[sdiy] Music magazines archive site

[rsdio at audiobanshee.com]

Yes, that is a very useful trick. I use a three-ring binder that's black, because it's a solid flat surface. I'm surprised that scanners all have bright white backings and no option to replace that with black.

Another good "trick" is to pull the grayscale scan into Photoshop and use the Image->Adjustments->Levels dialog to enhance the contrast. Once you use the black backing, your "whites" will be a little darker than full scale. The histogram in the Levels tool will make it easy to saturate all true whites to maximum. You can also enhance the blacks at the same time, all while maintaining the original mid-scale values.

If your scan isn't already grayscale, you can use the Image->Mode->Grayscale menu item. That's assuming you aren't preserving color photos in the magazine.

After this, don't save in JPEG. Use PNG, TIFF, or some other lossless format as your master. Photoshop makes it easy, with the Save for Web & Devices dialog, to reduce the size of the image while controlling the quality loss. JPEG makes schematics and text more difficult to read (even though it's great for photographs).


On Mar 28, 2016, at 6:29 PM, eidorian at aladan.net wrote:
> Colin, a simple "trick" is to put a black piece of paper behind the page you're scanning.  That's what I've always done.
> 
> Dan, what's the link to the site you mention?
> 
> Bandwidth keeps getting cheaper... even down here in the antipodes!
> 
> Cheers,
> A.
>