Scanning Problems

The funny colours on the backs of the stamps are a bit of a mystery to me - they must be printed images rather than actual stamps?  The bit of rainbow on the border behind the stamp perforations is more straightforward - as Rod mentioned on another thread, that's a type of Moiré pattern, a scanning artifact.  That can be controlled through assorted graphics filters on Photoshop or other fancy image editing software, but it's easy to fix as well just be changing your scanning resolution and downsizing afterwards.  One of your images on the Tuvalu definitives thread showed that the background behind the perforations was made of tiny dots.  If your scanning resolution doesn't have a high enough dots-per-inch count, then the tiny dot size of the halftone printing can "clash" with your dpi setting and give a Moiré pattern as a result.  If you scan at a much higher dpi and then downsize afterwards, the tiny dots are more accurately scanned and are blended smoothly when the graphic interpolation is done in the downsizing step.

This Moiré pattern is often seen when trying to use a low dpi count to scan newspaper photos, which are printed with a relatively coarse halftone.  You get much less Moiré interference when scanning at high resolution and resizing after.  Here's an example nabbed from a help page showing the obvious difference - the halftone on the newspaper photo was 85 dpi, the top scan was done at 150 dpi, and the bottom scan was done at 400 dpi and then downsized to match the top scan.  No more zebra measles.



Ryan

Scanning.
We are trying to nut out problems with Jerry's scans,             any assistance from members?

Jerry scans a page at the Library at 300dpi, and it comes in at 4.1 Mb.   (extension *.jpg)    (and it displays poorly, no definition)
I get it, and save it "as is" in ACDSee, and it drops to 75Kb

Any idea where the fault lies?   I am thinking perhaps the Library has the scanner set to "Film" rather than "Reflective"
Any other ideas?
Thanks

"snap"
you hit the nail on the head cjd!   well done you.

Yes the 100% appears to increase the workable scan from 890Kb  to 4.1Mb, that's astounding.
I still think Jerry's scans at 890Kb are too large,  my full page scans are coming in at 250Kb

*.jpg's  are curious, there is a "sweet spot" for clarity, I find 200dpi fine for my work.
Going to 600dpi, actually decreases clarity in general usage for us.
I think I recall BC getting "moire" in high resolution scans.   just noted in the posts above.

(I employ a 60% quality in my *.jpg's)

Hi

I am using NCH Photopad and after cropping I save with 100% compression quality.  I tried lowering the quality and it just made things worse.  I tried a couple of other programs for photo cropping and I get essentially the same results, in the megabytes, if I use 100% compression quality.

If I import one of the megabyte images to WORD, or Paint, the image is full page and very crisp and sharp.  If I do the same with Rodney's 75K version the image is much smaller and not as crisp and sharp.  According to Andy I guess this is expected because of the lossy JPEG.  I assume the TSF scans are not very sharp because ProBoards reduces the image for display?

Andy, Since the photos are in Photobucket, I assume that any photo format is alright for TSF, especially TIFF and PNG.  Am I correct?

Just tried converting the original JPEG to PNG.  Disaster.  With best quality compression the file size was 9.1M and with pretty good quality it was 7.0 M.

Jerry B

That's simply because I had your original scan, that was very poor.

The second scan you sent me (805Kb) I could see the hairs in the paper.
Cut down your *.jpg quality   to 60%
They will remain sharp and crisp.

Your target should be a full A4 page, scanned at 200dpi,  being crisp and sharp.

Hi Jerry,
personally, I would play around with your methodology, till you are comfortable with what you are accomplishing.
This may take weeks / months.
Each individual has their own focus,  mine was to produce scans, that had high resolution, low disk space,
and in William Steiner format.

I could then collate the pages, and bang, produce a *.pdf of say 10 year coverage of a countries stamps
Your own little personalised Digital Stamp Album.
At a glance you can see what you have, your want lists, your B.o.b  cinderellas  etiquettes sundries of that country etc & etc.

Hi Andy

I am going to re-scan Rodney's way, 200 dpi, if the library lets me, else 300dpi. I scrapped NCH Photopad as it did not let me do certain things (I already contacted them). I am now using IrfanView for photo editing. So, cropping and saving at 60%. I will not be deleting the posts that are already on TSF but I will update the thread photo links. In some of the programs I do I use RTF (BB Code) and I can read it fairly well. If I do everything correctly no one will know. Hopefully the scans will be sharper and definitely a lot smaller.

