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Scanning

Bob Davis

Bob Davis

Bob Davis
I have not only discovered my Birmingham postcards, but also 4 old b& w photos I took of the demolition for the ring road way back in the late fifties. As some of the postcards are Edwardian and actually dated by the senders and there are one or two other vintage cards, I thought instead of my holiday. I would bore you stiff with them. The question is what of the magic letters do I scan them in on and how so as they do not end up as thumbprints do I get them a good size on the post, like as what you experts ,do The magic letters on my HP Envy all singing, all dancing, copy, scan, fax, dishwash, toast and make tea machine are JPEG, PDF and one or two others. Please let me know so that I can excite you all with the card of Bromford Lane. There is in the postcard world a group of us who look at the worlds most boring postcards and Bromford Lane has shot up the list for the No 1 position. The Holiday Inn Bromsgrove have just rung to remind me that my booking for tomorrow has been cancelled. Salt in wounds.

Bob
 
Bob,
The thing to do is scan them and set the output to jpg which is short for jpeg. Don't use PDFs. Have a look at the forum instructions below and have a go at uploading in this thread which you have started.

Uploading Photos

The short instructions below are to help members with uploading photos and images to BHF. Thank you to Oldmohawk for updating these on 4/11/18 1. Go to the thread/topic where you want to add your image 2. Write your reply in the reply box 3. Left click 'Attach files' button - bottom left...
birminghamhistory.co.uk birminghamhistory.co.uk
We will watch and eventually turn you into an expert photo uploader like what we are ... :grinning:
 
pjmburns said:
Photos are JPEG files. That is about the limit of my knowledge.
Click to expand...

SOME photos are JPG / JPEG files, however there are many image formats.

A new format that is slowly replacing JPG as it is designed for the internet is PNG.

However JPG will be fine as it is a long standing format supported by all image programs.
 
I find those PNG are a bit of a pain, I get them sent to me from mobile phones to print out for a friend, nowhere near as easy as the jpg format.
 
PNG is an acronym for Portable Network Graphics and is lossless when saved. I use them when I do a lot of photo editing and have to keep opening and saving before I finally convert to jpg files.
I notice when I do a full screenshot with Win 10 it results in a png file. The forum will accept png format uploads but the files are always larger.
 
For me, Bob, the basic principle is to get the image scanned in high definition and transferred into the PC before I do anything else.It doesn’t matter if the file size is huge at that stage, just as long as you have got out of the original image absolutely every detail which is within it And it is all safely stored within the computer.

Once it is in the machine, you can then manipulate It to make it suitable for your eventual purpose. Any graphics software will do the job. I use Photo Elements and have got used to getting out of it what I want. It will probably vary a bit depending on the exact program but the end result will be the same.

What I want is a tidy image, suitably cropped and adjusted as necessary with regard to brightness, contrast, colour and so on. But still containing all the detail of the original – I don’t know when I might want all that at some stage in the future.

Ptoducing/posting a version of this to the Forum (or any other online destination like a website) then becomes a balance between the file size (which can’t be too huge) and the definition (which you don’t want to reduce any more than necessary). When posting to the forum I find that a image width of 700 to 1000 pixels gives a sensible size if uploaded and inserted as a full-size image. With a bit of luck the file size will often work out at, say, around 300/400 kb. If it doesn’t, and if the file is much bigger than that, I reduce the image width accordingly. There is no hard and fast rule about how big an image (in terms of file size, not image size,) it is possible or sensible to upload to the Forum But I imagine that we always have to keep an eye on Forum capacity and I start to feel a bit uncomfortable if I upload anything bigger than the numbers I’ve mentioned.

Keep it simple, just get it scanned and into the PC rather than trying to understand all the fancy options which the printer offers, fiddle with it there, and use JPEG!

Nothing official, or possibly even correct, about the above. It’s just what works for me.

Chris
 
I should have added that Elements gives you the opportunity to “Save for Web”. This gives a version of the scanned image with a width which you can specify and an automatically reduced file size.

Chris
 
I have a laptop and a tablet. I scan onto the laptop my postcards, so that when í àm àt à postcardfair, I can check àny finds. Ì then copy the scans via a memory stick onto a notebook, which is smaller than the laptop, but ìt is cumbersome. Is theŕe a way to get scan straight to thetablet? the scanner is wireless
Bob
 
I can't see any reason why not as long as you have the right software on the tablet.

But even if you can't you should be able to use bluetooth to transfer the pictures from your laptop to your tablet. Or by connecting them physically via usb.
 
Bob,

I'm very out of date with all this mobile stuff, never having had an occasion to use it. But if you want to go direct from the scanner to tablet, the thing that seems to be missing is a driver for the scanner on the tablet.

Maurice :cool:
 
My Apple iPad scans wirelessly direct from my Epson printer. It uses an Epson app in the iPad. I just tested it.

the following might be of interest ... I use it most days ...

If you use Windows 10 you get the free Microsoft Account which comes with the free 5Gb on their server which they call 'OneDrive' or 'Cloud'. You could set your scanner to save the scans on Onedrive but it is much better if the scanner only saves images in your computer then simply drag them with a mouse etc to Onedrive.

From the relevant appstore install Onedrive in your tablet. You can then view all pics from any device. Alternatively you can copy the pics into folders on your tablet for viewing.

I use all of the above with a PC, laptop, iPad, and iPhone. I often edit photos using OneDrive so I can quickly see how they look on different devices.
 
Possibilities.
Most tablets have some form of built in camera and usually two of them one facing front and the other back. You can use that to photograph your cards direct to the tablet.
In a lot of cases the charge lead for the tablet will connect to a 3 pin plug by means of a USB port. You can take this apart by pulling it out of the USB and plug the lead into a USB port on the laptop. This can then be used to transfer files onto your tablet. You may have to change settings on the tablet to get this to work. That way you can transfer the stuff you've scanned onto the tablet.
Tablets generally come with a socket for a small memory card. You can also get adaptors (in places like Poundland) so that you can connect said memory card to a USB socket. You can put your pictures on the memory card and just plug that into your tablet.
 
Bob Davis said:
I have a laptop and a tablet. I scan onto the laptop my postcards, so that when í àm àt à postcardfair, I can check àny finds. Ì then copy the scans via a memory stick onto a notebook, which is smaller than the laptop, but ìt is cumbersome. Is theŕe a way to get scan straight to thetablet? the scanner is wireless
Bob
Click to expand...
Bob, you might talk to the manufacturer of your scanner. Usually there is downloadable software if you were the original owner of the scanner. I have an Epson scanner and they were very helpful to me without even trying to sell me anything. But you need software on your tablet. Mine is an iPad and Lenovo note book.

Good luck!
 
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