Alex and arachneans: I've used 3 different scanners during my computer lifetime. I used to have one from Hewlett Packard that was specifically for slides and negatives. But it cost $600 15 years ago. Things have gotten cheaper. Currently there seem to be a lot of flatbed scanners on the market which can scan both flat photographs and slides or negatives.
The slide scanner part is embedded in the lid. When you scan you have to tell the computer that you are scanning a slide, not a photo, and then it shines a light through the slide instead of at the slide from behind the scanner's glass. The $100 price range does seem to be about right. The quality of the scanner itself seems to me not to be the primary thing, but rather the quality of the software that comes with it. The software is what allows you to meddle with the image once the scan has created a digital file for you. How easy the image manipulation is makes a big difference in how your final usable picture will look. For whatever it's worth, here are some suggestions based on my experience scanning 600 slides for creating my website. First, never ever use the photo sharpening function in the software. I think the people who designed the software never imagined that anybody would be scanning lace. The program makes assumptions, probably that most people are shooting people and the family dog. not lace. The preview scan mode is really useful in preventing your computer being blocked up with huge numbers of pixels that you don't need. After you've got the preview image, use the crop function to isolate exactly the part of the image that you really need. I think that a good lace image is one that shows you each individual shadow of each individual threadd: this is how you perceive the structure of the lace. This is how you know how it was made. I also find that improving the image is best done after you have scanned the image, not by manipulating the settings beforehand. I have found that the best functions for improving the scan quality (in terms of revealing structure) are darkening mid-range tones, possibly darkening the dark spots, and sometimes increasing highlights. Also intensifying the colors of the whole image helps. You end up with an image where the color is a little unrealistic, but the detail and shadows may be more visible. Also, any image manipulation you use should be done only in tiny bits: nearly always 2%-3%, rarely 5%, but never ever more than 10%. Sorry for the lengthy reply, but I've wanted to say these things about image enhancement for a long time. I've seen so many lace images on the internet which are fuzzy or pure black and pure white. And that kind of image is useless to a lacemaker because it doesn't show you the structure. If my explanations make no sense, please contact me with your questions, and I'll help if I can. Lorelei Halley - To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]
