Scanning cards.
If your card is in a plastic display bag then remove this as it
creates unwanted reflections.
If your card has 3D items on it, such as ribbon, that may be
squashed by the scanner lid then leave the lid open and put a
sheet of white paper over the card instead.
If you are going to show your card on the Internet then you want
to keep the file size as small as possible. Therefore it is worth
spending a little time finding out how to control the size of your
scans.
When you start your scanner software you will be presented with
a settings box something like the one below. You can change the
size of the resulting scan by changing the resolution setting.
This will usually be a drop down box with numbers ranging from 50
to 9600 dpi. A good resolution for images to be published on the
Internet is 72 dpi (dots per inch).
You will usually be able to do a preview scan to see if you have
your card square on the scanner.
When you have done a preview scan you should be able to select
the exact area you want to scan by drawing a box around the card
with your mouse. To do this place our mouse cursor on the top left
of the area you want to select. Press the left mouse button and
drag it down to the bottom right. This will draw a box around the
area you want to select. Release the mouse button. The result is
shown in the picture below.
There are other settings you can change and the best way to find
out about these is to click on your scanner's help file. If you
are not used to the software then look for "Automatic mode"
or "Default settings".
When you are happy with the settings click the scan button.
Saving your picture.
When your picture has been scanned the next step is to save it
to your computer. Reference to your software help file will
explain the various options available. If you are using MS Windows
based software you will select "File" and then "Save
As" from the drop-down list. You should then get input boxes
for File name and Format similar to the illustration below. The
format entry box should have a drop down list. Choose JPEG
(*.jpg).
If you have followed the above steps your card picture should be
suitable for sending to the Reader's Gallery. However, you might
decide to make some changes by using photo retouching software.
Picture editing.
The kind of thing you can do with photo retouching is change the
image size, adjust the contrast and brightness, trim off unwanted
background, rotate the picture to straighten it, remove colour
casts and apply a filter to sharpen it.
It is worth checking if you got any free photo retouch software
when you purchased your scanner or digital camera.
Before you start retouching your picture it is worth making a
copy so that if you do not like the changes you can go back to the
original.
If you have very basic image editing software you can remove
unwanted background by copying the part of the picture you want
and pasting it into a new picture. See your software help file for
instructions on copy and paste. Or if your image editing software
has a command called "Crop" then this is the one to use.
If you want to purchase a good image-editing program then I can
recommend Adobe Photoshop Elements. This sells for about £50
in high street computer shops such as
PC World. This can do
useful tasks automatically, such as rotating an image to get it
square and enhancing the picture with auto-contrast. It has a
special setting for saving pictures for the web where you can
choose the best combination of file size compared with quality,
this is shown in before and after pictures.
You will find a low cost image editing program called Satori
PhotoXL at http://www.satoripaint.com.
The last time I looked you were able to download a copy for £6.99
(9.95$) plus sales tax if applicable.
David, 19 January 2004
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