Scanning Many Photos
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So I have a box of family pictures I want to scan - and the first, most obvious thing i want to do doesn't appear to exist. That is, place more than one photo on the scanner and have it scan into individual photos.
Is this really not possible? Do I just need to find the right software?
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I'm not sure if its software driven or not. But I see scanners that advertise that they have the capability. So I'm not sure if its a hardware thing, or purely software.
Chris
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Jim, the software is called Photoshop CS...if you have it.
Place all your photos on the scanner bed; I'm tempted to say deliberately not straight, but the chances are that it's utterly impossible to get them mathematically straight anyway. Scan the whole bed-full of photos into one large image in Photoshop, then go to File > Automate > Crop and Straighten photos. The software will look for the straight edges of each photo, crop to them, straighten them and save them all to separate files in the working window, ready for individual tweaking or saving. -
You could try taking them to your local printshop. They'll probably have an auto-feed A3 colour-copier that can take each photo in turn and scan it as a separate image file or combine them all into a multi-page pdf etc; they can then put it all onto your memory stick for you. I did something similar about two weeks ago - I also had a load of copying to do... but the guy did an 30+ page scan onto a stick for ~30p extra (~50c). Our local library also has similar services but is a good bit more expensive...
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Jim, i have quite a cheap scanner "Canoscan LIDE 600F" that works with a ScanGear that can make what you described directly in the preview before the scanning. But it comes with a program called "Arcsoft Photostudio" that (not in all versions i believe) can make that after the scanning.
Massimo. -
Still in the process of scanning all the albums, scrapbooks and loose photos my parents have collected in their 70 plus years, I'll tell ya that fiddling with the photos on the bed so Photoshop Elements 5 could recognize the gaps (and you must leave decent gaps) so it can separate the pictures out of a scan bed full was too much hassle. Not enough contrast on the edges of photos, like those with light skies, made this an impossible job for Elements to handle.
My HP 6210 all-in-one printer/fax/copier/scanner helps me sit and scan as many as two hundred photos in a day (long day though), a scan bed full at a time without restarting the software. It'll stay open for me to continue adding more pictures and when I finish the batch on the glass, I just hit new scan and repeat selecting each photo by double clicking in the center of the photo usually or use the box to narrow down to one photo like using a crop tool and move that box to the next photo when done capturing it. When done with a batch, the software will save them all in a format I choose in a numbered sequence. Even if you run some software that causes a crash while scanning, the files scanned in the middle of a batch are in a temp folder in bmp format to recover manually. Worked great for the over 4,000 photos I've scanned so far. Next come slides and 8mm films... Thank goodness for audio books as they keep me from getting bored while my hands do the loading, unloading and pushing buttons.
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