scanning a photo with texture

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SusanG

SusanG

SGF, Supreme Grumble Framer
Joined
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Holland, PA, USA
A customer gave me a photo to scan with a slight linen texture. She wanted a few copies made. It's in fine shape and does not need restoration. Do you have any scanning tips to minimize the texture?
Thanks!
Susan
 
susang said:
A customer gave me a photo to scan with a slight linen texture. She wanted a few copies made. It's in fine shape and does not need restoration. Do you have any scanning tips to minimize the texture?
Thanks!
Susan
Click to expand...

Scan it at 600 dpi or higher. The more resolution you have to start with, the more you can do to smooth out the image after scanning. If your scanner's software has a "reduce moire" setting, that will help a little, but you'll never entirely get rid of that texture. The "descreen" setting should also help if you don't have the first one. Worst case scenario: If you can't get any good reults that way, scan it at 600 dpi, send it to me and I'll see what I can do.
 
Sometimes I also find that it helps to turn the photo 90 degrees if you are getting a really bad scan the first time. It seems that some of those old textured photos have a texture that is more prominent one way than the other and it depends how the light rakes across it.
 
I have had some success (but not always - works about 80% of the time) using 2 scans and merging them. Basically, you scan it once right side up and once upside down. In Photoshop, rotate the upside down version 180 d., create new document, paste in both images into separate layers & play with opacity until they smooth out. The reason this sometimes works is that it cancels out the directional aspect of the lighting and shadows cast on the texture.

Before overlaying the 2 images, make sure they are the exact same size (pixels dimensions) and that they are cropped exactly the same. Leaving a white border on both images can provide some breathing room to slide the layers around if you need to manually align. Also, make sure any settings that the scanner software uses to tweak the image's contrast and intensity are off; the idea is to prevent the scan from doing different adjustments to the 2 images.

This will either work fairly well or not at all. Worth a shot. I have used this approach scanning photos on canvas. You might find that the result is somewhat darker than you might expect; you can compensate with exposure and/or level adjustment after the merge.
 
I have done similar to what Steve has suggested but I recall a scan at 90° was more effective for the alternate layer, there was also kwite a bit of masking for different areas and multiple copies of the layers as alignment was a [insert preferred term here]. Nowadays we often photograph such pieces which often (not always) produces a better capture.
 
I try to scan whenever possible for all the obvious reasons. A camera adds as many problems as it avoids: lens distortion, lighting inconsistencies, lower resolution, white balance inaccuracies across the image, ad nauseum. :cry:
 
Steve Collins said:
I try to scan whenever possible for all the obvious reasons. A camera adds as many problems as it avoids: lens distortion, lighting inconsistencies, lower resolution, white balance inaccuracies across the image, ad nauseum. :cry:
Click to expand...

Yes indeed, electing the lesser of two evils is the trickier part.
 
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