 

 

[VintageComics]

I've mentioned this a few times and believe that Epson make one of the best scans for comics.

 

From what I understand they are expensive though (last time I looked, which was a long time ago).

 

From what I remember, they also have a tendency to misrepresent darker pages making even the slightest foxing, tanning or shadows look worse than they really are but on the flip side, most books look amazing when scanned by an Epson.

 

 

[BlowUpTheMoon]

hp scanjet 7400

 

$2.50 purchase from Goodwill. Plus a couple bucks for a generic power supply via eBay.

 

No glare. The colors are mostly accurate; the dark background looks a bit washed out.

 

 

 

[Indrid_Cold]

legal size scanner that uses CCD for $2.50?

 

Thanks for the tip, I'm definitely going to be hitting up the Goodwill (and similair) stores this weekend! I'd rather not have to deal with splicing images.

[bffnut]

Hey guys!

 

So I picked up the HP 8250 and really like it. But I'm having a tough time using the adjustments. I have to adjust because if I don't, they're dull and blurry. Roy illustrated this early in this thread.

 

I've played with the Brightness and Contrast. Here's where I'm having issues. If you look at the scans in my sig, the books themselves always come out pretty detailed. It's the CGC Labels that aren't coming out as sharp. Do you guys that have this scanner do the "Preview" first, then crop the image and do your adjustments, then scan? I'm probably doing this completely wrong and just figured I'd ask.

 

I'm sure this is in this thread somewhere. Just didn't know if someone had some great Default settings they could share!

 

Justin,

 

I bought this same scanner a month or so ago. I used it to scan the Preacher 9.8 that you bought from me. I'm not at home at the moment to look at my settings, but I use Paint to scan the comics. You make a custom settings for DPI, Contrast and Brightness. Someone did post their settings in this thread, and I used those.

 

When I open Paint, I click on the menu, select "from scanner or camera", select the 8250, click custom setting, make the adjustments, then select "scan" (not preview). With the scanned slab now in paint, I crop it and save it in JPEG. It will default to PNG, but I find these files to be larger and thus longer to upload to photobucket and the registry.

 

Hope this helps.

[bffnut]

Here you go, Justin:

 

Ok, heres the first scan.

 

Windows paint, DPI 200, Default Brightness and Contrast

 

 

Way too dark, it is a white book.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Second scan

 

DPI 300, Brightness 800, Contrast 300

 

 

Too Bright

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Third scan

 

DPI 300, Brightness 600, contrast 200

 

 

Better

[HarveySwick]

 

Thanks SO much Jim!! I will definitely give it a try this weekend!!

 

Thanks again for the help! (thumbs u

[BlowUpTheMoon]

[HarveySwick]

Ok, so my wild and crazy Saturday evening consisted of playing with Scanner settings.

 

Here are the results:

 

I tried scanning through Microsoft Paint first since I'd never done that before. I tried Hado's recommended "Better" settings. Then I tweaked it a bit and ended up with:

 

DPI 300, Brightness 500, Contrast 400

 

 

But I honestly found that scanning directly from the HP program worked best and that Microsoft Paint had this sort of fogginess to the scans. I put the slab on the flatbed, then hit the second from the left button (small woman in a dress) which brings up the HP controls. There is one thing I liked about the Microsoft Paint settings is that it automatically crops the scan for you while on the HP control panel you have to do it yourself which can be a pain if you're trying to get identical sized scans.

 

From there I played around forever with the Brightness/Contrast.

 

Here's what I like:

 

300 DPI, Brightness 60, Contrast 90.

I also tried with the cover down (which is how I scanned everything so far) then tried Ryan's recommendation of the cover up. I think I like it ALOT more.

 

Thoughts?

 

 

 

[Indrid_Cold]

I prefer lid up, that's how I've always done it

[thunsicker]

I prefer lid up, that's how I've always done it

 

I prefer lid up as well. But the women in the house are always getting on my case.

[HarveySwick]

Do you guys think that's a good Brightness / Contrast setting?

[VintageComics]

Do you guys think that's a good Brightness / Contrast setting?

 

The book looks great in the second pic, but the question is which one more closely resembles the actual book?

 

That should be the goal.

 

 

[HarveySwick]

I mean the book glows like that so I guess it's pretty accurate. How do you think I find my way around the room... I just hold up my Hulk #181...

[VintageComics]

I mean the book glows like that so I guess it's pretty accurate. How do you think I find my way around the room... I just hold up my Hulk #181...

 

Nice!

[HarveySwick]

[Indrid_Cold]

Your " lid up " example looks really good to me! I'd be happy with that scan, but the graphics pros around here may be able to identify further possible improvement that my simple eyes are missing.

[ItsJustRyan]

Lid up looks better in a side by side comparison - I really don't know what my default brightness/contrast settings are set at currently. I always manually adjust them using PrintShop 10 (for Mac) after the fact.

 

Looks good HS (thumbs u