P Gardner,
You have a HUGE project ahead of you! I gather they must be rather small images in that you can scan 4 at a time.
The only suggestions I have to offer…
Scan your images
Open in PSE
Hit "M" on the keyboard to being up the marquee tool and postion it. —NOTE: if all your images are the same size, you could preset the marquee to the correct size. So instead of dragging out a box, just a click will place the correct size box on the image and reposition by dragging with mouse cursor inside box. To do this, choose marquee tool, above image where it says Style and probably says Normal, use drop down arrow to select Fixed. Type in the dimensions you need—
Hit the Control key and letter C (ctrl/C) this is the copy command Go to File>New, OK the offered new canvas as it will already match the dimensions and resolution of the material you copied
Hit Ctrl/V to paste data on new canvas
Hit Ctrl/Shift/S to name and designate a storage folder
Repeat for remaining 3 images
Someone who has a copy of full Photoshop could probably write you an Action to automate this process. PSE, out of the box, does not play actions, but with free 3rd party add-on tools it can. PSE cannot create Actions however.
Nancy
edit–I think the shortcut for File>New with the same settings is Ctrl/Alt/N
I had a lot of old photos to do and the way I did it was:
I scanned then all in at 4 per scan, then I loaded one of them into Elements. I did image>duplicate image 4 times so that I then had four copies and the original on the screen. After that I cropped the copies to show one photo on each and saved them using "save as". That way the I did not have to change the file names or the folder to save to when I hit the "save as" button … so it speeded up the process.
I started off with one file say Photo1.jpg and ended up with four (Photo1 copy.jpg. Photo1 copy2.jpg etc) in another folder … (On the first save I had to set the folder to save to but after that it just carried on with the same one)
It certainly reduced the number of mouse clicks …
Wendy
I do it the way Wendy does, and I’ve done up to eight per scan this way, depending on photo size. It’s very fast and efficient.
I always leave a small margin around each image when I crop because usually one or two have wound up getting just a little bit crooked on the bed of the scanner. I leave wiggle room for straightening.
Great Ideas! Thank you… The photos are all of different sizes, so the latter 2 suggestions are great!
I am in the same boat, I have also many pictures, snapshots, and slides to scan. I started last week and only have about 50 done. Finding the boxes and sorting thru them is also very time consuming, as I can’t stop looking at them and savoring the memories; my husband is tired of me saying, come here and look at THIS.
I have been doing them individually, but I sure am going to try your methods! The slides will be easier as I have a unique slide scanner(for a Nikon Coolpix 990 which I will explain if anyone here wants)
Thanks! I sure will benefit by this info.
Jane
Hey Beth … I leave wiggle room too but never heard it called that …. I just love the phrase, it conjures up such wonderful images 🙂
I think duplicating the composite 4 times and then cropping one from each is brilliant!
You were getting ready to think of that, too, Nancy! You just hadn’t quite gotten around to it yet is all. 🙂
Beth,
Having never scanned more than one at a time myself, I confess to not having practical experience, I was mostly trying to convey the time saving aspect with using keyboard shortcuts.
Nancy
But back to the original post!! I thought of something. When you do the first scan and it opens in Elements, it isn’t saved until you get ready to close the image. And when you make all of those duplicates, they don’t really save until you get ready to close them, either. So, you DON’T have to do a Save As, as Wendy said, nor do you have to go into the File Browser to change file names like I said, either. All you have to do is hit Save and you’ll automatically get the screen for saving the file under a new name. This makes it even simpler!!
Well, Nancy, now if you ever do want to scan a number of pictures at once, you’ll have the advantage of our experience!
Hey Beth,
I like that one … cuts down the work a little more. Pity I have done all mine now 🙁
Never mind … roll on the next lot.
Wendy
BTW, for what it is worth, there is a feature in Photoshop CS that will automatically straighten the scans and chop them apart for you. You’d need to have an awful lot of photos to make it worth getting photoshop just for that, but maybe Adobe would consider putting that into PE 3.
Hey, Adobe–anyone listening?
Sure is nice to tune in and find such a useful thread. I’ve been doing composite scans a long time, and making duplicates for fast cropping never occurred to me. DUH !! Great idea, and a great timesaver.
Thanks, folks,
🙂
Brent
Recently, I also went through the task of scanning in a lot of photographs. My scanning software is HP DeskScan II, which may work differently than other packages.
I would lay out the photos on the glass and then bring up the scanning software through Elements’ Import function.
The software first brings up a preview of the entire scan-bed, which shows all of the images. I would then use the software’s selection tool to isolate a single image, then click the "Final" scan button.
This copies the selected area to PSE as the first image, and the scanning app stays open.
