basic scanning ... done the right way v1

7/30/2019 Basic Scanning ... Done the Right Way v1

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Basic Scanning

Done the RIGHT Way

Version 1.0

By ^KriTTeR^

Tuesday, December 3, 2002

Acknowledgements

I would like to gratefully recognize a few people who have helped me in the past with scanning as well

as those who helped in the development of this document: Apleif, Patricia, JDK, Jaerofthelake, Kass, Sulfur,

and any others who I may be lax in mentioning because of a chronic case of forgetfulness. Believe my friends i

was not out of spite, just getting old is all.I would like to send out some greets to those I have helped in the past, but I am afraid that in doing so I

would make you targets of less then benevolent people. Rest assured I remember you and will help you if you

can find me

Introduction

This instruction manual is not designed to be exhaustive nor does it tell you the only way you shouldscan. The information found inside is what I have collected over my career of scanning. I encourage you to

pick and choose from it as you please, play with your settings, and experiment. If you have questions, be sure

to ask your channel ops for help. If they are available they will help.

DPI and the Question of Quality

One should never scan below 150dpi. The reason for this is clarity. If no one easily read your scan on a15 monitor then what is the use of scanning the book in the first place.

300dpi gives you the best quality for your images and if you decide to print the item, it will be letter

quality. I scan all my images @300dpi and resize them down to 150dpi. Youre probably asking yourself, whybother, just scan @150 and be done with it. When you resize the image, whether using a graphics program or

using Acrobat Distiller, the images will look better than if you scanned directly @150dpi.

200dpi is the middle of the road. Its looks good and is smaller than images scanned @300dpi. If youplan to resize or distill to 200dpi then what I mentioned above still stands, an image resized/distilled from

300dpi down looks better than one scanned directly @200dpi. If you plan to resize/distill to 150dpi it should be

okay, but again, for the best results start with 300dpi.

150dpi, is the absolute lowest resolution you should scan at. Others might tell you to scan @100dpi and

I have even seen some people scan @72dpi. After looking at those releases I think I can speak for most, but allpeople, when I say that its nearly illegible.

Scaling

For most people scaling is not an issue, leave it at 100% and there will be no problems. Of course there

are others out there who say if you drop the resolution and increase the scale it will look better and be smaller. Ihave experimented with several times. My experience has been that when compared to 150dpi images there is

still a legibility issue. As for size, there is not much savings. As always use your best judgment.


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Contrast & Brightness

A lot of people forget about this option when scanning. There are two ways to go about this. The first is

to use the auto-contrast and brightness built-in to most scanning software. This option is not full-proof. If you

decide to go this route in scanning you will want to preview and check your auto-contrast every ten pages or

whenever there is a page that differs from the last page you previewed. Example: you previewed the table ofcontents, a page typically full of text, when you come to a page that is half image or full image, the settings will

be different. You should preview this page and run your auto settings again.

The way I do it is set the contrast and brightness to default settings, typically 100%. This doesnt add ortake anything away from the image. Later I use Photoshop to adjust the colors. Many graphics programs out

there have options for doing this as well.

JPG versus TIFF

There is quite the debate as to what file type to save your scans. If you dont have a lot of hard drive

space or plan to send the images to another person to work on, the perhaps JPG is what you need. If space is

not an issue or youre concerned about the best quality, then it is my suggestion you scan as a TIFF. Why isthat? When Adobe Acrobat converts your images into a PDF it uses compression software. This means its

squeezes the files down to its smallest size. As JPGs are already compressed any further reduction in sizetypically results in the image not being as clean (called pixellation). This is not true with all scanned images butit most cases it holds true.

Because the TIFF is not a compressed format, this allows the compression software inside Adobe

Acrobat to optimize the size of the image without losing quality. In most cases once Acrobat is donecompressing the image, TIFF images come out smaller and look better than the JPG images.

Naming Images

Use whatever method works best for. I name all front covers 000.TIF and back covers 999.TIF, if the

book being scanned is over 100 pages. If the book is less than 100 pages just drop a number. If there are

images on the inside covers then I name the front covers 000A.TIF and 000B.TIF and the same for the back.Inside pages are 001.TIF to whatever the last page comes out to. I use this method because the image name will

correspond with the page number. This makes it easy to keep track of what pages have been scanned as well as

backtracking to see where you missed a page.

Color Correction, Alignment, Cropping & Resizing

You can use just about any graphics program to do all these things. I use Photoshop exclusively for

these adjustments. You will have to ask others how to do this or play around with your graphics program. Iwill have instructions for this in Advanced Scanning Done the Right Way! For now, just do your best.

Why color correct? Thats an obvious one, so it looks nicer.

Why align? Again, self-explanatory, its always nice to read something when the text and images arealigned. It not only looks better, but is more comfortable on the eyes.

Cropping? Thy reason to crop is two-fold. The first reason is the cosmetic issue, it looks better. The

second reason is more practical, it makes the image smaller. In most cases a properly cropped image can shaveas much as 15%+. That doesnt seem like much, but when you think about a 10mb file being reduced to 8.5mb

you can see how its a real savings. Also, I recommend that you do not crop images in Adobe Acrobat. The

reason for this is that it leaves a white border around the edges of image. Not a big deal, but can be aggravatingAside from that, the cropping tool is not very good or accurate.

