When was the last time you used a scanner? No, not the kind that prices your Oreos or peruses your carry-on bag. I’m talking about the kind of scanner that turns pictures into pixels and doubles as a photocopier and business machine.
Although photography is decidedly digital these days, the desktop scanner still has its place. You might have old photographic prints, negatives, or slides that yearn to be seen and shared along with their digital descendants. You might shoot film when you want that analog look. You might have logos and other line art that need to end up in illustrations or page layouts.
These are just a few of the reasons why we’re working on some courses covering scanners and the scanning topics that matter in today’s world.
And it’s why we’d appreciate your help.
Below you’ll find a poll containing a list of working titles for a scanning course. Which name do you like best?
Loading ...If you have an extra moment, we’d love your comments regarding scanners in general. Is yours dusty and disused? Is it an essential part of your digital life? Or does it fall somewhere in between, in that I-use-it-now-and-then neighborhood?
Most important, what would you like to see in a modern scanning course? What scanning concepts, topics, projects are important to you?
Reaaally nice idea, and i think necessary. I still use my scanner daily for illustration process. Draning, inking, then scan, clean, print blueprint, and paint on top, then scann again (yeah, i have a long technique). Although i love digital, ink and paper still gives great results.
Instructing people to take a few moments to get to know their scanner. Experiment with the buttons and options.
Do you know how to:
enlarge and reduce?
scan B&W and color?
change resolution to get finer quality?
switch between text mode and photograph mode?
change the format (depending upon what the default it, can you change to another application format)?
Information on what scanning software might be easiest along with the following:
best image to scan, ie. jpeg, tiff, bitmap etc….
best layout, and size of image
every detail you could think of, should be included.
I use my scanner (part of an AIO) at least a few times each month for work. Sometimes for photos, sometimes to scan a hand-drawn illustration for refinement, but often for copying invoices and such to send to accounting (I work for a non-profit, but primarily work at home).
On a recent project, I scanned old B&W archived photos for use in invitations to an annual meeting and alumni reunion. People LOVED seeing the old pictures from the mid 50′s through early 60′s.
Personally, I have a LOT of old family photos that are degrading and would love to start scanning and restoring to preserve my own family’s story.
Scanners certainly are still part of my creative arsenal.
We have a lot of old pictures and films that we got before the event of the digital camera. We want somehow digitize them but until now we did not find any scanner that provide us the quality that we want, may be we did not use the right scanning method. So in this course if you could show us how to select a scanner or give evaluation of good scanners in the market, it would be wonderful.
Thanks so much for your great services.
I use my Epson Perfection V500 Photo Scanner quite regularly for scanning old photos, documents, and other things for art projects I work on. It isn’t uncommon to find pretty leaves during the fall that you can scan into your computer. What I miss is the ability to scan directly into Photoshop utilizing the Twain feature, however I believe that Adobe has a plug-in for this. Since resolution and size are important components of scanning in order for the best presentation, you might suggest to new users how they co-relate to producing a good scan. (whether for print, web, etc.) Other things like sepia tone or black and white can be controlled in Photoshop or other image editing software. I am sure what you come up with will be fantastic.
Something that was important to me when I was buying a scanner was learning about the technology behind the scanner. I found there are two types, one that gives better output than the other (can’t remember the acronyms now). My purpose was to scan original hand-drawn artwork for a book, so I wanted the best quality possible. I think including this information would be useful to anyone looking to buy a new scanner.
Also, information about output file types would be helpful, such as when to choose jpg, tiff, etc.
Keep up the great work!
My scanner seems to be in the same category as my fax. That is, it gets occasional use. There’s the odd document or old photo to scan but that’s about it. I notice somebody commented that they scan autumn leaves which I hadn’t thought of. My inclination would be to photograph those leaves but, if there are more ideas for making better use of scanners then I’d like to hear them.
I think their are many topics for coverage…and reason to support better & better professional capabilities that come with the scanner. Differences between file formats, Using the professional functions, Getting scanner software inegrated with Adobe Photoshop/Camera Raw, Getting the scanning software to include organization abilities such as integration with Adobe Bridge, Creative capabilities & techniques- especially since these days one can take a photo with their mobile phone and bypass the need for a scanner- yet scanners have the ability in size and added software to stand above such limited device. The use of creative techniques in the making of Art and not just the scanning of Art. Include the nitty-gritty for old photos, negetives, slides, film with FASTER capability than currently. Scanning technology can be revisioned!