I then re-select another image, click "Final" and that area is brought into PSE as the second image.
Once all images were brought in as separate scans, I then closed the scanning app, and saved all of the individual images files.
Lay a new bunch of photos on the glass, and repeat as required…
For me, this was a bit more intuitive than bringing the entire "collage" into PSE, and then chopping it up… but I certainly see how the other practice achieves the same end results.
I mention it merely to share.
Byron
I’ve used that one, too, Byron, especially when I had some small pictures that I wanted to scan at a resolution higher than that of others. I also always leave all of the pictures in the scanner until I’ve had a chance to look at each image, just in case I decide to go back and rescan one. I think I gravitated toward the ‘one scan does it all’ method because I just didn’t like having to listen to the scanner any more than necessary! I hope the newer ones aren’t as noisy as this old Umax is. But I sure am going to mourn the loss of that 14" scanning area. 🙁
Beth,
My old 1200S is still on my backup pc ( just in case ) . The new Epson’s are so-o-o-o quiet ! <G>
🙂
Beth, have you decided on a scanner yet?
My old UMAX does a fantastic job too, but I will admit that the noises are rather spectacular, and I really don’t know where to oil it. And it is slow, but it does its job perfectly. We all squeek and groan a bit as we get older. So does my truck, and my dog. Me and my husband too.
Jane
No, Barbara, I decided to try and hold off on buying one. It seems like every model close to what I want has a downside. I realize I’ll never get one that’s perfect, but as long as I’ve waited this long, I think I’ll see what that new Epson being introduced Feb 1 has to offer, which will probably be heart failure when I see the price! 🙂 I sure wish I could find a good photo scanner that has the 8 1/2 X 14" scanning bed. But I’m sure that really is asking too much.
Beth,
Those are out there. A couple months ago I picked up an Epson 1650 Photo scanner with a 14" bed. (refurbished for $39.00, full warranty). This is by no means a top of the line scanner though.
FWIW I just replaced my Visioneer with the Epson 3170 and it’s a light years improvement ($199 after rebate at Best Buy). I’ve heard the new Epson is even better, but not available here yet.
wrote in message
No, Barbara, I decided to try and hold off on buying one. It seems like
every model close to what I want has a downside. I realize I’ll never get one that’s perfect, but as long as I’ve waited this long, I think I’ll see what that new Epson being introduced Feb 1 has to offer, which will probably be heart failure when I see the price! 🙂 I sure wish I could find a good photo scanner that has the 8 1/2 X 14" scanning bed. But I’m sure that really is asking too much.
Thanks, Nancy, I’m off to the Epson site to look again. It looks like I’ll have to make a choice, though – big bed or good photo scans. I hate that. I want it all! 🙂
Beth,
I just bought a Epson Perfection 3170…it comes with PSE2 and an upgrade to full photoshop offer for $299…offer expires Dec. 31, 2003. I don’t know if I’ll do it but since your looking at scanners I thought I’d pop that in…of cource it was a $200 scanner which takes some of the ummph out of that upgrade quote.
Terri
Except for the difference that I use an Epson scanner and its software, I use a similar workflow as Byron’s. In a film strip up to 6 fames, a selection marquee is drawn on the first frame in the Preview window. Scan it and save. Then go back to the still open Preview window and just drag the marquee over the next frame to be scanned. After a few frames, I’ll be doing it almost by rote and can enjoy listening to music.
Shan
Out of curiosity, what resolution do you all use when you scan your old photos? What file format do you use and how much compression do you allow?
–Sam
Sam,
My ancient HP-3c scanner has a max optical resolution of 600×600, so that’s what I use.
Before I began using PSE, I kept my master scanned images stored as uncompressed TIFF files. Now I scan into PSE and store my images as uncompressed PSD files.
I suppose that there is a point of diminishing returns, but my expectation is that most serious archivers will use the maximum optical resolution available to them, and do not compress their master digital images.
If I’m wrong, hang out here for a few minutes and you’ll find out… :~)
Byron
My scanner is somewhat limited in option resolution, too, but I usually judge the resolution based on what I think I might be doing with the digital image. I have some very tiny pictures from waaay back when. I normally scan those at a higher resolution so I can increase the physical size and still maintain something around 300ppi for printing purposes. I have a separate slide scanner, but I never scan below 1200 on that, because it takes that much to get even a modest print at 300ppi. I don’t see any point in overscanning particularly. I just "save" that for pictures I think I might want to fiddle with in some way or other.
I usually scan and save the old ones in PSD, so there’s no compression. I figure if I’m going to do all this work, I don’t want to lose any of it! The quality on some of the really old photos isn’t all that great to begin with. 🙂
