Do we really still need flatbed scanners for comic scans? 4 4

[blazingbob]

If I happen to list books while at a show there are customers who will request pics.  Now while the phone will take a nice pic I'm not exactly sure how professional a website full of pics with backdrops of box tops would look.  Or my desk.  

For consistent scans I would go for the scanner,  if you are not posting a lot of books then a phone could work for you.

 

[comicwiz]

3 hours ago, fantastic_four said:

If yours died tomorrow, would you buy another?  If so, why?  The reason I started the thread is I'm not sure if scanners really do still produce the best results.  It was definitely the best way to go twenty years ago when digital cameras were bad and you didn't want to have to develop photos, but with great digital cameras that upload straight to the cloud, I'm not sure scanners aren't now obsolete for most purposes.

I'm a fairly tech-savvy individual. I could stage a scanning station like the one I have currently with a little effort and time should I need to. Hopefully I won't need to. The issue is getting the proprietary software it was meant to run to handle some of the micro-functions (i.e. sharpness setting on the HP software for instance, will not run on anything newer than XP). It's not a must, but I know the difference using the original OEM software rather than using the middleware software either Windows or Photoshop would use to import the scan. I've been through five laptops since, and I know one of them still has the old software running, and can easily revive it with a little time and a few feeBay purchases if I absolutely needed to - most are dead adapters which are again propietary to those devices, more a PIA locating old discontinued parts, but they're out there with a little patience and perserverence. Otherwise, I'm perfectly ok just using my current laptor using Photoshop to capture the image.

I'm not at home, so I just found this old scan I took as an example. No phone wlll ever image a better representation than this scan

Edited July 28, 2019 by comicwiz

[hapicamp]

5 hours ago, adampasz said:

I use Google PhotoScan. It's free.

https://www.google.com/photos/scan/

It has a Glare Removal feature, but if you set up some good lighting, you don't even need it. Glare Removal does come in handy for some reflective covers, like this ASM 375.

I also really like the integration with GooglePhotos, so it's easy to get your pics up on the cloud, organize them in Albums, and share. It is available for iOS and Android, but the integration on the Android version is a little smoother. 

I'm sure there are other nice paid apps. out there that do the same thing.

 

 

Thank you for posting link. Just downloaded, tried it and wow...really clears up the home scanning issues (I've had) of the newer thicker slabs, and far superior to phone pics re glare and reflection....thanks you again for bringing to our attention!

Edited July 28, 2019 by hapicamp

[adampasz]

13 minutes ago, hapicamp said:

Thank you for posting link. Just downloaded, tried it and wow...really clears up the home scanning issues (I've had) of the newer thicker slabs, and far superior to phone pics re glare and reflection....thanks you again for bringing to our attention!

Per my post above, I have had mixed results using PhotoScan for slabs.

That said, it could work if you could figure out a good lighting setup.

Anyone had experience with studio kits like this one?  They are super-cheap now.

https://www.amazon.com/Depthlan-Folding-Studio-Photographing-Shooting/dp/B01N7P8CGK

 

Edited July 28, 2019 by adampasz

[hapicamp]

This was my first, quick and dirty hit the button see what happens w/ PhotoScan. No room lights on, all shades drawn, 3:30PM w/ tree shielding sun, book on couch making that immediate area even darker. At first glance results, colors a bit duller/lighter v in-person view (which is also the case w/ my HP8710 scanner, factory settings). But the uninterrupted by glare & reflections view, and ability to do a straight on shot instead of from an angle is a really nice element it gives you with a phone pic imho.

 

Edited July 28, 2019 by hapicamp

[alexgross.com]

this thread should be mandatory reading for everyone trying to sell a book in the FOR SALE threads. i'd say at least half of all books listed there are shot with cell phones in awful lighting. sometimes even still in bags. hard to fathom why if someone is selling a $10,000 comic book, they can't try to take a better photo or remove the book from a plastic bag! for me scanner is still best, but i agree that a proper flat light cell phone photo can be pretty good too. this photoscan thing looks nice too. 

[01TheDude]

I prefer using my printer/scanner for a couple of reasons. I feel it does an excellent job capturing the level of detail I want for my own records. I also like the uniformity of the scans and the ease of use--- I usually do a front and back scan of all my comics. I do use my camera phone on occasion to take shots of specific interior damage or angled views of certain books to reveal damages the might not be obvious from a scan-- especially the spine.

I use the printer often enough that I need the combination printer/scanner anyway. I have cameras and phones I can also use in a pinch. But for the silver age runs, I definitely prefer having scans that I can easily access on my laptop. I also use the scanner on many other things-- such as magazines I list on Amazon, various receipts and documents, and when I went through my family photo albums and digitized the entire set of photos. I do end up doing quite a bit of editing/cropping of my scans to clean them up to the essential image that I want to bring full focus on. One of my peeves is when people take photos of something cool but do zero cropping and leave all this other stuff in the photo that distracts from the main object you are displaying. It is not that difficult to tighten up the scan with a simple image editor.

[Aman619]

15 hours ago, fantastic_four said:

You have to scan at 600 dpi or higher to see the printing dots though don't you?  What's your default scanning size?

The short answer to the dpi question I’d it doesn’t matter...  but that’s a dodgy answer.  The quality of a scan is a function of the dpi AND the size of the scan.  Size as in the dimensions of the scan.  DPI means dots per inch, so a 2x3” image at 600 dpi is contains no more detail / pixels than a scan at 100 dpi that’s 4x9”.  If you use photoshop or other image retouching software, you can change the image size/resolution (DPI) and see this effect. 

