User blog:JoshuaJSlone/Scanning continued

The replacement scanner came in even sooner than anticipated, which was fortuitous since a few hours earlier I'd finished the disc ripping portion for all the CDs and DVDs I've currently got out of storage.

At first things seemed pretty good--however, eventually I noticed a bit of a quality problem. At the DPI I was scanning (600) there was some somewhat noticeable vertical banding going on that wasn't part of the original image. Now, in the past when I've tried to do high quality cover scans around here, I've tended to scan at 600, straighten and do some other image processing things, then scale it down to what would be equivalent 300 dpi, because that still leaves a considerably large image without going overboard. I was hoping that with all the image processing and shrinking done, the lines would blend away. Nope. They wouldn't be noticeable when viewed at thumbnail size as they normally would be on the site, but I'd be disappointed to have that be my Best Version that's supposed to replace my need to go back to the physical version again.

HOWEVER, I found that when scanning at even higher quality, the max possible with this hardware of 1200, the vertical banding doesn't seem present. So while it makes things slower, I can still get a really nice scan. Even better, actually, as long as I leave them sitting around as 1200 instead of immediately shrinking them to 600 afterward anyway. Of course takes up a lot more space, but what the heck else did I get this H!P-specific 4 TB drive for?

As example of this issue, here is a small bit of Kono Machi Limited D cover at 600 and 1200 dpi.



And here is how either one turns out with the normal sort of image processing and scaling down to 300 I usually do--still a pretty big advantage for the one on the right.

Still, even the uglier one on the left is a big step up in detail from the equivalent section on the image from the official discography page.



What with spending so much time figuring out the vertical banding stuff, didn't get a ton scanned today, but now past 200 total. Some of the new images have the banding still since I didn't go back and redo them all, but it's mostly harmless for some obis and lyrics pages.