Jerry B

It sounds like you might have a problem with your computer not being able to wake up your scanner properly. Unfortunately, this can be caused by a wide variety of problems. I've run into this problem on two of my printers as well as one of my older scanners and I know how frustrating it can be. Since I don't know your scanner model, I can only make the following general suggestions:

1. Google your scanner model number and the problem, and see if this is an identified problem with a quick fix.
2. Make sure your device driver is up to date. If it is already up to date, go ahead and reinstall the device driver if possible. It is possible that Microsoft updates can introduce problems/incompatibilities.
3. Contact your scanner tech support. Be ready for them to blame Microsoft (it's standard tech support verbage).
4. Avoid turning off your scanner or unplugging the cable (I assume it is USB cable) while your scanning software is still open.
5.  Don't go through a USB hub on any device that is having this problem.
6.  Don't leave the device USB cable plugged into your computer for any device having this problem.  Only plug it in when you are about to use it.  This should automatically wake up your scanner when you connect the USB cable to your computer.

Workarounds:
1. Wake up your scanner BEFORE you open your scanner software. If you scanner goes to sleep again before you do an actual scan, again make sure you wake up your scanner before you click the scan button. It's annoying, but it worked for me, and it beats doing #2.
2. Unplug your cable (I assume it is USB). Turn off your scanner. Wait 10 seconds. Turn your scanner back on. Wait 10 seconds. Plug the USB cable back in. Try scanning again. If that doesn't work, quit your scanning software, and then reopen your scanning software and try again to scan. It's tedious, but it beats having to restart both your computer and scanner.
3. Mail it to rod222 and ask him to scan it.

On a side note, one time my printer wake-up problem really did disappear after a Microsoft update. I guess that time it really was Microsoft's problem.

Best wishes.

I had a bunch of grief with my old HP scanner once upon a time (probably 1999 or so). It had a Quick Start button you could press to start the scan (a big special selling point printed on the box, scanners apparently didn't have buttons back then), and it also had the normal scan software with a start command which was the way most scanners started their job. I bought the scanner in 1998, it worked fine for a while, then the grief started, freezing up, no longer functioning at all. I ended up finding and deleting the software that controlled that goofy button and presto, everything was back to the way it used to be. I assume it was a problem with a Windows Service Pack update or something like that.

Beyond that, the normal method I use when trying to fix grouchy scanners / printers/ modems / etc is 1) try turning the grouchy part on and off, 2) try unplugging the grouchy part and plug it back in, 3) reboot the computer. Sometimes #1 works, sometimes #2 works, sometimes I need to go to #3. Usually I don't really figure out what the problem is and it eventually crops up again. Oh well.

Ryan

Congratulations.  Fortunately, reinstalling the printer driver/software worked for you.

The tricky part is finding out what caused it to begin with.  Obviously it's related to your software.  If this happens again (and we certainly hope not), try deleting your printer spooler file first.  Sometimes when that gets corrupted due to a printing error/interruption, it messes things up as well and causes the printer driver to get confused.  By deleting it, the printer driver will automatically create a new printer spooler file (it's like starting a new line at the supermarket checkout).


I had to scratch my head and read this twice.  But I finally understood!  Guess I'm not used to printing "blank [album] pages".

I have a somewhat different problem when I try to scan something. I use a dell AIO 940 scanner and when I try to scan, I get a message an error has occurred during preview. If the scanner was being used, please wait for it to complete the task and then click preview.  I have to try 8-10 times before scanner  would activate.  Any fix?

rod222- thanks for the tip. I reset the brightness and now it works on forst click. Thanks again. After waiting awhile, I tried it again now problem I had before has come back.

My scanner broke and I am test scanning some stamps from a new scanner. How does it look? The software has so many settings compared to my old one. I tried to go with 1200dpi and no adjustments such as Descreening or Unsharp Mask.

Just curious: what adjustments would you make? I scan my stamps like that and am sort of content with the result without having made any adjustments. But if it can be done better.......