2 Scanners

Monday, December 10, 2012
       cloudy, raining, mild, & slippery
       Montreal, Quebec, Canada, eh!

2 Scanners

Introduction

     Sometimes, I never know what I'll be writing.  I already added a post today about the "Blur-Sharpen-Smudge" tool in Photoshop. On my other blog about old toys, I was writing about an old April 1927 Butler Brothers catalog from the U.S.A. The catalog is a cornucopia of information, and a real history lesson about what merchandise there was at that time.

    The catalog is 9.5" (W) x 13.5" (H)   or  242mm x 343mm. I was using my Epson V700 scanner, which is an excellent flatbed scanner even for film. The problem is that it only scans about 8.5" x 11"( 212mm x 280mm).  What I have to do is scan the catalog pages in 2 scans, then splice them together in Photoshop. IfI was to scan all 442 pages for presentation to someone who had a Butler catalog site, that would take a long time!

   So, just on a whim, I went to Business Depot (Rest of Canada)  or Bureau en Gros "en Francais" (French) or Staples in the U.S.A. They only had 1 model that could scan 11" x 17" (280mm x422) and that was a Brother all-in-one.. I ask the salesperson if he can scan a page frommy catalog and he can't - the printer is not wired for use. That's nice!  What are these there for - to decorate the store?

  Well, so much for that idea. I come home, and my wife comes home later after having seen a play with her friend. I tell her the story, and she tells me that she has an 11" x 17" Brother all-in-one scanner-fax-printer-copier. I won't tell you what she said to me in fun about my not knowing she had one!

  Naturally, I had to do a test to see just how the Brother all-in-one compared to my Epson.  

Price-wise, the Brother costs about $ 250.00 Canadian, while my Epson costs $ 750.00 Canadian.

The Scans

I took 2 scans for comparison. One is from a page of the Butler Catalog, and the other is of my  sped wonderful dog Buddy. I've placed the 2 scans side-by-side,and I'll let you decide what you think. For myself, either scanner can do the job, but for $ 250.00 Canadian, the Brother can do 4 things. As for the quality, I'll let you be the judge.

The 2 Scans Completed With Photoshop Adjustments.

1. Splice for Epson

2. Reduce from 600 dpi to 300 dpi

3. Sharpen

4. Colour-balance

5. Shadow-highlights

Straightforward Scans - Cropped and Reduced to 300 DPi and a File Size Just Below 5 MB

The 2 Scans Completed with Photoshop Adjustments.

1. Splice for Epson
2. Reduce from 600 dpi to 300 dpi
3. Sharpen
4. Colour-balance
5. Shadow-highlights
6.Reduction of colour noise

Tight Cropping for More Detail

     The file sizes are small, but you can click on any photo to enlarge it for a closer inspection. If anyone out there had 2 scanners similar to mine, send me the finished files at about 5 MB each, and I'll add them to this post.  

   For the overall quality (for posting) either scanner would do. While I was looking on the Net, I found that there are all kinds of scanners at all kinds of prices. THere are wide-format scanners that you feed. There are museum scanners that are like the old copy stands that photograph from the vertical position.  Those 2 types of scanners are not inexpensive, and can cost a lot. What's interesting though is that most scanners that will scan documents or artwork or large-sized posters scan at maximum resolutions up to 600 dpi. I'll have to check some more on that. They will "extrapolate" via a computer program to larger file sizes and DPI's but all that is done mathematically by what are called algorithms, rather than the actual lens and scanning elements.

So that's all for today.

Have a nice day,

Stacey