Resizing? This is up for some debate. Some people prefer all images to be at least 200dpi and that

smaller releases (32 pages and under as a rule) should be scanned @300dpi. This is all up to the individual. If


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youre going to keep it at the scanned dpi or plan to distill to a lower dpi then at this point there is no reason toresize.

Making Images into PDFs the Simple Way

Once you have decided on what dpi you want your release to be and have cleaned up all your images(color correction, alignment, and cropping) now is the time to make the actual PDF.

1. Open Adobe Acrobat.2. Open Windows Explorer and go to the directory that has your image scans.3. In Adobe Acrobat click: File Open as PDF File.4. Select the cover image (000.TIF) and click OK.5. In Windows Explorer Left-click to highlight first file (001.TIF) SHIFT+PAGE DOWN or

SHIFT+END (this will highlight all files from first image file highlighted to last image file in sequence:

001.TIFF through 999.TIF).

6. Left-Click on the first file in the sequence (001.TIF), then drag to the open Acrobat window. When youdo this Acrobat will pop up a window called Insert Pages. In the middle of this window will be a

section called Page. Is that section you will see three choices: First; Last, and Page (it will default to

this option).7. Click on Last (make sure the black dot appears next to this selection).8. Click the OK button.9. Once all the image files are added then FILE SAVE AS.10.Under, Save as File type, from the drop-down menu select Adobe PDF File (*.PDF).11.In the Object Name box, type in the name of the file.12.Click OK

Naming Your Files

For the most part there are only a few things you should keep in mind when you name a file. At a

minimum include company initials, product number, and the name of the book. Do not leave blanks betweenwords, blank spaces should be filled in with a _. Why you ask? Depending on the persons operating system

the blank spaces can cause problems. For the least amount of problems please add the _. Example:

WW9901_-_The_Keep_of_Von_Blood_Muncher.PDFIf you like you can add additional information like who scanned it, dpi, etc. This is really up to you, but that

information traditionally comes at the end. Example:

WW9901_-_The_Keep_of_Von_Blood_Muncher_scanned_by_ScanMan.PDF WW9901_-_The_Keep_of_Von_Blood_Muncher-300dpi_scanned_by_ScanMan.PDF

I name my files using this naming scheme. You do not have to use it, its just there so you have an ideais all. Like this:

_-__-__(notes)_scanned_by_ TSR11629_-_Alternity_-_Gamma_World_Campaign_Setting_-_(300dpi)_scanned_by_emass


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Making Images into PDFs the Simple Way But Looks Better

These instructions are for people who dont want to manually resize files or want Adobe Acrobat tooptimize the compression so it looks best in PDF format.

1. Open Adobe Acrobat2. Open Adobe Acrobat Distiller3. Open Windows Explorer4. In Adobe Acrobat click: File Open as PDF File.5. Select the cover image (000.TIF) and click OK.6. In Windows Explorer Left-click to highlight first file (001.TIF) SHIFT+PAGE DOWN or

SHIFT+END (this will highlight all files from first image file highlighted to last image file in sequence:

001.TIFF through 999.TIF).7. Left-Click on the first file in the sequence (001.TIF), then drag to the open Acrobat window. When you

do this Acrobat will pop up a window called Insert Pages. In the middle of this window will be a

section called Page. Is that section you will see three choices: First; Last, and Page (it will default to

this option).8. Click on Last (make sure the black dot appears next to this selection).9. Click the OK button.10.Once all the image files are added then FILE SAVE AS.11.Click on SETTINGS (bottom middle) Under FILE FORMAT OPTIONS: PostScript select

LANGUAGE LEVEL 3 from drop down menu

12.Click BINARY below that PostScript option.13.Click OK14.Under, Save as File type, from the drop-down menu select PostScript File (*.ps).15.In the Object Name box, type in the name of the file.16.Click OK17.Go to Acrobat Distiller window and click SETTINGS JOB OPTIONS COMPRESSION. This

area will be broken into three sections: Color Images, Grayscale Images, and Monochrome Images. For

each image type be sure you select: BICUBIC DOWNSAMPLING TO, COMPRESSION

AUTOMATIC, and QUALITY MEDIUM.

18.There are two areas with dpi settings, the top one is the one we are concerned with, Distillerautomatically sets the bottom one based on the tops selection. It is suggested that you either choose

200dpi or 150dpi. This is strictly up to you. I usually rename the *.PS file with 200 at the end and distill

it with the settings 200dpi, then once that is done, rename the *.PS with 150 at the end and distill withthe settings at 150dpi. I then look at both and decide which looks better for the size.

19.Once you have set the DPI size, click OK.20.Go to Windows Explorer and double-click the PS file or grab and drop to the Distiller window. Distiller

will automatically compress everything for you and save it as a PDF with the file name you named the

PS file.

basic scanning ... done the right way v1

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