Month: April 2021

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Family Photo Chest Part 14.4: Assembling a Scanning System

pricingGood Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I’ve studied another photo scanning system available on the web. Let’s get started!

Introduction

Scanning seems evermore a topic I’m learning about without entering production. I’ve lost count of how many workflow iterations I’ve come up with, yet each time I feel closer than ever to that most elusive batch #0001.

I’ve now studied the free portions of two workflows from people who claim years of experience: scanyourentirelife.com and howtoscan.ca, but howtoscan is my favorite between the two. Both give enough of their respective systems away to be functional, but they each offer additional, step by step, click by click training affordable to anyone rich enough to afford a dedicated scanner as is recommended when scanning thousands of photos at home.

My outline today is based on what I’ve gleaned from freely available sources, though influences of the above two are more prominent in my mind.

1. Have a System

Anyone can throw a few prints in a scanner and share them online. Hundreds or thousands of pictures taken and organized by people spanning generations mandates some form of structure.

My system at this point looks like it may be sorting pictures by immediate family of origin and further sorting by year. Eventually, each item will end up in one of several 10-12 gallon buckets that can be scanned and moved to a neat “completed” stack.

2. Select Hardware Wisely

You don’t need a $50,000 professional scanner if you don’t know how to use the $150 one intended for home use you may already have lying around, like me.

If, on the other hand you are buying a scanner new and already have scanner software piked out, like XSANE, you should make an effort find a fully compatible model. Remember: marketing for home grade scanners doesn’t always have quality results in mind; they’re there to sell a product to the general public. This probably isn’t you if you’re taking the time to research.

Thought should also be given to storage. You may choose to store your photos on a cloud or locally, but if you’re planning your digital archive lasting another 3 to 5 generations, I would recommend some form of protection against hardware failure, such as a RAID configuration featuring redundancy.

3. Assemble a Workstation

Less important is the workstation you’ll be scanning at. In my experience so far, RAM is a limiting factor. Right now, I’m working with a keyboard, mouse, and monitor are straight out of the 90’s. Other than that, your average workstation should be fine.

I will note that since I have animals in the house, I have a room with a door to keep them out. I will also note that I feel safe enough leaving the door open when I’m in the room with all the pictures in the buckets mentioned above.

4. Capture Natural Scans and Fix in Post

Again, standalone scanners aimed at households will have modes invented by the marketing department to sell scanners. Scan at your final resolution, dust and all. Anything you do to a scan preview is permanent to your scan proper. Take advantage of automatic numbering in names. Work on a copy in a program designed to manipulate images, not one intended to sell scanners. Scan in batches with similar settings to save time fiddling with software settings.

My setup uses GIMP. I’ve taken a class on the basics in Photoshop, and about the only thing I miss is something like the Quick Select tool, but GIMP beta has an early version out for testing before their big 3.0 release. I also plan on using a script called DivideScannedImages so I can scan multiple pictures in a single pass.

Now this last part will hurt, but not everyone will be interested in his or her 8th grade school photos or the backside of a motorcycle frame. Pay the most attention to the pictures people will want to see.

5. Manage Your File System

Whatever file system you learn, learn it. Metadata is your friend. Learn how to add tags, dates — for all I know you can add whole pictures (would be nice for photo backs annotated in foreign scripts, but probably not). HowToScan recommends learning how to use batch handling, and the Linux command line usually has it baked in.

Takeaway

I can see why people might spend years figuring this stuff out and valuing it at X hundred dollars to sell the specifics. Some people need step-by-step, click-by-click instructions, but I don’t feel the need for me. I had a class in Photoshop, and most of the important points in one of the howtoscan free ebooks was all about using the “healing brush,” a technique I once used to remove a power line from a church building photo — the line art of which is still used in the directory to this day.

This has been a hard push of a month. I expect to return to assorted topics next week.

Final Question

How much would you pay to learn how to scan?

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Family Photo Chest Part 14.3: Into Production, Right?

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I’m making the first official scans for this project. Even then, I might have farther still to go. Let’s get started!

False Starts and Setbacks

I’ve wanted little more all month than to finally get some momentum going on this project — to actually have some results I can point to and say, “This is a sample of my finished product.” I want to know tangible progress is being made. Unfortunately, I still have much to learn.

I wrote a series of instructions on how to use XSANE scanning software with the setup I’ve assembled. I started with a set that covered opening the program and making sure it was configured correctly. A second batch of instructions covered what to do to prepare for a new batch of scans — how to name the directory and reset the name counter. Finally, a third and most important set covered actually scanning each set of pictures working through the envelope, rubber band, album, or whatever constitutes a manageable grouping. I got through the instructions the first time and my trainee went back to open XSANE fresh again.

