Scanning Images using the

Hewlett Packard ScanJet IIcx



A LITTLE BACKGROUND

Most professional scanners are connected to a computer by means of a SCSI (Small Computer Standard Interface).  In our office, our scanner is connected to Greg's computer.  It is on most of the time as indicated by the small green light in front.  If the light is off, the power switch is located on the rear of the right side.  If the scanner is not on when the computer is turned on, Windows will not know that it is there.  So, if you re-start or start Greg's computer with the scanner off, it will have to be re-started once again after the scanner power is turned on.

Most image input devices on a computer operate two ways.
1.  Through their own software.
2.  As a TWAIN device in a paint program.  In Greg's computer, that will be Photoshop 4.0

The same thing applies to the use of the Olympus camera.  You can upload pictures from the Olympus camera using its own software or as a TWAIN device in a paint program.

When you use the devices own software, no matter if you are using the Olympus Camera or the HP Scanner, there is limited ability to modify images once they are brought into the Windows system.  Therefore, we normally will always use Photoshop to input images from both the Scanner or the Camera.

SCANNING ON THE HP ScanJet IIcx

1.  Align Your Document -- Place the document on the document glass.  If you are scanning paper, close the cover, if a book, hold it down flat against the glass.  Justify the document to the upper right corner indicated by the two red triangles of the scanner.

2.  Start Photoshop -- Click on START and then select .  Photoshop.exe to launch Photoshop.

3.  Select Your TWAIN Device -- Click on File, Import, then Select TWAIN Source.  You will now see two options.  (1) DeskScan II 2.3, (2) Olympus Digital Vision.  Click on the first one, DeskScan II 2.3 then click on Select.  Now, Photoshop knows what device you will be using to bring in images.

4.  Scan The Document -- Click on File, Import, TWAIN...  This will start the scanner.  It takes a few seconds to get going.  The first thing that will happen is that the scanner will do a quick scan to determine the size and type of document on the glass.

5.  Select the Desired Crop Size -- To the right of the DeskScan II window is the image preview window.  The scanner will attempt to decide the size of your document.  You can change the crop size at this point by using your mouse.  If you place the mouse in the middle of the crop lines, you can move the crop outline left, right, up and down.  If you click on any of the four sides of the crop lines, you can change the shape of the cropped image.

6.  Select the Document Type -- In the DeskScan II window, up towards the top, there is a type window.  There are only two types of documents that we ever scan:  (1)  Sharp Millions of Colors and (2) Sharp B. and W. Photo.  Use the pull-down tab to the right of the TYPE window to re-select you document type if it is now what you like.

A NOTE ON DOCUMENT TYPES
Sharp Millions of Colors is what we use to get the highest quality color photo into the computer.  Most all of the time, the Scanner will guess correctly but sometimes, if you are scanning a black and white document, the scanner will attempt to select the color mode.  This will happen if there is any color tint on the paper.  If the document is only monochrome and there is no reason to carry color, select Sharp B. and W. Photo.  This will create a much smaller file than a full color scan.  We always want small files when we can get away with it.  Scoreboards should always be scanned in the Sharp B. and W. Photo mode.
7.  Select Your Contrast Value -- The automatic contrast button work real good.  It is the "ying yang" button in the middle of the Scanner window.  After your image is cropped to its desired size, click on the "ying yang" button and the contrast will be automatically set.  Of course you can make additional corrections by using the Brightness and Contrast sliders located either side of the "ying yang" button.  Simply put your mouse on the slider, hold down the left button and move the slider to the desired position.  It take a second for the image to show you what you are doing, so move it slowly.

8.  Set Your Image Size -- Default measurements on the screen are in inches and represent the actual size of your scan.  The scanner is capable of modifying your scan to another desired size if you like.
 

A NOTE ON IMAGE SIZE
Digital images are stored as a group of Pixels.  We usually express an image by its width then its height.  Our standard image size is 640 by 480.  This means that the image will have 640 pixels in its width and 480 pixels in its height.  Since pixels are considered square, this will also determine the aspect ration of the image.  640 X 480 is 307,200 pixels and has an aspect ratio of 4X3.  This is sometimes called 1.33:1.  When scanning story boards, we might choose to use 1.85:1 or 2.4:1.
Format Note
Width
Height
Normal Picture A Photo
640
480
TV Picture Normal TV Image
640
480
1.85:1 Movie Normal "flat" image 
640
346
2.4:1 Movie Anamorphic or Scope
640
266

Since the default manner that the HP scanner indicates image size is in inches, it does not mean much to us in the digital world.  You can change the way that the scanner indicates size by pulling down the CUSTOM menu then selecting Image Size.  Use the Units pull down arrow and select Pixels.  Now click on OK.  When you get back to the main HP window, the current picture size will be expressed in pixels, width then height.  Slide the box from left to right to increase the scaling size of the scan.  Never exceed 640 in width unless there is a particular reason to do so.  If you want to create an exact aspect ratio, select the width of 640 and then go back to the preview window and move the top or bottom crop line until you get the desired height.  It is normal that you may not get exactly on the number you want.  Don't worry, there is another chance to change this setting but get as close as you can now.  After moving the top or bottom crop line in the preview window, you may have to move the whole crop box around by clicking in the middle of the crop box and sliding it for the best fit.

9.  Scan Your Picture -- Now click on the FINAL button in the Scanner window.  The scanner will come on and make a final scan.  When it is finished, the final image will be placed in Photoshop and labeled as Untitled-01.

