Scans

[sreader3]

Peter,

I love that scan. I am a sucker for sure.

Standards. Standards. Standards. That's the only way to (maybe) make us all happy.

Scot

[steve B]

I'm not an expert on digital imaging, but I have learned some from a few different people including my wife who used to work for a video card manufacturer. So take these points as you will.
None of this is meant to imply anything about any particular scans or sellers, either as a complaint or excuse.

First, things will look different on different monitors. Even two examples of the same model of monitor may display things slightly differently. This is especially true for colors.
Monitor settings can affect things as well. I run mine with the brightness turned up, but normal contrast. I have a friend who runs his with the contrast pretty low and brightness turned down a bit. (The 75 Topps is well on its way to sunglasses territory for me)
This has been true to a point since the very beginning. Some types of traditional film give more contrast, and some have tendencies towards certain colors. Most Fuji movie film has stronger blues than other sorts of film, and Kodachrome has very saturated colors.

The second point is that different scanner software will have different "standard" settings depending on the target market or simply what the people at the manufacturer think is "better" AND.....They might change that at any time. So just going with the factory settings isn't guaranteed to produce the same result even on the same scanner.
My current scanner can be run at least three different ways.
I can simply press the "scan" button.
I can open the scanners own software which lets me preview the scan and select a particular area to scan - Basically cropping the image before even generating it. Plus a bunch of other stuff.
Or I can run the scanner from some of the photo editing software.

I nearly always use the second option since it lets me get scans done a bit more quickly. I can put several cards on the scanner, select one by drawing a box around it, scan, then the next one I just have to move that box to be around a different card.
The interesting bit is that the software makes adjustments in brightness and contrast automatically I believe based on how light or dark the subject is. (I scan lid up to get a nice black background unless it's something like 71 Topps or maybe T205 where I want a light background. )
I can adjust some stuff manually, but rarely do since the automatic adjustments usually provide a nice scan. The controls let me change nearly everything, but are simply labeled beginning at 0 with a rage from -100 to +100 ........I'm not sure what that is, I assume percentage, but they never actually say. And that's from the automatically adjusted values, not from any fixed number (Or more technically correct not from any fixed value I can access)

The third challenge in making a standard is that the technology changes somewhat quickly, and I don't see a manufacturer seeing any benefit in staying with it. In networking it applies, since a manufacturer wants their stuff to work with most anything. So a non-standard network card might be great but if it only works with one companies stuff it probably won't sell very well. A scanner on the other hand just has to work with a handful of operating systems - Windows, Apple, Linux, Android, after that you're probably on your own.

Steve B

[Leon]

Personally I do whatever I need to do to a scan to make it look like it looks when holding the card in your hand. That is what I want when i buy a card from a scan. I want what i see on the screen.

[gregr2]

Originally Posted by Leon

Personally I do whatever I need to do to a scan to make it look like it looks when holding the card in your hand. That is what I want when i buy a card from a scan. I want what i see on the screen.

Agree. I do a lot of photography editing so I calibrate my monitors monthly using a Spyder4. After I scan the card I hold it up in front of the monitor and make the minor adjustments needed to make the screen image match the card. This is usually just minor changes to Exposure, Contrast and Vibrancy.

[ibuysportsephemera]

I don't use a scanner so this might be an ignorant question...But isn't one of the problems that images look different on all types of computers and devices?

Jeff

[TanksAndSpartans]

Not an expert by any means, but what I noticed is that if a card has some surface flaws (a little stray print, a spot, a dot, uneven color, whatever) then when a scan is super bright, those tend to get lost in the background. As a rule of thumb, I would say that if your holding the card in hand, know there is a flaw, and the scan isn't showing it, it would be better to make some scan adjustments.

On a note unrelated to brightness, I remember one listing once - a really nice card graded PSA 3, a head scratcher for sure, but the seller noted "spider creases" in the description. I would've rather seen them, but maybe he just couldn't capture them.

[clydepepper]

This all reminds me to put the Windex to my scanner screen.