Re: [ARSCLIST] Scanners for album covers?

[Mike Richter <mrichter@xxxxxxx>]

At 02:20 PM 9/17/2004 -0400, Jonathan Wise wrote:
> Colleagues,
>
> Can anyone recommend a flatbed scanner that would be suitable for scanning
> 33.3rpm album covers (~12.4" x 12.4")? Any experience with scanning album
> covers would be appreciated.

The suggestions will depend on your application, volume and funds.

For most purposes, 300 dpi is ample - and that is available on virtually
any scanner you might consider. Registration is a key issue and that can be
judged from reviews and samples, but will exclude the toys. Color fidelity
is not usually significant since minor corrections are straightforward and
often one is dealing with fading or imprecise colors to begin with.
Integral descreening is highly desirable unless you are planning on
painfully high resolution, at least 1200 dpi, to resolve individual dots
using a limited palette (essentially, one color per ink).

The major issue is the bed size. Even tabloid (11x17) will not handle your
need, so if the volume is low and cost is a factor, you might consider a
legal-size scanner, planning to stitch two scans in your graphics
application. Unfortunately, most large-bed scanners are flying-spot, which
won't serve your purposes at all.

Since I scan an album cover only rarely, I use a Microtek ScanMaker 8700
(8.5x14 bed) and stitch the two partial scans. Its registration,
flexibility and initial editing (including descreening) are very fine;
price around $900. For image editing, including stitching, I plan to switch
to PhotoShop when I have time to learn it; until then, I use an 'ancient',
discontinued program, Microgafx Picture Publisher in XP SP2.


Mike
--
mrichter@xxxxxxx
http://www.mrichter.com/