Scanning Your Work

Hi Erika,

I'm paying someone to scan my work... still working the bugs out of that, but as far as I can tell, I'm getting more consistently competent images from scanning than from my inept amateur photography & barely adequate camera.

Some other threads talk about what kind of scanners different people here on FAA have... one of the more frequently mentioned seems to be an Epson something-or-other. It has a smallish scanning surface, I checked out the prices on Amazon -- assuming I was looking at the right thing, they're somewhere in the neighborhood of $500. For artwork bigger than the scanning glass, people use a program, maybe Photoshop? to "stitch" multiple images together to get one big image - I don't own photoshop and I have no real interest in paying for purchasing photoshop if I'm not going to use it for anything other than post-processing images for FAA. I can do most of the post-processing I need using freeware - Picasa seems to work ok, but I don't think it can "stitch" -- if it can, I have not figured out how to make Picasa do that. So... if you buy a scanner, you might also have to buy and learn photoshop or some other computer program that has a "stitch" function, unless you only do small sized art originals.

I would have to sell a huge number of prints on FAA to pay for a scanner that can produce FAA print quality images. If I ever start selling that many prints, I'll consider investing in a scanner, or a better camera. Given my sales rate right now, the cost benefit analysis does not argue in favor of spending any money at all on scanners or camera equipment...

I hear people consistently saying they've been on FAA for a year or more and still have yet to sell a single print, so I'm not expecting the sales-fairy to grant my wish of thundering herds of print sales anytime soon. So... off to the print shop I go...

I'm mainly using FAA as a website where I can show people what my work looks like, so I can show my art to friends/relatives, & sell my art elsewhere. I don't need especially high quality images for that, although there is a massive nuisance factor to selling a print on FAA, and having FAA contact me to say the image I posted won't print and I have 48 hours to provide a better image of the art. I'm delighted with the sale... I'm not delighted with the last-minute fire-drill to try to get a better image. Apparently FAA promises customers a 48 hour turn-around on orders... so everything else equal, it's good if my posted images are good enough for FAA to be able to fulfill the order without me doing a short-notice re-do of the image that was ordered. Especially problematic if I sold the original... so I can't re-photograph or re-scan it.

I have found the process for figuring out whether there are problems with my posted images - for purposes of getting FAA prints done - somewhat frustrating. Unfortunately, as far as I know there is no way to test the images I've posted to see if they're FAA-print-worthy before the first buyer of that image actually places an order for a print. I can get a certain amount of critiquing of image quality from other members on the discussion threads, and from looking at the green box, otherwise I'm pretty sure I have to wait until someone orders a print of an image to find out that there is a problem with it.

A lot of the people posting on these discussion thread are photographers, or digital artists, who like playing with all that equipment. If you don't have any reason to get the equipment other than posting images on FAA, and you don't enjoy the learning process for using electronic gadgets, you're probably better off just continuing to have your work scanned.

Ok, it looks like you have two threads, "Scanning Your Work" going. The other thread has some recommendations for scanners.

Cheryl - it is actually fairly simple to see if your image will be print worthy .
For those of us who are not technologically affluent ( me) - there is Picassa Photo editor - Free download.

In there you can see your image @ %100 and over.

My Epson was $300 ish. Prints well for shows & Gallery prints on Watercolor paper.

For what the local printing companies were asking to scan - with no guarantee mind you, it was well worth the cost - even if I used it for gifts alone.

Paint once, scan once - image is forever yours to sell & keep.

I know we have 2 threads going now on this - but it is certainly well worth getting the best quality image.

Hi Janine,
If only it were that simple. I had an image that looked just fine in Picasa that didn't work out so well once it was uploaded to my FAA profile & someone ordered a print. There's no substitute for having someone actually order a print....

My print shop is reasonably priced, I can get a lot of scanning done for the price of even a $300 printer. If and when a decent volume of print sales starts rolling in, I'll worry about investing in a scanner...

Ericka--
I purchased an Epson Perfection V37 scanner a couple years ago and have not had a rejection for printing since. Before that, I had lots of issues with quality photos, etc. Epson comes with its' own Scan-N-Stitch program with instructions on page size, etc. I paid less than $100 for it and it has been great. I am sure there are many others out there that are not too expensive as well.

Hi Marilyn:
$100 is sounding more appealing. How high can you get the resolution (dpi) on your scanner? Good to know about Epson coming with it's own stitch program... that makes it easier.

Hi All,
I, too, am scanning my work. Using our older HP All- in-One printer/fax 309c. I stitch my scans together using Pixelmator (a cheaper photoshop-like app alternative that I think is great).

But I am having a heck of time getting my images under 25MB and and keeping large in dimension, so if anyone has advice that'd be great. ?

I generally scan in at 300dpi, then stitch, then change the image dimensions (larger) and also reduce to 72dpi in same motion. Then I save as .png because I wanted to avoid .jpg compression and voila! I have a file that is 40MB. So I have to go back and tinker.

Also, what about "color-depth" I can adjust for 8-bit or 16-bit. Does it matter?

Color depth? What is that, and how could it affect how a posted image looks/prints?

Thank you everyone for sharing!

to stitch software:
You can get a free one from Microsoft (called ICE; look for download on the Microsoft site)

to colour depth:
it tells You how many different colours can be shown.
I.e. 8 bit colour depth means that You have 8 bits for each of the three basic colours red, blue and green. 8 bits in binary code (ones and zeros) allowes 256 different shades of each. So You have all in all 256*256*256=16,777,216 different colours. Normally that is more than enough. Only when You have one of the three colours exclusively in Your image (i.e. a red curtain with different shading), than "only" 256 colours may be visible. Modern software works with 10 or 12 bits colour depth. That means 1,073,741,824 or 68,719,476,736 different colours! Nobody can see that! So 10 bit is more than enough.

about too big files:
You don't get difficulties with jpegs when You don't go below 11 (of 12) in quality. With jpeg also my big panoramas have less than 25 MB. Keep the big png for Yourself as high quality file but do upload the jpeg.

Hmm. I wonder if I'm having color depth issues with some of my images. They lose some of the reds - not when they're posted, but, oddly, when they're re-posted (they look ok on my profile, but not when they're reposted in a discussion thread).

You're welcome Erika. Check out Best Buy & Amazon for good deals.
Best wishes .

Cheryl, You never know what happens when Your image is reposted especially with compression. So when Your uploaded version is ok everything will be fine.

Thanks, Rudi, for the helpful info. I'll go back to trying out .jpgs.