Thank You
I bought a new flatbed scanner about 3 years ago and have used it: once. One time. It’s now in a box in my basement. The digital camera and clients’ digital assets have obviated the need we used to have.
The scanner that I use almost daily though is the ScanSnap document scanner. It is so simple to use I can’t see how you’d do a video on it. You don’t even need to turn it on/off, it does so automatically as soon as you open/close the feeder thing.
But perhaps a title (or a chapter in a title) on “print to digital” … hooking up a scanner to Acrobat for converting reams of paper docs to readable/indexable PDFs … would be useful.
For me, scanning is all about maintaining a paperless filing system. I stopped keeping paper on January 1; all documents now reside on my computer as PDFs or other kinds of document files.
I don’t scan photos or use a scanner for any creative purposes. Instead, I’m interested in how to get scanning done more efficiently and make resulting files easier to store and retrieve.
I use my scanner for turning my old portfolio samples into digital files and to capture old and deteriorating letters and correspondence from my family (60 year old letters etc.). Also even though it is a flat bed scanner I capture 4×5 negatives and and prints. It delivers a pretty good product but I think there is a market for a large flat bed scanner that has a greater DIN capture and will go ultra high res for art prints. I also have a Nikon Super Coolscan 9000 for negs and film up to 6×7. Its amazing but the drop off to the other scanner is noticeable. I am self-taught and would definitely use a course that walked through standards but included some fancy tips and tricks.
I’m the archivist at a medium-sized museum with archives and a research center. We have nearly 350,000 photographic elements (prints, negatives, slides, etc.), as well as many manuscript collections. I recently purchased a high-end scanner to begin digitizing these for access and better organization. I could really use a decent course on best practices and techniques for scanning various media before investing too much time in the wrong approach. As the resulting scans will be ingested into a digital asset management system, I would appreciate a course that takes that into consideration, as well–naming conventions, file types and sizes, compatibility with Bridge or similar applications, and so on.
Some tips on best use of a Nikon Coolscan 5000 for transparency and film scanning would be very useful. It is a good quality dedicated film scanner that is often used by designers, agencies, publishers, and people wishing to digitally archive images.
Scanning from film or negative seems to be recommended over scanning from a print for quality reasons.
I use the above, and also an Epson V500 flatbed (for scanning prints where no negative exists).
I use mine for old family photographs, recipes found in newspapers, and making copies of other documents. I currently use an Epson Artisan 810.
I use my scanner daily for receipts into Quicken and some photos; however I cannot seem to scan from PSE into the program always comes out as a thumbnail. But, if I scan to a file and import to PSE it works just fine….so a class might be helpful.
My vote was for Scanner Essential Training. Fujitsu’s line of ScanSnap scanners rocks, but I’m sure I could make much better use of my scanner, and I think the same is true for most people. What are the benefits? How do you choose a scanner? How should settings be tweaked for documents, receipts, photos, artwork, etc.? What are best practices for maintaining your scanner to keep it running as good as new? Some specific tips on some of the more popular scanners would also be great.
Our family made it a project to scan in all of the family photos for our parents 60th wedding anniversary. (We also had all of the family videos converted to digital format.) We did not stop with prints but also looked thru some of the very old negatives and scanned them and found photos we had never seen printed of our parents before marriage, their first home, daddy holding the twins, daddy bringing home a 1st puppy to his oldest son, on and on and on….priceless memories captured now everyone can share.
I used a scanner daily at a museum to digitize a very large photo collection. Outside of the museum I use a scanner to digitize film (both old photos & negatives and newly shot), as well as actual objects. A scanner is a great tool for getting detail from surfaces. I think it is important to include topics such as resolution and how that factors file size and output for future uses, especially if someone is archiving their family photo history or important documents.
I use my scanner (Epson Artisan 810) frequently to digitize old photos and then restore them in Photoshop. In addition to the other comments, I would appreciate some in-depth instructions on calibrating the scanner using the histogram adjustments for color and B&W in the scanner software. I have studied the lynda.com tutorial video on this topic but it is geared to a particular 3rd party software.
I’d love to see a section of the course cover the range of specifications you consider when buying a new scanner for various purposes – whether to archive family photos or just to scan your receipts/documents. And once you get your scanner, which parts of the resolution/bit depth/etc are important to have on the highest quality and which ones can you dial down without losing much quality? I had to pick my graphic design friend’s brain for an hour for those details last time I shopped for a scanner. Specific sections could be geared toward the best settings for photo archiving, photo scanning for restoration, photo scanning for facebook albums, document ocr-ing, etc.