While attempting to push into production, I quickly found the DivideScannedImages script doesn’t do so well with picture backs. I don’t even know how I want to display such pictures with their backs. It’s a topic for some time after I’ve reverted to monthly updates. I’ll probably end up scanning and retouching such pictures manually.

I decided narrow the focus of eligible batches to scan. If you have the negatives, that’s all the detail there ever was to capture right there. I was going to save batches containing the original data for another week, but the archive has way more negatives than I anticipated and my focus was now too narrow.

One of the scanners I’m working with came with a slide/negative holder and XSANE has a host of negative presets. I ran some numbers, and I figure I’m capturing about the same level of detail scanning prints at 1200 dpi vs maxing out the scanner on negatives at 6400 dpi (XSANE does not appear to let you access interpolated resolution in the scanners’ specifications).

But the process was way more involved than I thought. The colors were way off once inverted, and there was some pretty bad speckling that overpowered the filter on XSANE’s post-scan viewer. My father and I tried again on a more recent and hopefully less faded negative, and the color sort of came through… after I had poked at it with GIMP, but it wasn’t something I would put on display.

My shortcomings don’t end there. I have albums wider than scan bed to consider. There was a time when photos were available on CD and I might be able to harvest metadata from there. Duplicate detection and CD metadata harvesting.

A Footnote on UI

On a more positive note, I’ve been learning more about other aspects of using retro hardware. The division script in GIMP is too tall to display on this old monitor, even when hiding the panels (“start bars”) at the top and bottom of my screen. This is more a desktop environment problem, but by digging in my settings, I found that Alt + Drag (optionally Super/Window + Drag) moves windows around without the need to grab the title bar. I put the script up and out of normal bounds, and it failed spectacularly (see above).

Takeaway

These setbacks are the very reason you would pay good money for a professional who already knows how to scan. Besides, properly scanning negatives illuminates from one side and scans from the other, and I’m working with a purely reflective system. Suffice it to say, negatives are beyond the scope of this project, and I’ll be focusing on prints until otherwise stated.

Final Question

What project have you tested your patience with? How is it coming along?

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Family Photo Chest Part 14.2: Prepared to Scan At Last

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I am bringing my workstations online. Let’s get started!

Calibration

Last week, I detailed a workstation I assembled using found parts. I’ve gotten used to the trackball mouse, but click and drag is next to useless.

Also, just now while writing, I was looking for a place to put my tablet — between two scanner workstations, the desk is full– and thought it would be a good idea to slap it on this monitor from a more cubic era. Moments later, I’ve switched to dark mode, and it appears to be messing with the colors on some of my icons in the upper left part of my screen. Turns out it was magnets in the tablet. Degaussing fixed it, but when I removed the tablet, the colors went off again. I have since degaussed again and everything is normal.

Workflow And Training

I’d rather look back wishing I had done a better job than look back I had done any job. For this reason, I am shelving a lot of research and deliberation I got myself lost in. Perhaps in a few years, I can redo the master digital archive with better-supported equipment. In the meantime, I’ve selected a resolution that should be good enough to enlarge, yet small enough to store.

I wrote a set of instructions detailing my prototype workflow and started training family members in how to operate the scanner. As I went, I noted where they got confused and adjusted the instructions accordingly.

My first set of instructions is in how to start a work session. Make sure the scanner is on, start XSANE, set the resolution correctly and check that the persistent settings are correct.

Structure in the analog archive I’m digitizing is sporadic, but when it’s present, I’d like to respect it. Work will be divided into batches. My instructions detail how to name each batch and to make a metadata file describing the batch and the container it was found in, like B&W vs color and print sizes.

Finally, a third set of instructions is all about individual scans. Line things up, don’t go over the scan area, get a preview, and don’t bother with zooming in on that preview because there’s no sideways scrolling and no way to quickly alternate between zooming in and out. A final inspection checks for dust or hair/fur, and I have a little something in there for when pictures have notes on the back.

Challenges

I’m scanning to TIFF files, but I want the ability to include the backs of prints too. Ideally, I would just add .front or .back to the filename, but XSANE’s automatic numbering is stubborn. It wants a four (or more) digit number at the end of the file name, and refuses to recognize multiple file extensions. I’ve resolved to manually setting the file type to TIFF and using the front/back extensions.

