If you own a Kodak s1220 or near relative you'll know what I mean - those horrid single pixel tracks that ruin scans? Yes, the remains of debris attached to photos which latch onto the scanner glass. Typically from non-drying adhesive such as Blutack or Pritt Stick here in the UK. Not cleaned from the back of one photo, rubs off onto the front of the next and from there to my beautiful scanner. As a photo scanning service owner I now twitch at the thought.
But we are over it. Frequent thorough cleaning before and during each run, plus eyes and fingers fine tuned to spot tell-tale adhesive scraps. It's a thing of the past. OK, that's the back story.
Last week I was in a rush. We were within a few hundred scans of August (traditionally a very quiet month) being our busiest month ever. I know its petty and I'm the only one it affects but breaking that record, in August of all months, really got me going. When a big box of photos arrived I jumped on it (not literally). A big step to beating the record. Off I went. Couple of hours later, check the results.
You guessed, about 20 scans in, three images with those telltale streaks, and another couple at the back. Scrap it, start again, clean offending prints, eat dinner, resume after (it's twilight now), finally finish up early evening. Next morning, check, same problem. Sift through the box which held just over 1,100 photos to find the miscreants. Clean them with one of our micro fibre (that's micro fiber to many of our readers) dusters. Clean scanner, clean hands, clean up language. Re-scan 15 photos as a single batch to make sure I was getting them right.
This time, despite my thoroughness, five images had the damned track marks. But the rest were clear. Why? It was a simple explanation and without the scarring experience those years ago with the glue I would have found it quicker. All the duff scans were monochromes, same size and similar subject material so safe to deduce from the same original photo shoot. And the photos were themselves scratched. Yes, each print had three distinct fine scratches running along the face. Not deep enough to affect the surface where the chemical printing action took place and on most only visible if you knew what you were looking for. My guess was that as they went through the scanner the gouges were refracting the massively bright light from the scanner causing imperfections.
Correction - check with the good scans which orientation they needed to go though the scanner for the surface flaws not to be picked up. Half an hour later the batch had been cleaned of the original bad scans and the proper images inserted. We're a big step toward breaking the record. Thanks (again) Kodak.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
The Customer is Always Right ....
From time to time I have to repeat this, helps calm me down. I had to say it quite a few times this morning.
Last week a chap rang, he'd got back from holiday to find his basement flat had been flooded. Thankfully his landlord lived in an upper floor so most of the water had been mopped up but many of his possessions had been damaged, including his photos. He described them as wrinkled and eaten away at the edges but they had been dried. Could we scan them? Trying to be helpful I said we'd try.
So a couple of days later just over 800 photos arrived in a box. They were certainly crinkled and around the edges the coloured material of the photo seemed to have come away from the glossy surface. Some had chunks of paper missing, but most were in reasonable condition. I fired up our scanner and crossed my fingers. The Kodak s1220 has an amazing feed mechanism (improved in later models) and the prints could be fed in quite easily, albeit one-by-one, and some hours later the photo scanning exercise was complete.
Today we got an email from the client. He was not happy, well, half not happy. He pointed to some defects in our service. Many of the images, particularly those which should have had a smooth blue sky, showed unacceptable hard lines. Clearly the scanner sees alternative shades of blue as the print surface wrinkles closer and further from the scanner glass. Then the colour restore function in effect hardens a line that shouldn't be present.
No, no thought for what we had achieved - in double quick time he had fixed these images against more decay; that at least half had been properly scanned despite the physical damage to the original.
The client suggested the photos would be better if scanned on a flatbed scanner. I said I thought this ought to be the case as the wrinkling might be reduced. I declined the request that we should reduce our flatbed charge (50p per image) to that of our bulk scanning service (10p). We part on a little less than great terms. You can't win them all, but you can tell yourself the customer is always right.
Last week a chap rang, he'd got back from holiday to find his basement flat had been flooded. Thankfully his landlord lived in an upper floor so most of the water had been mopped up but many of his possessions had been damaged, including his photos. He described them as wrinkled and eaten away at the edges but they had been dried. Could we scan them? Trying to be helpful I said we'd try.
So a couple of days later just over 800 photos arrived in a box. They were certainly crinkled and around the edges the coloured material of the photo seemed to have come away from the glossy surface. Some had chunks of paper missing, but most were in reasonable condition. I fired up our scanner and crossed my fingers. The Kodak s1220 has an amazing feed mechanism (improved in later models) and the prints could be fed in quite easily, albeit one-by-one, and some hours later the photo scanning exercise was complete.
Today we got an email from the client. He was not happy, well, half not happy. He pointed to some defects in our service. Many of the images, particularly those which should have had a smooth blue sky, showed unacceptable hard lines. Clearly the scanner sees alternative shades of blue as the print surface wrinkles closer and further from the scanner glass. Then the colour restore function in effect hardens a line that shouldn't be present.
No, no thought for what we had achieved - in double quick time he had fixed these images against more decay; that at least half had been properly scanned despite the physical damage to the original.
The client suggested the photos would be better if scanned on a flatbed scanner. I said I thought this ought to be the case as the wrinkling might be reduced. I declined the request that we should reduce our flatbed charge (50p per image) to that of our bulk scanning service (10p). We part on a little less than great terms. You can't win them all, but you can tell yourself the customer is always right.
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