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Saturday, February 8, 2020

What a difference a scanner makes.

I've been working on my NASCAR cards again lately...as you may recall from previous posts, I scanned the fronts only of my entire collection back in 2009 and 2010. But I did a pretty lousy job of it, so pretty much every scan needs to be fixed...or replaced outright. For the past two weeks I've been working on this pretty hard, but I've only fixed about 400 cards. There's still 12,000 to go.

Anyway, my second scanner, which I used from 2010-12, was not very good. It had problems with colors, and then the glass delaminated and I basically had to recreate each scan in PhotoScape if I was able to use them at all.

On the topic of colors...
this was the original scan. I uploaded it to my website on July 11th, 2010. It's pretty awful. Here's the new scan I made yesterday, February 7th, 2020.

That is much more accurate! Look how much of the grass detail was lost in the original scan, and the 1s and 0s in the background. Yet the yellow was far too bright.

I've gone back and forth on saving the old scans or just outright rescanning them, but I've decided that I'm going to save as many of the originals as I can. It's a slow process, it would actually be faster if I just rescanned them. But that would be losing some of my history. I don't want to do that if possible. I will if I have to, of course. On the same scan as I pulled this one from, there was a rescan of a card where part of it was cut off on the original, and it was so badly crooked that I would have lost a significant part of it to rotate it. So it got rescanned while the original got deleted.

I may have to end up rescanning most of the non-sports cards, though. Most of them were done with scanner #2. Time will tell.

NASCAR season starts today! I can't wait. I went through a few year period where I didn't enjoy the sport very much. That changed last year, which is unexplainable because NASCAR's current rules stink, and one of my least favorite drivers won the championship. But I still enjoyed it. And I've been really looking forward to the new season starting, and finally, today, it is!
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11 comments:

  1. SumoMenkoManFebruary 8, 2020 at 3:01 PM

    Bring on NASCAR! I’ve lost interest the past few years, but I’ll likely at least watch the Daytona 500.

    ReplyDelete
  2. JediJeffFebruary 8, 2020 at 8:25 PM

    Wow - amazing how much detail was lost from that scanner 2. Color values were WAY off.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Billy KingsleyFebruary 9, 2020 at 10:43 AM

      Yeah...I'm going to have to rescan just about everything from scanner 2.

      Delete
  3. Base Card HeroFebruary 8, 2020 at 9:28 PM

    Nice upgrade. I recently picked up an Epson V19 and love it. I then started using VueScan software and the pictures started to come out even better.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Billy KingsleyFebruary 9, 2020 at 10:43 AM

      I'm using a V600...best quality scans I've ever gotten.

      Delete
    2. Base Card HeroFebruary 9, 2020 at 8:05 PM

      I looked at the V600. Almost pulled the trigger, but ended up buying the cheaper one.

      Delete
  4. FujiFebruary 9, 2020 at 1:36 PM

    At first I couldn't tell the difference between the two two scans... then I saw the gray 0's an 1's in the background and noticed the difference. If and when I ever have to rescan all of my cards... I'll probably just quit blogging (since that's the primary reason I take the time to scan cards).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Billy KingsleyFebruary 9, 2020 at 2:23 PM

      Take a look at the grass, too. It looks almost black on the original scan!

      Delete
    2. FujiFebruary 9, 2020 at 6:26 PM

      Oh yeah. That's a big difference.

      Delete
  5. Billy KingsleyFebruary 9, 2020 at 2:22 PM

    I've changed my mind. I am going to rescan them. Since I wrote this post on Friday I've found more and more where the color is off. And my new scanner can actually pick up the foil, usually.

    With one exception. I'm going to reuse the original scans for the mirror foil cards if I can. The original scanner did a better job with them then the current scanner does. But if I have to, I will rescan them as well. I hope not, because I don't enjoy doing them at all.

    ReplyDelete