Scanning Photo Basics

Course Summary
Learn the best methods for scanning a photo into your PC.

This course will get you up and running with your scanner and show you how to get the
best-quality results for scanning and sharing your photos online.

In this course, you’ll learn how to:

 Get your scanner to work.

 Get the best possible image scans.
 Calibrate your monitor so that it renders your scanned images as accurately as
possible.
 Edit your scanned photos.
 Apply special effects to your photos.
 Scan text.
 Prepare your scanned photos for the Web.

Lesson 1: Choosing a scanner

Explore how a scanner works and what determines its quality.

Welcome to Scanning Photos 101

So you finally bought yourself a scanner and have big plans to scan treasured photos
and share them with your friends and family online. What do you need to know?

This course will get you up and running with your scanner and show you how to get the
best quality results, plus tips on how to share your photos on the Web or over e-mail.
Before we dig in, let’s review how a scanner works.

A scanner works by passing a bright light across an image. The light from that image
reflects on rows of mirrors. The mirrors send the light to a charge-coupled device
(CCD), which converts the light to voltage. From there, the voltage is sent to an
analog/digital converter, and then to your computer for storage and editing.

The quality of the CCD determines the quality of the scanner. The CCD acts as the main
gateway between the photograph on the scanner bed, and the file stored on a computer’s
hard drive. The image brightness, color depth, and clarity depend on the accuracy and
number of sensors in the CCD (as well as the brightness of the scanner lamp).

How to choose a scanner

When it comes to judging specs, be sure to read the box carefully. Some manufacturers
quote the interpolated resolution rather than the optical resolution. The former conjures
up pixels where none exist, by mathematically approximating the pixel value based on
its neighbors, while the latter figure represents the actual number of photo-sensitive
sites on the sensor. Optical density can also be a tricky spec. It’s a measurement of the
range of tonal values a scanner can capture, on a scale of 0 to 4.0; the closer to 4.0, the
more detail you’ll see in the highlights and shadows. But there’s no standard defining
the scanner settings with which the measurements are taken, so we can take the
manufacturer’s quote as only a rough approximation.

The breadth and depth of scan controls, as well as the software bundle, can make a huge
difference in your scan quality. For instance, to get the maximum tonal range, you
should perform color and exposure adjustments at scan time whenever possible rather
than during postprocessing--in Photoshop, for example--to minimize image degradation.
Similarly, if you have a ton of photos to scan, you definitely need a driver with good
batch-scanning capabilities and well-designed film holders. In addition to basic apps,
most scanners come with some sort of additional software, even if it’s only a modest
imaging program such as Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Take some time to read about your scanner with this information in mind.

Lesson 2: Installing your scanner

Explore what needs to happen in order to access your scanner from your computer.

Installing your scanner for the first time

When you first hook up your scanner, you should follow the manufacturer’s installation
instructions precisely, so that the scanner’s software drivers are loaded correctly.

Note:
Drivers are the organized routines that allow the scanner and computer to
synchronously perform their related tasks. When you install your scanner
software, these small files automatically load into the computer. Some software
programs install the same driver; this causes older drivers to overwrite the newer
versions. However, for your scanner to work, the computer must have correct versions
of all relevant drivers.

Your scanner will come with a basic scanning utility program that will allow you to
access and control the scanner so you can make setting changes and execute scans. This
software displays the scanner image area and allows you to preview the image before
the scan finishes and gets saved to your hard drive. It will also allows you to adjust
resolution and color depth.

Note:
If you have photo editing software installed on your computer, you may be able
to access the scanner directly from within that software as well. This scanner
control features usually appears when you select the ‘Acquire’ option in the photo
editing software.
Scanning Guidelines

Now that you’re ready to begin scanning, keep in mind the following guidelines:

You can scan images bound for the Web or other computer applications such as
PowerPoint slideshows or CD-ROM images at 72 dpi.

You can scan images bound for inkjet printers at 150 to 200 dpi. On the other hand, you
can scan photographs that have a lot of flesh tones or details closer to the 200 dpi range.

For professionally printed images, for a company brochure or poster, scan them
according to the print house’s requirements, between 300 and 1200dpi.

All photographs should be scanned at the highest color mode possible. Look for a
special setting in your scanning software called “Full Color Photograph,” or “16.7
million colors” or “24-bit Color.” Avoid scanning a photograph at 256 Colors, or 8-bit
color. It will look blotchy and have incorrect color blends.

Lesson 3: Calibrating your monitor

Learn how to calibrate your monitor to set appropriate darkness and lightness for
working with photos.

Calibrating your monitor

Have you ever noticed that images on your computer look lighter or darker than they do
on other computers? Before you begin the process of editing your photos, you need to
calibrate your monitor to ensure you’re seeing the most accurate rendition of what
you’ve scanned. This process is called Gamma Correction.

Computer monitors have varying degrees of brightness. Some monitors exaggerate an

image’s dark tones. You may find that adding brightness to an image only makes it
looks washed out on another computer. For example, if your image has an RGB color
setting of Red: 100, Green: 50, and Blue: 50, you’d think that every computer would
show the red twice as intense as the green and blue, but that is not always the case.
Gamma correction compensates for this intensity difference.

Photo editing programs usually offer a calibration feature that allows you to set your
monitor to a general darkness and lightness intensity. Some software packages also
offer calibration programs that adjust Gamma by displaying a band that fades from
black to white and then prompt you to select certain points along the band. This process
shows the software how to manage the lightest, darkest, and midpoint color ranges
when viewing an image.

