OT - Old vs new scanners

[Rainman Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close Rainman]

This is probably a stupid question but I'll ask it anyway. I have an old Agfa scanner (approx 10 years old), would a new one produce better results when scanning things like old photos?

Some time back I started scanning some of our thousands of old photos and was a little disappointed in the quality, particularly those with a gloss finish. I can understand the old matt finish not coming out too good, but I would have thought those with a gloss finish would have produced a fairly high quality reproduction. Not the case it seems and now I am wondering if I could get better results with a new scanner or do I have to be satified with what I have?

[LiveFreeAndRoam Avid PP Poster! Find all posts View Profile Close LiveFreeAndRoam]

Re: OT - Old vs new scanners

G'day Rainman,

The answer is... probably . 10 y.o. technology is approaching dinosaur-status - time for a museum donation . There are too many improvements to even attempt mentioning them... other than one: Ten years on, the technology is better and cheaper!

The scanner is just the start of the process. The back-end image processing (i.e. processing the pics on your PC) is where the hard work really begins. I've seen crappy scans come out looking perfect after heavy-duty image processing. Fortunately, the out-of-the-box image processing with most reputable brands is pretty decent and usually sufficient for the home-user. Though, if you want to lose yourself in a decent free image-processing tool, then you can't go past GIMP, imho.

I don't think dedicated scanners are very expensive now either, so probably worth the upgrade anyway.

Cheers,
LFaR.

[FlyingBushPig Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close FlyingBushPig]

Re: OT - Old vs new scanners

The answer is...Yes, and No.
If you are spending money to buy a new one, you need to get one that has the highest "Dmax" number. The Dmax number refers (in simple terms) to the amount of detail you will get out of darker areas (shadows) in an image. In years gone by, a drum scanner($30,000+) was the only way to get superb results but nowadays a good flatbed can get a better Dmax then my 20 yr old drum scanner. 2nd, get one with decent quality glass and buy some good scanner wipes and cleaning fluid. The other easy thing to do is learn briefly what Gamma, brightness, contrast settings and especially histograms do. Get that and your images will improve fantastically.