Since so many scanners come with their own branded software, which wouldn’t really be possible to cover in one video, I think it would be useful to introduce how to scan directly into common software, like Acrobat and Photoshop. Often the scanner’s own user manual doesn’t make it clear those are alternatives to the scanner’s software.
I would love to see a course for scanning film and prints for archival purposes. I am not so interested as scanning with a particular print size in mind, but mainly want to just scan once in the highest resolution possible (even knowing I might loose a little on not making a print-specific scan).
In particular, it would be nice to see some training which includes some detailed instruction on the Silverfast Archive Suite.
Maybe I’m a little strange since I still love to shoot film, but it still seems that there are plenty of other people out there that are involved in scanning large amounts of film and prints from the 150 plus years of photographic images before digital: just check the eBay prices on used Nikon film scanners and look at the popularity of current production brands like the Plusteks!
I haven’t used my scanner in years, it had an attitude years ago, much like the soup kitchen nazi in Seinfeld, ..”No scan for you!”, it worked when it wanted to. I’d hit the scan button, sometimes it would say “you want scan? I give you 5 scans! You can’t stop me muhaw haw haw!” “Now you have 4 scans you don’t need! And I send file to some random place, thank you have nice day”
Now he sits in my closet, alone saying nothing, sometimes I open it see him there and snicker “who’s the boss now”. I shouldn’t be so harsh on him, I purchased him at work refurbished for $30, of course he’s going to have an attitude, I wonder if I plug him in again, he will mend his ways, but I doubt it. I can’t see much use for it, the only project I would need is scanning family photos, but all of that is on east coast and I’m out here.
My digital camera sits out next to my pc and I use that for photos, however I’ve recently started a hobby taking new photos and converting them to old prints. Should I ever be asked to do the opposite and convert old photos, I would be interested. But in my mind, I’m skeptical about scanners because I believe something gets lost in the scanning process, quality of the print, but I might be wrong.
I would would appreciate seeing a section of the course devoted to the use of high-end film scanners, such as the Hasselblad-Flextight, and the Nikon Coolscan series.
I’m looking forward to a scanning course. I scan prints, film (negative and positive), documents and artwork. Until now figuring out settings has been voodoo for me so I’d like some guidance on using the proper settings, and also on how to prep my scans to avoid alot of work in photoshop…like removing dust spots!
I also would like a course for scanning film, print and slides for archival purposes. We have a lot of old family photos and slides that I would like to preserve. I would like to know the most efficient way to do it with the best quality.
I use my scanner to scan prints.
I’m using my scanner to restore old images. Some of them are faded to almost nothing, while others are marked and torn or creased. I’ve had some fair results so far, but more specific information on restoring old photos using Photoshop CS5 would be great, particularly effective colour (black & white) restoration and noise reduction without loss of detail. Is that even possible?
Aside from using my scanner to traditional purposes, I also enjoying using it to scan flowers, food and other three dimensional objects. The details in the scans can be quite amazing!
A course in digital asset management would be extremely beneficial. I work as a photographer at a University and I’m currently involved in helping maintain our image bank. I too would appreciate a course on file naming conventions, workflow procedures for archiving as well as file types and sizes. I know you cover some of this in Lightroom 3 but digital asset management is discussed fairly briefly.
For instance, we used to work with CR2 + XMP (sidecar) files in the past but have recently started converting our files to DNG. I’ve checked a few forums to see if Lightroom 3 will convert the CR2 + XMP sidecar file to DNG but haven’t had much success. I have however discovered that Adobe DNG Converter takes on the sidecar file. Unfortunately it’s a fairly basic application with limited features. Ideally it would be best if this could be done in Lightroom 3 to include additional metadata during the import/conversion.
I would love to see comparisons between the various types of scanners: flatbed, sheetfed, handheld and even scanning software for smart phones and tablets. QR codes are a popular right now, and you need to use scanning software to use them effectively.
I came to lynda.com because I bought a scanner and couldn’t find any good information on scanning. The video on lynda.com was somewhat out of date, but it more than got me started on using my scanner to a fairly high level. I think it would be good to get an update.
Great idea. I use the scanner on our office copy machine almost on a daily basis. Mostly to digitize documents, but still a very important piece of equipment.