10.  Scanning More Pictures -- If you have other pictures to scan place them now on the glass scanner top and go back to step 4 above.  Each picture you scan will get its own name in sequence.  The second picture will be called Untitled-02, etc.  These pictures are not saved at this time.  You will have to save them later.  They are just in the Photoshop desktop.  This is fine, because we will have more work to do to them before saving them.  After you have all your pictures scanned, you can only do about 25 at a time, it is time to save them in the desired formats.

11.  Done Scanning? -- Now close the Scanner window by clicking on the X in the upper right hand corner of the Scanner Window.
 

A NOTE ON PICTURE FORMATS AND SAVING
I keep all pictures in the default mode of 640 X 480 (or sometimes a different height if called for  i.e. 346 or 266) as the primary scan size.  I also keep a smaller version called a "thumbnail".  Usually, the thumbnails are 200 wide by whatever the height comes out as.  Photoshop allows us to change the size by only specifying one of the sizes, height or width, and it will keep the aspect ratio the same as the original.

There are two different picture formats that work on the internet and in browser.  These formats are called Jpeg [.jpg] (pronounced jay-peg) and Giff [.gif].  We use the .jpg extension for the normal size pictures and the .gif extension for the thumbnails.  We do this for a couple of reasons.  First, .jpg images can be compressed quite a bit.  The larger pictures will create larger files, so the compression will come in handy.  I use the .gif extension for the thumbnails to keep them separate from the jpg files.  Whenever we save pictures, we save two files.  The .jpg file and the .gif file.  We always know that the .jpg is the full size image and the .gif is the thumbnail.  Both files can then have the same first name.

I also always use only lower case when naming pictures and their associated thumbnails.  Therefore, a scanned picture for FX-01-1 which would be the first element for FX-01 might be labeled   "fx-01-1.jpg" and "fx-01-1.gif" respectively.

The jpg file might be up to 90 kbytes in size and the .gif will usually be about 10 kbytes.  (kbyte = 1000) usually referred to as "k".  90k - 90,000 bytes, 10k = 10,000 bytes.
 

12.  Final size of your scans -- To create the final size of your scans, select the image you want to work on by clicking once in the middle of the image.  The blue bar at the top of the scanned image window should be on.  Now select Image then Image Size from the pull down menus.  Now you will see a window that allows you to change the size of the image again.  Only make reductions or small changes in this window as it will damage the image quality if you attempt to make it much larger than you scanned it originally.  When the window opens, it will default to the width value.  (Indicated by the blue highlight) It should be close to 640.  Simply type 640 on the keyboard and then the Enter key and Photoshop will make the picture a perfect 640 wide.  If the height is not exactly the way you want it, you must turn off the Constrain Proportions function or else Photoshop will keep trying to maintain the exact aspect ratio that you started out with.  There is no problem with most storyboards changing the aspect ratio by a few pixels, but don't do it too much or the picture will look funny.  I never change the aspect ratio of a live or photographic image.  After you toggle the check mark off on the Constrain Proportions box, you can now click once in the height window and type in a new height.  Once this is done, click on the OK and Photoshop will  make the final adjustments to the actual image.

13.  Saving and Naming The Primary Image (.jpg) -- Click on File, Save As and the Save As window will open.  Here you can navigate to the folder you want to save your images in.  Then select the Save As type in the bottom pull down window as "JPEG (*.jpg, *.jpe).  Now click up in the file name window and name your file.  For example     fx-01-1.jpg   remember to use lower case only.  Click on Save.

14.  Selecting the Image Options (Image Quality) -- In most cases we always will use a value of 6.  10 will be the largest file and make the picture look as good as possible.  1 will make the smallest file and the picture will look like shit.  I have found that 6 is a good number.  There are some compression artifacts but they are reasonable and a compression level of 6 will keep the file size reasonable.  Once the image is saved as a .jpg file, the title in the blue banner at the top of the image window will indicate your file name.  Be sure it is in all lower case

15.  Creating the Thumbnail Format -- The thumbnail format of .gif requires that the color information in the image be changed slightly.  This is done by pulling down the Image, Mode and selecting Indexed Color.  Once you have clicked on Indexed color, the Indexed Color window will open.  For the best quality thumbnail, leave the settings at 8 bits/pixel.  If you want to make even smaller .gif files for the thumbnail, you can lower the number here to 7 or even 6.   Much more and the picture will start falling apart.  After you set the number of pits/pixel, click on OK.  The picture will be modified per the instruction.

16.  Creating the Thumbnail Size -- Click on Image, Image size to allow you to change the size of the current picture from 640 wide to the 200 wide we use for thumbnails.  This is done just like you did when you tweaked the size of your image in step 12 above.  Don't change the aspect ration here unless you have a good reason.  I can't think of any......  When you are finished click on OK.  The image will now be reduced to the thumbnail size.  A perfect 640 X 480 image will be come a 200 X 150 image.  A perfect thumbnail.

17.  Saving the Thumbnail Image -- As before, click on File, Save As and select the Save As type to be Compuserve GIF (*.GIF).  The file name will automatically change, but usually the .gif will be upper case.  Be sure to click on the file name and change the .GIF to .gif.  Then click on Save.  Now you must indicate the Row Order.  I like the interlaced mode.  Once you select this for your first image, it will stay the same for all subsequent images until Photoshop is shut down and re-started.  Click on OK after you have selected Interlaced.  Now Photoshop will ask you if you are aware that you will loose some information, simply press Enter or click on OK.

18.  You now have two files for the first image saved, the .jpg and the .gif.  You are through with this image so close the small window by clicking on the X in the upper right hand corner of the image.  You are ready to work on the next image.  Go back to step 12 and repeat all these steps until you have saved all the scanned images in both formats.

When you are finished, close Photoshop by clicking on File, Exit.  THAT'S ALL!