Scanning Tips & Tricks
You might have noticed that alot of the images in my "photography" gallery are actually scans. I like my scanner alot, it is quite a good one, and since my camera equipment is not that good i prefer scanning natural materials rather than photopgraphing them - as far as possible.Here are a few tips i found useful and discovered over time:
1.) Scanning Dirty Things
When scanning dirty, it is important to protect your glass with a thin transparent foil, i use those that are used for overhead porjectors. (Although this gives a slight morire) I also use foil to scan fluids. To fix the fluid in one place i fill it into an empty looroll that is placed on the foil. If you want a high Depth Of Field you fill in more, i want only sharp bubbles fill in little... very dependent on your materials
2.) Scanning Flowers
Obviously one of my favourite subject to scan; Flowers. You can't just put the flower head down on the scanner, the leafs would bend very unnatural. Therefore i installed a small system that allowed me to hang the flower above the scanner, so that it BARELY touched the glass. By moving the rope i can precisely ajdust the distance between scanner and object AND the object will not move at all.
3.) Multi Pass Scanning
You can somtimes achieve interesting effects if you scan the same object with different setting (dont change the view!!!) and then layer those together in your software. This is a bit like rendering the same object with different materials and then combining in ps. Quite Experimental but worth a try.
Try to optimized your image inside your scanning software as far as possible so that further manipulation in your image-software is kept to a minimun, because every change via Levels/Curves will redcue you image's quality.