pwcc

[thecatspajamas]

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

I have an Epson V700, which cost a lot of dough IMO and is CCD based.

I constantly have to adjust in Professional mode to try and make items look as close to realistic as possible, depending on what is being scanned.

I'm not talking brightness and contrast and such........I'm not touching those features unless it's something that legitimately needs to be touched up for non-auction/selling reasons.

I'm talking the Sharpness and Descreen features, and the levels those features are set at. A newspaper is scanned differently from a magazine which is scanned differently from a lithograph which is scanned differently from a real photo.

Sometimes on older photos with off-white borders or backs you have to disable the automatic brightness that gets implemented on the initial pre-scan because it makes it too bright and exaggerated, sometimes it comes out closer to reality and you keep it.

On many printed style baseball cards, postcards or magazines, you have to implement the descreen into magazine setting in order to keep the cross-hatch or dot patterns from over-whelming the scan, and then you have to implement the sharpness setting at the same time, in order to keep the descreen setting from dulling down the card/item too much.

A few other things, you should always be scanning in photo mode and not document mode. You should also be disabling such features as dust removal and color adjustment at all times, unless it's something not related to re-selling something.

I'm sure a lot of these large ebay consignment auction houses have several different people scanning with several different scanners, using several types of settings, and this is a reason for several of the differences you see.

Maybe I'm rambling but I hope this makes some sort of sense to somebody. Maybe I'm just worrying too much about it.

Makes perfect sense to me, Dave. I've been following this thread quietly, but you pretty well summed up my thoughts on the subject. I have 3 different scanners myself that I use for different scanning projects, and all 3 will give different results if you just throw something in there and scan away. In my experience, ALL scanners have different "factory settings" straight out of the box and/or different software for acquiring the scans which may/may not have similar "native" settings if left alone without adjustment.

To suggest that all scans of an item should look identical and match its actual appearance if you just use a "good" scanner and "don't adjust the settings" is naive at best, and to focus on whether the "color" of the card/flip/whatever is accurately represented on your monitor is like a dog chasing its tail. You know what color the flip is "supposed" to be, so just adjust the monitor on your end until that looks right. Then it won't matter whether the seller has done anything to monkey with the colors.

Now if there are specks, lines, creases, folds, tears, etc. that are visible with the card in hand that do not show up in the scan, that is another matter entirely, but still may be a result of the default settings in the scanning software. You have to remember that most scanning software is not designed with card collectors in mind. Believe it or not, the general public would actually LIKE for most tiny flaws to be removed or masked when they are scanning documents, family photos, magazine articles, etc. That is why scanning software with "Digital ICE" technology and other built-in "touch up" tools proudly state such on their packaging, and chances are, unless you "adjust" those settings (as in, turn them off), they're going to be actively cleaning up your scans straight out of the box. If you're more concerned with giving an "accurate" representation in the scanned image rather than the "best looking" image that the other 99% of non-card-collecting scanner users are going after, chances are, you're going to have to adjust some settings.

Or, you can just go with whatever the scanner poops out with its factory settings and just hope it displays accurately on the buyer's monitor. Then use the time you save by not adjusting settings to ponder why your camera won't take "good pictures" when you push the button or your television's picture always seems "too bright" when you plug it in or that song on your stereo doesn't "sound live" when you turn it on, even though you've left them all on their factory settings. Maybe you'll get lucky with factory settings, but it's more likely that you will have to make some adjustments to get your equipment to accurately reproduce real life.