Thanks for coming up with another great, much needed course topic. I’m about to scan THOUSANDS of pages of research for an 8-book series I’ve been working on for a decade now. The first book comes out later this year, and most of these documents are hand written; others are scribbled on napkins, scraps of paper and even fabric (napkin from a restaurant — I did reimburse them for it). Some were printed from another computer, and I want the info so I can so I can search them electronically by topic, date and/or keywords. I don’t have many image or graphics files that I need to scan. I’m moving in a few months, and would like to both organize and cull what I have so it’s both useful and fits into my outboard hard drive. Best to all of you at lynda.com. You’re all wonderful…
I use my scanner just about every day to scan in artwork (mostly 2D) and OCR data, and sometimes to scan photos and slides. But I can always learn more and would welcome a course on scanning! (Have also used my DROID and iPad to scan in a pinch.)
I use it mainly for documents — so that I have electronic data . I hardly ever fax anything anymore. Also did a bunch of old snapshots . I love my futjitsu scan snap; but occassionally haul out my old epson for odd shapes and sizes.
I use my scanner for illustrations up to size DIN A2. Larger illustrations get taken to the repro-shop. I think it is important to teach about color management in scans, how to adjust the histogram and using the gradation curves to reproduce the original colors.
I use a scanner to make prints of all my fine art paintings before I send them to the gallery. My scanner is an Epson flatbed 2400 with a 14″ bed. I scan paintings in sections then assemble them in photo shop. I have scanned paintings up to 48″ with great quality edge to edge compared to the difficulty of using photographing even with good studio lights and filters. Thanks you for all your products.
I have 3 scanners that are usually dusty. Unfortunately they are essential when I need to record a reciept before the ink fades, or copy some leagal document before I lose the original. I also ocasionally find old photos I need to keep before age and neglect destroy’s them. There might be a tie in to the Adobe CS 5 suite that I am now studying. Good Luck.
This course has been a long time coming! Going through the manuals for each scanning device was always a chore because it mostly dealt with the mechanics of scanning. Whatever the course ultimately turn out to be, it should include a section on how to improve your scanning results for pictures, artwork, and film negatives as well as a section on how to get great results from a document. The question I always have to ask is “Which is better? Grayscale, Black and White or Color when scanning a series of documents?” It seems like almost everyone has moved to color documents (receipts, reports, etc) and your mileage always varies depending on the coloring of the source document. This topic may not resonate with the home user, but for the business user it comes up more often than not.
This topic could be put into more than just one course. Being in the Medical Space, Document management, format types, resolution optimization for html vs archival space, OCR, Scanning client software to use, etc are useful for many business professionals. The scanning of photos and, art work, and negatives, etc. is another area for a great scanning training. Considering speed, vs color depth, resolution when choosing a scanner, as well as the number of documents that can sit in a feeder, seperator pages, etc. All these become good topics to cover in scanning lessons. Consider multiple classes, so that those of us with differing needs can get right to the meat of what we need. Thanks for all the great courses you offer!
I was in the process of scanning the over 15000 slides in my photography collection, when a new project came up which will add as many as 10000 more to do. Needless to say I will be firmly attached to my film scanner for many months to come. I hope the best practices for dedicated film scanners (including scanning BW and color negatives) will be covered in the course. I already know it will be great, however. Every one I have viewed has been more than worth the time. Thanks!
I’ve been scanning my grandfather’s slides. I have found the clean up (dust, scratches, contrast, color correction etc.) to be somewhat tedious. I don’t always feel as though it turns out very well even though the slide original looks good. Some suggestions or tips for that would be great. Also, If there were any way to learn how to perhaps take them HDR? Some of them I’ve had to scan several times at different exposures. But I have as of yet to successfully use HDR merge, though the HDR toning has been helpful from time to time.
I own about 10 scanners… I just can’t help buying them.
Whomever records this course should read “Real World Scanning & Halftones, 3rd Edition.” (and hold it up to the camera in the opening movies)
I have two scanners, both of which were given to me. I have managed to connect them and set them up. While I have been able to get items scanned in to be traced using Illustrator, I KNOW that I am not getting the best quality from the scans. Therefore, my CURRENT scanning needs are basic, fundemental techniques that will enable me to improve the quality of my scans. Bottom line, for me… ANY help in obtaining good scanned results will be much appreciated. Thank you.