Tuesday, June 26, 2012

I hate my scanners




I've got two printer/scanners and I wouldn't pay a dime for either one of them again. I don't care what I do I can't get certain cards to scan correctly. Like this Dennis Martinez Fleer Somethingorother Auto'd card.

I really like the card. Denny Martinez was a huge favorite of mine back when he was active. But I'll be damned if I can get either of my scanners to show the whole card. The white border gets chopped off every time. I even tried scanning it in a holder (as you can tell by the reverse side scan) but no joy. 

Maybe the border is too white. Maybe there's a secret I can't figure out. Maybe I should use a camera. Maybe I need a 'dedicated' scanner instead of these multi-function deals. Maybe someone will nuke Canon headquarters. And then do the same to Epson.

4 comments:

  1. I was just cursing my scanner the moment I pulled up your post. I can't get my cards to be scanned straight without trying like 5 times. My last scanner had "auto correct," which took care of that issue. This scanner has so many functions that auto correct might be one of them, but it'll take me 6 years to find it.

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  2. this is a problem with all scanners. The way I get around it is to place a piece of coloured paper over top of teh white bordered card, scan it, then upload it into one of my many photoshop type programs and crop it so that just the card remains. I can also us the same program to rotate it if it is not straight.

    I've been doing that for years. If anyone has a way around that, I'd love to hear it.

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  3. Night Owl: I hear ya. The software is as bad as the scanner. With 'auto' setting only two cards get scanned no matter how many I have on the platen. With 'manual' there are too many variables.

    Cap'n: I'm going to go back to that. I used to do that but when I used a full sheet of paper it would always knock some cards out of alignment. And individual smaller sheets were a pain. But ya do what ya gotta do I guess. I put the cards on my Picasa site and that has good built-in tools for cropping online.

    What burns me is that I can talk to my daughter in Buenos Aires via Skype like she's in the next room but I can't get a baseball card to scan right. ::::pffffffftttt::::

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  4. Here's a trick I picked up accidentally. I scan cards in the corner diagonally opposite of the one with the little arrows on it.

    Then I move it about a 1/4 inch from the border by guiding the top of the corner away from the side. The top of the card stays level to the scanner that way and it scans the whole card.

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