How to get the best images from your scans

[noclass_nick]

Just wondering how people get the best quality images from your scans. I scan at 600dpi, and im wondering how people turn those into the best quality images by adjusting colours etc

Be good to have guides on such things for photoshop/gimp etc.

[pumanchero]

First of all, you need to know your printer. What I did was to print a color chart like this http://www.pagetutor.com/common/bgcolors1536.png because most of the times a picture looks awesome on the screen but printed it turns out to be too dark.

My scanner software doesn't come with a de-rasterize de-screen option, so I get images with noticeable Moiré pattern most of the time. How do I proceed? here are the steps I take (click to enlarge)


On action


I hope you find these few tips useful.

[noclass_nick]

cheers man, is that for photoshop? any chance you know what that would be on .gimp? lol

[Zalovar]

This is very good information to have, thanks!

[wiggy]

I seriously don't like use of the median tool on these covers because even at its lowest setting (1), you still end up with a blurry image IMO.

@pumanchero - Are you scanning via Photoshop, or with the scanner's included software? 

[kaysow]

that's about the same process i've been using. despeckle is a good tool as well if median is doing too much damage. it really depends on the type of picture/print tho.

this thread, however, reminded me to go back and rescan some pages from my guidebooks in 1200dpi instead of 600-800. been fiddling around a bit today, and decided that the descreening filter built into my epson stylus dx6000 doesn't produce as good results as a bit of manual shopping. scanned with descreening at 600dpi looks totally acceptable, but that's the max for descreening and it has to be reduced to 300 to compare to the sharpness of manual work. better to scan at 1200 and downsize from there. too bad tho that a full-page scan at 1200dpi takes 5-6 minutes =P

@wiggy: photoshop stopped supporting twain capture for some weird reason. now i have to use epson scan and save it to bitmaps before importing into photoshop.

also http://www.thecoverproject.net/forums/index.php?topic=55.0

[wiggy]

Eww, that's shitty.  At which version did they stop?

[kaysow]

i think at cs5-6? fairly recently i guess. it's not all bad tho, this way i can scan 20+ pages in a row without having to worry about a crash or power outage.

[pumanchero]

@pumanchero - Are you scanning via Photoshop, or with the scanner's included software? 

I scan with the twain capture option via Corel Paintshop Pro X, X2 or X3. I can't afford fancy software like photoshop or illustrator and PSP does a pretty good job

[wiggy]

i think at cs5-6? fairly recently i guess. it's not all bad tho, this way i can scan 20+ pages in a row without having to worry about a crash or power outage.

Figured since I'm on 4. Man, that seems like a fucked up option to remove.

@pumanchero - Are you scanning via Photoshop, or with the scanner's included software? 

I scan with the twain capture option via Corel Paintshop Pro X, X2 or X3. I can't afford fancy software like photoshop or illustrator and PSP does a pretty good job

Ah, gotcha.  I was gonna suggest Pshop because IT has all those options within the scan menu, so you don't have to dick around with the scanner software.