» Scan Tutorial [ REGULAR SCANS ]

PROGRAMS USED
For scanning:
- PhotoBase // download demo
- Scanner: CanoScan N1240U (Canon)
For editing:
Paint Shop Pro 8.0 // download demo

Before Scanning

Everthing under A4 and of course DIN A4 included I'm considering as regular cuz it usually only requires to scan a page once, exception is a double page picture for which you have to do 2 individual scans and later join them together - there's a lot of editing in that process which is kind of complicated to explain. If you have any questions about that, then don't hesitate to ask me.

Open PhotoBase or whatever program you are using for scanning images.
Assuming you have found a great photo you want to scan in a magazine, put a black paper/sheet or whatever behind the page where the pic is located - that way the text on the other side of the page won't shimmer through.

Correctly aline the page to the edges of the scanner. Now, so that the page won't rotate and so that the black borders won't appear on the side I'm putting some weight on the mag at the edges - this is especially important for double page scans, there you are going to need a lot of weight when you are not ripping out the pages out of the mags like me. I could never destroy those beauties. :)

 

 

The Scan Process

Now start scanning, I'm using normally a resolution of 200dpi but for celebs or any subjects I like I'm going for 250dpi. If the photo is not A4 size or full page I'm using between 300 and 360dpi. To the left you can see a preview scan of my scan. I'm normally not doing preview scans, just when I want to find out what size the mag has so I can crop the scan size a bit which I'm doing here. Now scan the whole cropped thing - it takes my scanner around 1-2 minutes to scan at such a resolution. The resulting scan is automatically archived in my PhotoBase album, automatically labeled with the scan date and a number.

 

 

The Editing

Open the scan you just created in Paint Shop Pro, the image now is 2126x2750 pixels huge.
First crop the image so that it looks perfectly isolated.

If you find any scratches or dust you should get rid of them now before resizing the image.
For small scratches I'm using the Scratch Remover tool which you can find in the tools under Clone Brush. For bigger parts that need editing I'm using the Clone Brush function. I'm using that as well when I need to reconstruct parts or when I'm joining double page scans together.

Here's an extract of the image before and after the Scratch Remover was applied:

 

Now go to > Adjust > Add/Remove Noise > Edge Preserving Smooth

I usually have the "Amount of Smoothing" set to 4, but just play around until you are satisfied. The process usually takes a few seconds, my pc crashes so often when I'm editing scans. You can see an extract of what the tool does to the left by enlarging the thumbnail. See the difference? The image is a lot smoother.

 

Now resize the image - at an original scan size of over 2000 pixels width, I'm usually resizing the image to 1500 pixels. Feel free to sharpen the image if the smoothing effect has taken the sharpness out. And that's about everything there is to know about my scan technique.