Scans
 

A lot of sellers (including Net54 members) have been attacked for scan "manipulation." There seems to be two schools of thought on scanning:

1. "Naturalist" View.

Whatever your scanner produces under factory settings -- just leave it alone. I will call this the "naturalist" or "preservationist" view. I happen to disagree with it, since the scans that my scanner produces often do not fairly represent the card I am selling.

2. "Best Representation" View.

Manipulate the "raw" scans that your scanner produces and attempt to make the card look as close to what it looks like to the naked eye as possible. This is what I try to do (although I am not a major seller, by any means).

I think these are both legitimate views. Which school do you ascribe to? (Or perhaps a third or fourth school?)

Thanks for the inputs.

Scot

Edited to add: This thread is NOT in response to any specific issue I have had with a seller or buyer; I just want to find out what seller and buyer expectations are.

Further edited to add: Maybe we can all agree on disclosure rules, like: factory settings = X; current settings = Y ??? Perhaps this is too complicated.

Further further edited to add: Would anyone be open to developing a set of comprehensive standards for vintage BB cards -- like IEEE for networking ??? So that everyone could just say VBC compliant? Perhaps too ambitious.

I appreciate the "best representation" version.

The most important thing to me is that scans are large enough -- and clear enough -- to understand the card and its grade. All too often scans are just small enough to hide issues with cards.

Best regards,
Steve

I am in camp #2. I understand the thinking behind camp #1, but if your scanner doesn't produce an accurate representation of the card then I don't care if you used factory settings or not. That said, the goal of any tweaks must be to make the scan match the card rather than to make the scan look as sexy as possible even if it misrepresents the card. The temptation to do the latter is what makes option #2 dangerous (combined with people's varying photo editing skills and perceptions of the colors on their cards).

As long as it doesn't burn the eyes I am good.

Guess who?

Good points guys about size and over-manipulation.

Thanks for the inputs.

Awesome scan Peter but I have no idea (I don't collect modern too much).

Edited to add: Zoilo Versalles is one of my favorites. A popular trivia answer among my son (baseball addict) and me (also baseball addict)!

Scot, from the man who never enhanced a scan in his life, because it isn't in his DNA (see other thread), our good friend PWCC.

Peter,

You gotta admit it's a great scan :)!!!

I get what you are intimating but I'm sure I would like that card in person.

Scot

Edited to add: Maybe that's why we should agree on standards?

Scot, so you don't feel left out.

Put on your sunglasses now.

Peter,

I love that scan. I am a sucker for sure.:)

Standards. Standards. Standards. That's the only way to (maybe) make us all happy.

Scot

I'm not an expert on digital imaging, but I have learned some from a few different people including my wife who used to work for a video card manufacturer. So take these points as you will.
None of this is meant to imply anything about any particular scans or sellers, either as a complaint or excuse.

First, things will look different on different monitors. Even two examples of the same model of monitor may display things slightly differently. This is especially true for colors.
Monitor settings can affect things as well. I run mine with the brightness turned up, but normal contrast. I have a friend who runs his with the contrast pretty low and brightness turned down a bit. (The 75 Topps is well on its way to sunglasses territory for me)
This has been true to a point since the very beginning. Some types of traditional film give more contrast, and some have tendencies towards certain colors. Most Fuji movie film has stronger blues than other sorts of film, and Kodachrome has very saturated colors.

The second point is that different scanner software will have different "standard" settings depending on the target market or simply what the people at the manufacturer think is "better" AND.....They might change that at any time. So just going with the factory settings isn't guaranteed to produce the same result even on the same scanner.
My current scanner can be run at least three different ways.
I can simply press the "scan" button.
I can open the scanners own software which lets me preview the scan and select a particular area to scan - Basically cropping the image before even generating it. Plus a bunch of other stuff.
Or I can run the scanner from some of the photo editing software.

I nearly always use the second option since it lets me get scans done a bit more quickly. I can put several cards on the scanner, select one by drawing a box around it, scan, then the next one I just have to move that box to be around a different card.
The interesting bit is that the software makes adjustments in brightness and contrast automatically I believe based on how light or dark the subject is. (I scan lid up to get a nice black background unless it's something like 71 Topps or maybe T205 where I want a light background. )
I can adjust some stuff manually, but rarely do since the automatic adjustments usually provide a nice scan. The controls let me change nearly everything, but are simply labeled beginning at 0 with a rage from -100 to +100 ........I'm not sure what that is, I assume percentage, but they never actually say. And that's from the automatically adjusted values, not from any fixed number (Or more technically correct not from any fixed value I can access)

The third challenge in making a standard is that the technology changes somewhat quickly, and I don't see a manufacturer seeing any benefit in staying with it. In networking it applies, since a manufacturer wants their stuff to work with most anything. So a non-standard network card might be great but if it only works with one companies stuff it probably won't sell very well. A scanner on the other hand just has to work with a handful of operating systems - Windows, Apple, Linux, Android, after that you're probably on your own.

Steve B

Personally I do whatever I need to do to a scan to make it look like it looks when holding the card in your hand. That is what I want when i buy a card from a scan. I want what i see on the screen.

Agree. I do a lot of photography editing so I calibrate my monitors monthly using a Spyder4. After I scan the card I hold it up in front of the monitor and make the minor adjustments needed to make the screen image match the card. This is usually just minor changes to Exposure, Contrast and Vibrancy.

I don't use a scanner so this might be an ignorant question...But isn't one of the problems that images look different on all types of computers and devices?

Jeff

Not an expert by any means, but what I noticed is that if a card has some surface flaws (a little stray print, a spot, a dot, uneven color, whatever) then when a scan is super bright, those tend to get lost in the background. As a rule of thumb, I would say that if your holding the card in hand, know there is a flaw, and the scan isn't showing it, it would be better to make some scan adjustments.

On a note unrelated to brightness, I remember one listing once - a really nice card graded PSA 3, a head scratcher for sure, but the seller noted "spider creases" in the description. I would've rather seen them, but maybe he just couldn't capture them.

This all reminds me to put the Windex to my scanner screen.

Agree wholeheartedly. Also of interest in this regard was a recent contact I had concerning a card up for auction through PWCC/Brent. The scan depicted what appeared to be a very under-graded card, so I contacted Brent and asked why the card got the grade it did. He was quite candid in acknowledging that the scan was unable to pick up what I would consider some rather minor, yet cumulatively significant defects, and told me exactly what they were.

Kudos to the honest approach,

Larry