[Techtalk] getting quality photo scans

[Carla Schroder]

On Thursday 16 November 2006 21:07, Akkana Peck wrote:
> Carla Schroder writes:
> > That's interesting, because even when I run a scan at the highest
> > resolution, which is supposedly 1200x2400, it takes longer and it
> > produces a much larger file. But to my eye it looks exactly the same as
> > lower-res images. I think I
>
> Is that the highest optical resolution, or the highest interpolated
> resolution? Some scanners offer fake resolutions that are a lot
> higher than their sensors can scan. If the interpolation software
> isn't that good, you might do better scanning at low resolution
> then scaling it up in gimp or imagemagick.
>
> But I doubt that's the real cause of the sharpness problem
> you're seeing -- any modern scanner should have plenty of optical
> resolution (300dpi is usually plenty) to give a nice sharp scan
> of any normal sized photo.  So there's probably something else wrong.
>
> Do you know if the scanner is capable of making decent images at
> all (e.g. with a windows or mac driver)? I know I always hear that
> multifunction devices don't scan very well, but I'm not clear whether
> that's all a Linux problem or if they just aren't very good scanners.

Well now there's a funny story behind that. When I first got the device I 
installed the Windoze drivers and tried to use it with Windows XP. The 
bundled software was absolute poo- it brought a Sempron 2800 with 512 
megabytes ram to its knees. The interfaces were beyond sucky and well into 
random, to the point that both Terry and I had permanent ??? hovering over 
our heads.

After a few days of struggle, I figured I could either try purchasing some 
good winderz apps, or try it on Linux. Why did I not try it on Linux first? 
Because I am a doofus with blind spots. The only hitch was entering the 
scanner into udev so that ordinary users could use it. After that it was easy 
peasey, and I've done loads of scanning and digital editing on Linux ever 
since.

Anyway the scans are no better in Windows. So I'm starting to think it's the 
scanner itself. It's a cheap piece of poo anyway, it won't break my heart to 
go shopping for a better one.

-- 
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Carla Schroder
Linux geek and random computer tamer
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