Scanner Settings

Hey there!

I've been given a Canon CanoScan 9000F as a christmas gift! Now I wonder which settings are the best to be used with stamps/covers in general.. I can use any DPI up to 9600dpi. Although, couldn't create A4 image with 9600dpi because the filesize would be >20gb for a .jpg.. It's a bit overkill. I've googled around and most say that 600dpi should be enough..

So I wonder what settings you use for your scanners? Are there any other settings that could be good to use? I know there are contrast/brightness/colourcorrections etc etc..

I'm about to start sorting through 25-30 albums and 5-7 boxes of cut corners.. So I think I will probably need to scan quite a few to be able to ID, or to upload for help here. :)

I have at least 4 TB of harddrive space so filesize isn't really a big matter..

Thanks for any help!

/Jimmy

600dpi is a great standard for scanning stamps,
but they won't fit on SCF at that, (*.jpg format)
SCF has an automatic "resizer" for that.

I guess it depends on what you are doing with your images, I like to use the computer as a tool to help flyspek my stamps therefore I scan at 1200. This resolution allows for better zooming in on your computer than 600, the image doesn't blow apart as quickly.

I also agree with rod222 and think 600 is good enough for stamps, covers, ebay listings, general postings etc.

1200 allows you to zoom in and take clear snips of what you have discovered: (Hold down [ctrl] and press the + or - key to zoom your screen)









Have a good one,

Skilo54

Therein lies the choice.

My *.jpg at 600dpi can give adequate "fly specking" appeal,
if deeper res is needed one can always re scan the stamp,
but generally not needed.

Here is the payoff, at 600dpi *.jpg my scan of choice is 63Kb
uncompressed it is 1,200 Kb.
Multiply that by 400,000 scans and you can see my obvious choice.

Here is a comparison that I've thrown together to illustrate the difference in scanning resolution.

As others have mentioned, 600dpi is typically the sweet spot - it takes half the time to capture as a 1200dpi scan but still satisfies view ability 90% of the time.

I have scanned at 4800dpi, just to test it a few times.. It's quite awesome that you can zoom to the point when you see the fibres of the paper, without going over 100% zoom.. But hardly any useable..

I don't like the resizer on this page, however I guess I just need to get used to it a bit more. Most of the cases I've just uploaded to imageshack and linked them here. And if a high-reso is needed, I've linked the URL to the picture.

I'm not planning on scanning all of my stamps, since that would take years, literally. However, when I do have sorted through the ~25-30 albums and 6-7boxes and put them in albums, I will probably scan most of the albumpages. I am thinking about ordering a webpage with ~40TB to store most pictures and my excel-files, as well as using it as an online gallery for anyone to see.. So for that I will need to scan a lot.. Therefore I'd like to get it right from the start so I don't have to re-scan anything.

You only change dpi-settings when scanning? No other settings? E.g which *.jpg-quality to use?

Tomten,

With your scanner's software you should be able to choose .jpeg compression quality output but I would suggest .tiff format output or something similar which features zero image compression. This way you will preserve maximum image detail ensuring no re-scans and if you are planning on a server of 10TB or more then you should have more than enough space to house hundreds of thousands of uncompressed 1200dpi scans.

My very ordinary HP scanner works well for most stamps at 200dpi. I use 300 or 600 dpi for vintage stamps. Images are easily compressed with Irvanview "save for web function" to upload to SCF, or I use VSO Image resizer if I need a really clear compression of a large file. I chose VSO because it gives a whole new image, it doesn't replace the original one. Suggestions welcome on the improvement of my methods :)

I use VSO Image Resizer as well. For covers and larger material that I don't need too much detail, the 300 dpi setting is generally fine. When I do want detail or wish to scan just a specific stamp, I move up to the 1200 dpi. I need it (maybe some don't) to identify the microprinting included on most new US issues. Due to storage considerations, I don't generally save the image at that high of a resolution, but it saves me having to dig out a magnifier when identifying those stamps.

I'll also share this tip: If I save a stamp image on my HP Multi-Function Printer, and the result is too large for SCF posting, I simply open and save the jpg image using the Paint program and it compresses the file to almost half the size without losing any of the image quality.

Another vote for 1200dpi as I only scan a select number for my blog, and I do examine the stamp closely. For SCF it is probably overkill , but I want to be one and done and not rescan.

1200dpi is great for individual stamps but for larger items such as covers and mini sheets I usually drop down to 600 or even 300 depending on size.
Remember that doubling the dpi quadruples the effective detail and the subsequent uncompressed file size.

I have thousands (over 4000) of scans @1200dpi and they don't tale up much space really. I have a copy of them on Flickr which is unlimited if you pay $25 per year and also on dropbox which is free for 2Gb.

Tomten, Did you download Canons disk program (comes with printer/scanner) and look under 'Custom' in 'Solution Menu'. Under paper size there is 20+ settings that do make a difference. I found A4 works fine.

Which one do you mean? The two CDs that came along had 1) Canon MP Navigator, 2) SilverFast CanonSDK, the latter is the one which has a load of different settings.

I scan all Stamps at 1200 DPI and Covers at 1000 DPI. Being as a 1Tb hard drive is only $75 storage is cheap and I use Photobucket for my hosting so I don't need to re-size anything. At 1200 DPI each image is still under 1Mb and the detail is good fo finding flaws and such.

Tomten, Canon MP Navigator.

Alright, thanks for all the input so far! I will probably go with 1200DPI, because I will have the HDD-space/webspace to support the sizes.

When I scan, should I have a black paper as background?