pwcc

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by cyseymour

Personally, I really don't like the idea of changing the scanner settings. A photograph is a work of art - the photographer is the artist and entitled to fix it however they wish. But a scan is really something that is a matter of record in the sense that it is representing something else, which itself is a work of art (or memorabilia). It's a subtle difference, but it's a major difference. Auctioneers aren't artists whom ought to be figuring their own interpretation of a card.

Sometimes cards do look better in real life than in a scan, but if an auction house is having that issue, they really ought to replace their scanner. Scanners these days do extraordinary work at capturing an image, especially with the new technology available. Anyone with a strong knowledge of technology will realize that there is no need to adjust the scanner settings at all.

Look at Just Collect, for instance. They have very nice scans of their OJ's on ebay right now, and you can tell that the hue is not adjusted, because if you look at the sgc flips, they show as a rich, dark green that they are in real life. That's one barometer for telling that the scanner settings have not been adjusted to enhance the image of the card. In some other auction houses, those very same flips would show up a light, bright green.

So it doesn't really have to do with any attempt realism - it has to do with enhancing an image to make a bidder believe that the card is brighter, cleaner, and more attractive than it is in real life in order to proffer a better price on the card.

Are you saying it's best to just use the standard factory setting on every scan you make?

If so, I disagree pretty strongly.

Maybe you have some super-intuitive scanner in your possession but most don't. Most scanners I have ever owned, and I have owned many, need to be tweaked in the professional setting in order to reflect what type of item you are scanning whether it be a real photo, lithograph, printed photo, old paper stock, new paper stock. They are all scanned somewhat differently in order to look as close to the approximation they look in real life.

A scanner will play all kinds of havoc with off white's, just depending on where you crop it sometimes, and you have to adjust to either remove or keep the brightness factor the automatic settings apply.

[vintagetoppsguy]

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

Are you saying it's best to just use the standard factory setting on every scan you make?

If so, I disagree pretty strongly.

Maybe you have some super-intuitive scanner in your possession but most don't. Most scanners I have ever owned, and I have owned many, need to be tweaked in the professional setting in order to reflect what type of item you are scanning whether it be a real photo, lithograph, printed photo, old paper stock, new paper stock. They are all scanned somewhat differently in order to look as close to the approximation they look in real life.

A scanner will play all kinds of havoc with off white's, just depending on where you crop it sometimes, and you have to adjust to either remove or keep the brightness factor the automatic settings apply.

I disagree pretty strongly as well. I haven't read this entire thread, but I can say sometimes you have to tweak the scanner settings. I know when I scan a card at home, it looks much different than when I scan it at work (each before any adjustment). I'll post images tonight to show this w/o any adjustments on either scan. Even cameras have different settings based on the background and conditions of the object being photographed. Scanners are the same way based on what you are scanning.

All that said, I don't know much about PWCC (I choose to overlook his auctions as the prices are too high for me), but if he is tweaking scans to hide a card's flaws, then that's another story and I'm certainly not defending that.

[cyseymour]

Guys, the argument can be made either way - that it is more or less realistic if the settings are adjusted. But the bottom line is that three separate entities - Legendary, Goodwin, and PWCC, have had threads created about them in which they are accused of juicing their scans, and there wasn't a whole lot of dissent about whether it was occurring in any of those threads. The proof is in the pudding - look at the cards, and you will see the difference. You can see that the scans are coming out brighter than they really are. Meanwhile, we have auction houses like B&L who don't change the settings from default on their scanner. You haven't heard a lot of complaints about B&L's scans, have you?

So the question is, how do you know when there's funny business going on, when something isn't quite right with a scan? It's because you can see it, you know that that's not what the card looks like, that that's not what the card really is. We can argue the details of scanners and settings till the end of time, but when a scan is being juiced, you just know, because you know it when you see it.

[ullmandds]

jamie...you mean when a scan is juiced...you'll know it after you've received the item...right?

[cyseymour]

Originally Posted by ullmandds

jamie...you mean when a scan is juiced...you'll know it after you've received the item...right?

I think you can tell even before that... you can look at the flip... is it the proper color. Is the SGC label light or dark green? Or just look at the card itself - I know what an OJ looks like, I've seen plenty of them, and I know that they don't glow orange or shine in bright ways. So if they are doing that on the scan, it's pretty obvious that something funny is going on there, right?

Have I bought cards, just in the last couple of months, from scans which I knew were juiced, and gotten the card home to see that it was indeed true that the scan was juiced? Yeah, I have, because I wanted those particular cards. But I may have paid more for them than I otherwise would have because other bidders might not realize it was juiced. This is one of those things that inflates prices, just like shill bidding. It is another artificial inflation of prices. Some call it fraud.

[vintagetoppsguy]

Attachment 118855

Originally Posted by cyseymour

The proof is in the pudding - look at the cards, and you will see the difference. You can see that the scans are coming out brighter than they really are.

You're assuming that just because the scans are brighter, he's adjusting the settings. This may not be so. I work for an engineering company and I use a lot of different reproduction equipment. One scanner I use very often is designed to enhance colors (mostly reds and blues) and minimize black (factory settings). We mark-up vendor drawings with red and blue pencils and this scanner enhances our marks and comments so when we send them back to the vendor, our marks really stand out for easy identification.

My point is that you have no idea what kind of scanner he is using and are only assuming that he is adjusting the colors because of the brightness of the scans. If you like, I can scan a card with my scanner at work and then scan the same card with my scanner at home and you will see a noticeable difference in the brightness of the two cards (using only factory settings on each).

[cyseymour]

Originally Posted by vintagetoppsguy

Attachment 118855

You're assuming that just because the scans are brighter, he's adjusting the settings. This may not be so. I work for an engineering company and I use a lot of different reproduction equipment. One scanner I use very often is designed to enhance colors (mostly reds and blues) and minimize black (factory settings). We mark-up vendor drawings with red and blue pencils and this scanner enhances our marks and comments so when we send them back to the vendor, our marks really stand out for easy identification.

My point is that you have no idea what kind of scanner he is using and are only assuming that he is adjusting the colors because of the brightness of the scans. If you like, I can scan a card with my scanner at work and then scan the same card with my scanner at home and you will see a noticeable difference in the brightness of the two cards (using only factory settings on each).

Okay, David, please read Brent's post. Brent himself said that he was adjusting the settings.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by cyseymour

Okay, David, please read Brent's post. Brent himself said that he was adjusting the settings.

He did say that and in any event it's beside the point. When you need goggles to protect your eyes from scans, there is a problem even if that is what the factory settings do.

[vintagetoppsguy]

Originally Posted by cyseymour

Okay, David, please read Brent's post. Brent himself said that he was adjusting the settings.

As I said earlier, I haven't read the thread, but I did go back and look for Brent's post. Here's what I saw (copied and pasted directly from his statement).

Just to confirm, our scans are never enhanced artificially.

Where do you read that he said that he was adjusting the settings?

[vintagetoppsguy]

And just to clarify, adjusting the scanner settings doesn't necessarily mean adjusting the color. It can also mean adjusting the size, the output format (PDF, JPEG), etc.