There is a wide difference between the typical Gamma of a Macintosh monitor and that
of a PC monitor. An image created on a PC may look dark on a Mac, and conversely, an
image created on a Mac may look too bright on a PC. The typical Gamma correction
value for a PC is 2.2, while Macs are usually set at 1.8

Lesson 4: Editing your photos

Explore techniques for editing your photos.

Now it’s time to polish the photos you’ve scanned and saved.

You can use image editing software like Photoshop or PaintShop Pro, if you have them.
Or your scanner may be bundled with a basic image editing program like Photoshop
Elements.

You can also try a free photo editing program like IrfanView.

Tip:
Make a backup copy of all your photos before your start editing. Put the
untouched scanned image files aside (burning them onto a CD is a good choice).
This way, you can fearlessly make bold changes to your photos knowing that you’ve got
the originals stashed away in case you ‘go too far’ with the edits.

Most graphics program offer a number of techniques for altering images. A few
common ones include correcting the color of your image with level equalization, color
curve adjusting, color balance, and brightness/contrast.

 With level equalization, you can adjust the brightness and contrast in an image
and make the midtones darker or lighter to bring out the detail. Some
applications refer to this tool as “levels” or “equalization.”
 The color curve adjustment tool, sometimes called “curves,” allows you to map
pixels to new bright and dark values by dragging along the points in a curve. All
the hues surrounding the point you drag on the curve will also adjust to some
degree. This makes the brightness change look more natural.
 Color balance allows you to adjust the different color ranges, to bring out the
colors at one end of the range or the other.
 Brightness/contrast tools are the easiest tools to use. They increase both the
image pixel luminance, and the difference between the lightest and darkest
pixels.

You can also correct an image with pixel editing tools such as sharpness and cropping:

 The sharpen tool makes an image look crisper, less blurry. Watch out, though, as
too much sharpness creates a “frosty” halo around objects, which can be just as
unattractive as the blur that the tool was used to correct. The unsharp mask tool
sharpens subtly and, in the instance of blurred scans, can work wonders.
 Cropping an image removes part of the picture. For instance, if all you care
about is the basketball player in the center of your scan, then crop out any
extraneous background, so that your subject matter becomes the main focus of
your image.
Lesson 5: Using special effect filters
Explore how to use special effect filters to alter your photos.

In the previous lesson we covered the essentials of photo editing: cropping, contrast,
sharpening, and color balance.

Most image editing programs also offer you a variety of “filters” you can use to distort
or modify your photos in fun and exciting ways. Some filters will make your image
appear to be an oil or water-color painting. Another will make it appear to be an old
sepia-toned black and white photo. A wide variety of eye-catching lighting effects are
also available.

Using these filters are certainly not necessary, but it can be a lot of fun trying them out.

ALERT:
Again, it’s a good idea to make a copy of your photos before experimenting with
filters. Or alternatively, if you open a photo file and make radical changes, you can
just choose “Save As” and re-name the file so that your original file is retained without
any changes.

Most current graphic editing programs let you select a portion (or all) of your
photograph and resize it, distort it, and apply effects it, while leaving the rest of the
image untouched. Also, depending on the program you’re using, you can copy a portion
of the photograph to the clipboard and then paste it into a new ‘layer’ so that you can
restrict the effects of the filter to a specific layer and leave the rest of the photo
unchanged.

When you paste a selection into another image, or even into the same image, you can
specify how opaquely the overlapping layers, or objects, will combine. When you paste
in a new layer into a graphic editing program, you’ll see a dropdown menu called
Merge, or Blend Mode. This dropdown menu will have options such as Add (meaning,
add the two colors together), Multiply, Saturation, Texturize, etc. Each option will apply
a unique mathematical formula to determine how the image layers interact with each
other color-wise.

You can have a lot of fun with these tools, but remember: a little filtering goes a long
way.

Lesson 6: Preparing your photos for e-mail and the

Web
Learn how to save your photos in the best format and file size for e-mailing and the
Web.

One of the easiest ways to share your photos with friends and family is to send them via
email. However, your newly scanned/edited photos are not ready to be e-mailed. This is
because the image files are probably quite large (anywhere from 1 megabyte to 5 or
more depending on the resolution you selected when you scanned).
You don’t want to e-mail such large files because they take too long to transfer, and
many people can’t receive big files because of e-mailbox size limitations. So the answer
is to reduce the filesize of your images before emailing. They’ll still look great, and
your friends will thank you for not clogging their inbox with massive files.

Here’s how to do it:

1. First, reduce the actual size of your image. Since your recipient will be viewing
the photo on a computer, it should be small enough so that it fits completely on a
computer screen. To do this, open the image file in your image editor. Then
change the size--for emailing, the image shouldn’t be any more than 600 - 700
pixels wide.
o In Photoshop, this is done with the “Image Size” option, under the Image
pull-down menu.
o In IrfanView, this is done with the “Resize/resample” option, under the
Image pull-down menu.
2. The last step is to compress the file into a smaller-sized ‘e-mailable’ file. To do
this:
o In Photoshop: Choose “Save for Web” under the File pull-down menu,
select the JPG format, and set the Quality to 50 (or less).
o In IrfanView, choose “Save As” under the File menu, select the JPG
format, and set the Save Quality to 50 (or less).

ALERT:
When you save these new e-mailable files, give them a different name, because
you don’t want to replace or overwrite your original full-sized version.

You’ll notice that these smaller compressed image files still look great even though
they’re a tenth of the filesize of the original file.

Any images you put on a web site should also go through this process so that your site
visitors will be able to download your photos more quickly. But note that many of the
new photo gallery web services (such as Flikr or Webshots ) will do the resizing and
compression for you. So you can just upload your full-sized/uncompressed images and
they’ll automatically produce a quick-loading version to display in your gallery. Very
convenient!