NVMUG eNews 5/15/2004
Last updated 5/21/2004
Digital Scanners
Midge Lubot demonstrated two digital scanners with help from Stephen Farber and Warren Walker. There were a number of related and not so related questions, answers, and other items.
In this NVMUG eNews1. Digital Scanners Demonstrated
3. New Addition to the Library - Excel Hacks
(See Reviews though not a review)
1. Digital Scanners Demonstrated
As reported in the Calendonian-Record, Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Midge Lubot demonstrates scanners at the Northern Vermont Macintosh Users Group meeting in St. Johnsbury Saturday.
Midge Lubot brought two new digital scanners to demonstrate at the Northern Vermont Macintosh Users Group in St. Johnsbury Saturday One was a scanner for 35 mm slides and film strips. The other was a multipurpose flatbed scanner that can also scan slides and film strips.
Both scanners work with Macintosh and PC computers.
Like many people, Lubot has a collection of slides from many trips she and her husband have have taken. They have 144 rolls of film with 36 exposures each from 10 years of traveling. After each trip, they looked at these slides, carefully put them away, and rarely looked at them after that.
Richard Lubot bought her a PrimeFilm Series PF 1800 scanner so she can scan and manage the images from these 35 mm slides and film strips.
Digital filing will preserve the images, make it easier to find the ones she wants to look at, and make it more convenient to view them.
The Lubots may find other uses for the special images, and will get more enjoyment from them.
The PrimeFilm PF 1800 scanner looks small, only about 9 inches long, 4 inches wide, and 7 inches tall. It can scan positive and negative slides and film strips. It is easy to load and has automatic focussing.
It did not take long for Midge Lubot to scan a slide Ñ the manufacturer says it takes only 23 seconds. Based upon the manufacturer's specification, the 1800 x 1800 dpi optical resolution produces a 1720 x 2590 pixel image, which is better than a 4 megapixel digital camera and enough to produce good 8 x 10 inch prints.
Both scanners come with their own software and with Photoshop Elements 2. You can scan from both scanners from within applications like Photoshop and Photoshop Elements 2 to import images, or you can start scans separately with their own software.
For the PF 1800 scanner, you enter the dots per inch to be scanned and the type of film to adjust for the profile characteristics of the film used to take the picture. The CyberView35 software that comes with the PF 1800 scanner has considerable editing capability.
Phyllis Hammond thought the image had a slightly red hue, but that might have been the actual color of the buildings in Italy. She asked if the color could be adjusted.
Lubot has not had much time to work with the new scanner, but she demonstrated how to use CyberView35 to flip an image, to make it larger or smaller, and to use variations to adjust the color hue or make the image darker of lighter. The software can also adjust levels, the light and dark values of an image. Adjusting levels is a a bit of magic used to really add life to many pictures. Before and after views let you experiment with adjustments and cancel them if it is not what you want.
Stephen Farber demonstrated the Epson Perfection 3170 Photo flatbed scanner. He took the lid off, put a penny and a bill on the glass flatbed, and gently set the lid down. (Warren Walker advised us to never put a hard object directly on the glass.) At an optical resolution 3200 x 3200 dpi, the quality of the scan was amazing.
Farber then put a book down on the scanner's glass, set the cover on top, and scanned the back of the book into the optical character reading software that came with the scanner. The optical character reader analyzed the picture and translated most of the characters correctly into a text document. It recognized italics, picked up a bullet mark, and read the ISBN number correctly. However, it did interpret l's as Ps. The result was an editable text document which required very little editing despite the high gloss of the cover.
You can push a buttons on the Epson scanner to scan to printer to use it like a copier, to scan a business card, to scan for e-mail, or to scan into an application.
The Epson Perfection 3170 has equipment built into the cover of the scanner to scan 35 mm slides or film strips. You use either the provided a slide adapter that can hold four slides at once, or an adaptor for one or two film strips holding the standard six 35 mm pictures you get back when the film is processed
The scanner was new, so no one had time to study the instructions, but Warren Walker set the equipment up to scan four slides in automatic mode at the highest resolution. The scan took about 20 minutes! It produced one large image containing four small images surrounded by lots of black area, not the four separate images we expected. We were dismayed by the length of time it took, but amazed by the quality of the images.
I researching this article afterward on the Epson web site, and found that the Epson Perfection 3170 will not produce multiple images in the Fully Automatic Scan mode. Producing multiple images requires using either the Home mode which allows simple common adjustments or the Professional mode which allows more complete scanner control. The amount of area scanned would have been much smaller, and the scanning time would probably have been much shorter if we had taken time to read the instructions first.
The quality of the Epson image in detail and color rendition was finer than that of the PrimeFilm Series PF 1800, but this may have been at least partially the result of earlier adjustments to the color on the PF 1800 that were not reset for this scan.
The first impression was that, as expected, a dedicated slide and film scanner, like the PrimeFilm Series PF 1800, would make it much faster and more practical to scan the huge number of slides to produce good digital images. A flat bed scanner, like the Epson Perfection 3170, is a more versatile scanner and, in this case, it might be worth scanning selected favorite trip pictures on it to see whether and how much it improves the quality.
