OT: Let's talk scanning software

[Griffins]

I scan from photoshop, found that to be the most efficient. Thru the end of the year adobe has a deal that you can sign up and pay 9.95 a month for the latest version of Photoshop and Lightroom and 20gb of cloud storage.

This is the process I use, it's simple, automated and consistent. Since it's so simple my son was able to do most of my scanning from about the age of 8. Takes a few minutes of one time setup and then anyone can do it, with a bit of oversight. Apologize if this is a bit techno geeky, but if you have photoshop it will make sense.

Lay 4 cards on the scanner bed, not touching. Set the live area to the full scan bed so you don't have to preview (takes too much time). Scan the 4 cards, pull them off, scan 4 more. After about 16 4-up scans close the scan module and save everything into a folder.
With photoshop you can create actions, which are scripts of tasks. It's super easy. I created an action that adjusts the brightness and contrast for each scan- the flip in the holder is generally consistent, so if you set that at the same amount of brightness (243 in photoshop, 255 being pure white but that is too pumped up) then each scan will be consistently the same. Add a touch of sharpening (in filter-sharpen-unsharp mask and a setting of about 110-1-4) and then include the command "crop and straighten photos". Save it to a folder and you're action is complete.
Running this action will adjust the contrast consistently, make the scan crisp and clear, and then crop each 4-up scan into individual images, cropped right to the edge of the holder. All automatically. Scan 40-50 cards, run the action, walk away for a few minutes, and come back with clean scans all ready to go.
Depending on the speed of your computer you can scan and prepare the files for about 160 slabs per hour.