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DIGITAL PRESERVATION / Re: My magazines (almost all in PDF format)
« on: June 01, 2020, 12:09:09 AM »
Yes Mike you're right, with the overhead light all scans of glossy magazine paper had a big white spot in the middle. Unfortunately, with the backlight, the bottom of the page would often look darker than the rest as the software tried to be too clever and the contrast threshold makes it look worse.
Another problem was that the lasers try and guess the shape of the paper and distorts the picture it's sees to match. While that seems to work quite well on smaller books with paper that keeps an even shape, on magazines with curly edges, all that seems to go out the window and frequently tried to compensate for curves that are not there. Having to regularly manually edit the laser lines and the centre line was a pain. It seems to be worse when there is more black ink on the page.
On my Google Drive, there is now a folder called 'Scanned with overhead scanner' I have included the results of several hours of fiddling with the overhead scanner per magazine to make them look as good as possible, you can compare the scan of ‘Using your BBC Micro’ with the one I did with my flatbed scanner. Then you'll see why I decided to stick to the flat bed scanner. Pity, the overhead scanner is an absolutely gorgeous bit of kit and when or if I have scan a book, it would be the perfect tool for the job.
Another problem was that the lasers try and guess the shape of the paper and distorts the picture it's sees to match. While that seems to work quite well on smaller books with paper that keeps an even shape, on magazines with curly edges, all that seems to go out the window and frequently tried to compensate for curves that are not there. Having to regularly manually edit the laser lines and the centre line was a pain. It seems to be worse when there is more black ink on the page.
On my Google Drive, there is now a folder called 'Scanned with overhead scanner' I have included the results of several hours of fiddling with the overhead scanner per magazine to make them look as good as possible, you can compare the scan of ‘Using your BBC Micro’ with the one I did with my flatbed scanner. Then you'll see why I decided to stick to the flat bed scanner. Pity, the overhead scanner is an absolutely gorgeous bit of kit and when or if I have scan a book, it would be the perfect tool for the job.