The general rule for scans that will be printed is to scan at same size at 300 DPI.  When creating vary large scans, say 30x40” you can do half size at 300 DPI.

scanning comics at same size at 600 dpi is overkill for little extra benefit.  Files are pretty large especially if you are storing 1000s of scans., but, I guess storage in MBs isn’t the problem it once was with the cloud and terabyte drives!

[fantastic_four]

15 hours ago, hapicamp said:

This was my first, quick and dirty hit the button see what happens w/ PhotoScan. No room lights on, all shades drawn, 3:30PM w/ tree shielding sun, book on couch making that immediate area even darker. At first glance results, colors a bit duller/lighter v in-person view (which is also the case w/ my HP8710 scanner, factory settings). But the uninterrupted by glare & reflections view, and ability to do a straight on shot instead of from an angle is a really nice element it gives you with a phone pic imho.

I don't know what Photoscan is, but that pic of your AF15 CGC 3.5 is terrible.  Awful lighting, pixelated, horribly blurry, and the CGC title and issue number is weirdly double-visioned.  If that were the prime argument for digital imagery over scanners, the clear choice would be scanners every time.  But I know that's just a bad pic.

[fantastic_four]

7 hours ago, 01TheDude said:

I use the printer often enough that I need the combination printer/scanner anyway.

Wait, you have an all-in-one printer/scanner that does legal sized scanning?  I didn't think those existed.  

[fantastic_four]

22 hours ago, adampasz said:

I use Google PhotoScan. It's free.

https://www.google.com/photos/scan/

It has a Glare Removal feature, but if you set up some good lighting, you don't even need it. Glare Removal does come in handy for some reflective covers, like this ASM 375.

I also really like the integration with GooglePhotos, so it's easy to get your pics up on the cloud, organize them in Albums, and share. It is available for iOS and Android, but the integration on the Android version is a little smoother. 

I'm sure there are other nice paid apps. out there that do the same thing.

  

 

Now THOSE are really good digital camera pics.  

I'm thinking that if we did a "is it scanned or digitally photographed" challenge where we have to pick which was used to take the image with the best examples of both sources there would be no clear advantage for scanners.  

[fantastic_four]

19 hours ago, namisgr said:

Consider the size of the sensors, which are responsible for capturing the reflected light.

Typical cellphone: ~0.7 cm diameter (a little over a quarter of an inch).

Typical high quality digital camera: ~3 cm across (about an inch and a quarter).

Typical 11x14 scanner: 11 inches by 14 inches (as multiple image lines are captured sequentially and assembled into a full size image).  See below.

Thanks for the info!    I'll research that a bit more, because it's not a straight line from sensor size to what that does for image quality.

[namisgr]

16 minutes ago, fantastic_four said:

Thanks for the info!    I'll research that a bit more, because it's not a straight line from sensor size to what that does for image quality.

That's because flatbed scanners move the sensor to cover the entire area being scanned, but the sensors themselves are much cheaper varieties than what's used for decent digital cameras.  And as digital camera bodies get more and more expensive, they do so in large part because of the quality and sophistication of their sensors.

[01TheDude]

On 7/29/2019 at 4:42 AM, fantastic_four said:

Wait, you have an all-in-one printer/scanner that does legal sized scanning?  I didn't think those existed.  

I don't. I also don't have many (2) CGC slabs either. But even if I did, I do not have to close the lid of my scanner/printer to use it. I just place a dark towel over it when I want to scan the front of something large or too thick to close the lid on. If I needed to scan slabs, I would just do it in two steps-- the comic part and the label-- then marry the images together.

[namisgr]

On 7/29/2019 at 7:53 AM, fantastic_four said:

I'm thinking that if we did a "is it scanned or digitally photographed" challenge where we have to pick which was used to take the image with the best examples of both sources there would be no clear advantage for scanners.  

 

Edited August 2, 2019 by namisgr

[bc]

My lame guess is the Hulk is a photo and the Avengers is a scan.

[namisgr]

5 minutes ago, bc said:

My lame guess is the Hulk is a photo and the Avengers is a scan.

Nah, both are scans, taken and processed identically.  I'm of the opinion that a well-taken and processed scan generally gives a much better representation of a comic book cover, and as others have mentioned the consistency can't be matched by photos.

Compare any of the AF15 photos posted here with this scan of one.  Look at how clear the flaws and how crisp the details are:

Edited August 2, 2019 by namisgr

[bc]

2 minutes ago, namisgr said:

Nah, both are scans.  I'm of the opinion that a well-taken and processed scan generally gives a much better representation of a comic book cover.

That was my second guess. Typically a scan will show more bleed thru on a white cover than a photo, hence my guess that the Avengers was scanned.

[GACollectibles]

On 7/29/2019 at 7:42 AM, fantastic_four said:

Wait, you have an all-in-one printer/scanner that does legal sized scanning?  I didn't think those existed.  

There is at least on on the list HERE

[miraclemet]

On 7/28/2019 at 9:26 AM, adampasz said:

I use Google PhotoScan. It's free.

https://www.google.com/photos/scan/

It has a Glare Removal feature, but if you set up some good lighting, you don't even need it. Glare Removal does come in handy for some reflective covers, like this ASM 375.

I also really like the integration with GooglePhotos, so it's easy to get your pics up on the cloud, organize them in Albums, and share. It is available for iOS and Android, but the integration on the Android version is a little smoother. 

I'm sure there are other nice paid apps. out there that do the same thing.

 

 

holy is photoscan great! 

just took these no setup just putting a white board behind the book... and i was just thinking about buying a scanner...you saved me some cash!