NVMUG normally meets at 10 a.m. on the third Saturday of the month at The Old Mill Club in St. Johnsbury. To learn more about the questions and answers at the meeting, or about NVMUG, see the web site at http:/www.sover.net/~nvmug
2. More About the Meeting
Leigh Hurley said she is a writing and code geek. All of her business is online. She sells eBooks in the unique renewable energy niche, among other things. She says a successful online business depends totally on your subject matter.
Phyllis Hammond spent quite a bit to get a photograph of a painting, used it to order postcards, and was not satisfied with the results. Midge said she has a good, less expensive source for postcards in New York, and that she sends them an inkjet print on 8 x 10 photo paper.
Here is the information from Midge:
The company is called Color Card, their address is 1065 Islip Ave, Central Islip, NY 11722, telephone number is 800-875-1386 and their fax number is 631-232-1392. They take VISA and MasterCard and are very pleasant to work with (after you get past the NY accents, they just speak a little louder than New Englanders).
The cost of a 4x6 postcard was 500 for $95 plus shipping which was $10.00. I'm not sure if the prices are up to date, I have not used them for about 9 months. If anyone wants, I can scan the order form in, Richard is not here right now with the scanner so I am just sending this info to you now. Please let me know if you want me to scan.
If you want Midge to scan the order form for you, or have other questions for her, you can call her at (802) 748-3798, or e-mail her at lubot@sover.net.
Phyllis asked how to get a picture from a painting on to a business card. Someone recommended that she scan the painting on a flatbed scanner, and to use Photoshop to resize it, and create the business card
Midge had one picture at Martinsen Industries that they could not photograph because of the reflective surface. The scanned the picture, photographed the frame, and then put the picture into the frame using Photoshop.
Stephen Farber said that if you discontinue an e-mail download in SoverNet, it sometimes really louses up. Leigh Hurley says when she is going to send a large eBook by e-mail, she first sends an e-mail to get permission. Then she sends an e-mail along with the eBook. She optimizes her file before sending it, so what used to be a 7 meg pdf file now fits into 3.6 megs.
Phyllis said that where she used to get 12 e-mails a day, she now gets 45, mostly spam. Midge said she gets 200 a day, and she thinks the spammers have gotten smarter about outwitting the filters used to prevent the spam. Screening spam is a constant battle of wits.
Warren Walker recommended looking at the content and composition first when making the decision whether to save the image or not, then consider any improvements in quality.
Leigh recommended bringing in the raw photo, and making a duplicate level to modify. Then you can compare the original with the modified level.
Stephen Farber said when using a tool like variations, make it too much, then move it back a little, or use levels to make the adjustment and then reduce the degree of opacity.
Leigh said they use an iMac and digital camera set up so the digital image comes up directly on the iMac and they can review it immediately for quality. I showed Phyllis the pictures I had just taken at the meeting as an example, and Midge selected the least objectionable image to send to the Caledonian.
Leigh said when using an optical character reader to convert a file, after the preview they block off areas with images from the OCR.
Stephen Farber recommended using iView Multimedia Pro for asset management. It has huge capabilities for classifying, cataloging, indexing, and storing images. Several others agreed. Stephen said the real problem is what's it filed under.
Quote of the day: When Midge was talking about saving TIFF and JPEG files, Phyllis asked, "Doesn't your hard drive get a bit bulgy?"
4. A Wierd Experience
We had been having trouble with our Airport dial up connection to SoverNet. We had to reset Airport quite often because it would connect us, but we could not get the web page or e-mail.
I called SoverNet service, and the people were most helpful. They even told me how to use Terminal to Ping to analyze the connection. After many tests, and calling them back after each one because Airport and our telephone share the same line, one of there technical support people had me run a test and called me back - which was very nice of him.
With the help of their technical support we got to the point where my wife's iMac was connecting to the Web and e-mail, and my iBook was connecting to e-mail but not the Web. It appeared obvious that Safari on my machine was the problem. Reinstalling Safari did not help. Deleting software in the Library, and then reinstalling Safari did not help. Reinstalling Panther did not help.
I decided rebuild everything from scratch. I started backing things up, then to save time and be sure I had backed up everything, I copied my whole home folder to an external hard drive. I got a message that something would not copy because i did not have authorization. I was tired and stupid, and continued. Later I found that the copied iPhoto files were empty.
I am still moving images from my camera into iPhoto, but now, instead of editing them and saving edited copies in iPhoto, I have a different system. I delete the ones I am sure I do not want, name the rest, and put them in Albums. Then I drag them to a separate JPEG file where I check them with Photoshop Elements 2 to see if they need simple adjustments like levels or exposure. I save either the original or the adjusted image at the highest JPEG resolution, and put a separate copy on my external hard drive. I still need a system to be sure these are backed up to CDs - always before I mess with my System.
Communications are now working fine, but I do not know what was corrupted or how it happened.