XSANE has a preview feature. I am using it to select occupied parts of the scan bed to reduce scanning time. But that doesn’t work without click and drag. I’ve since added a wireless USB mouse, and the trackball is good for 2D scrolling.

Speaking of scrolling in all four directions, while setting up my laptop for the same procedure, I had to get into the touchpad settings. It was something I had found a little annoying, but it was an easy fix when I bothered to look for it.

Final Question

Have you ever needed to write instructions for others to follow? How much did you need to change, even though you thought you thought everything out ahead of time?

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Family Photo Chest Part 14.1: A Workstation From the Parts I Have at Home

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I am setting up my second scanner workstation. Let’s get started!

Prologue

As seems to be my new tradition when getting/assembling a new workstation, I am recording this week’s observations from said machine. It’s been interesting. Especially since I don’t have a budget for new hardware.

The Tower

Once upon a time, I set up a Minecraft server for my family to play on. I named it ButtonMash. I did a lot of maintenance to keep it running, but eventually, we stopped playing on our own family-owned servers. Ever since, ButtonMash has been running in the background, catching dust.

With a renewed effort towards finally starting production on scanning, ButtonMash is the perfect fit for a workstation. It’s presently running on 16 GB of RAM, and while I thought it might benefit from an old graphics card I found lying around, a quick test proved it to be a downgrade from integrated.

The Hard Drive

A long time ago, I talked my laptop into scanning without sudo. So long ago –in fact– it was before I cloned Debian to run internally, so it would still be on the external SSD on USB 3.0.

ButtonMash’s motherboard lacks a USB 3 port, so we ordered up a card special. Unfortunately, it straight up refuses to boot from either of the card’s USB slots. No configuration works. lspci will detect the card once booted, but not even my GRUB disk can find my Debian external drive. I could get lost trying to troubleshoot, but for now, the bootable USB 2 slots must suffice.

The Keyboard and Mouse

There must be about seven wireless keyboards hovering about my house, each of which is orphaned from its dongle and paired mouse. Each of them always seems to have some sort of buffering problem.

On the other hand, I managed to spot a keyboard from when I was little hanging out in our treasure trove of old tech stored in the garage. It’s in relatively good shape — most likely because its from the days before USB became king. Fortunately, ButtonMash is old enough to have not one, but two PS/2 ports: one for keyboard, one for mouse. On the other hand, the integrated tickle pad uses a different standard I don’t have the proper port for.

My greatest gripe is that it’s a little hard to write on because it has the pipe and backslash key to the right of the Right Shift key. My computing habits have evolved since using this keyboard. When selecting text, I move my right hand so my thumb presses Ctrl and Shift, and my other fingers operate the arrow keys. On this model, I have to angle my hand at awkward angles to not hit a key I never use outside the command line.

The mouse was a little harder to find, but I managed to pull up a trackball with three less-than-perfectly-reliable buttons. It too is on a PS/2 connector, and so wasn’t designed for “plug and play.” However, I have tested it, and ButtonMash’s motherboard was able to pick them up after unplugging them without rebooting when I tested it for myself.

The trackball is different to use. I’m a lefty, and while I can normally manipulate the thumb buttons with my ring finger, I don’t have the dexterity to spin a sphere in the same place with my pinkie. I’d also have to contend with more extreme button placement, in addition to said buttons being unreliable. I’m finding I get a more consistent click if I press near the base of the button, though click and drag requires a particularly good streak of luck. Either way, it’s pretty fun to spin the ball super fast and watch the pointer not know what to make of it until things slow down.

The Display

ButtonMash has been running headless, only sharing a monitor with my father’s tower when needed. However, I found another treasure from the garage from when I was little: an old CRT monitor I remember being amazed with because of how flat the surface was. It’s just an extra panel of glass in front of the tube.

The long standing standard of VGA means that ButtonMash has no problem outputting to this old monitor. Honestly, it has no business lasting as long as it did.

I started the monitor for the first time in what must have been around 10 to 15 years, give or take, and cringed, thinking it was burning itself out as it crackled to life. It’s probably just thermal expansion. The picture still looks good, though there is noticeable flickering in large patches of white. I calibrated the screen so I’m using the full usable area, but I noticed it drifting a little after a while. My particular monitor has a degauss option hidden in its menus, and in addition to making everything go funny for a few seconds, it removes latent magnetic interference that builds up over time. It also produces a satisfying TWANG! After a few days of regular use, the picture appears to have mostly stabilized.

One thing I was sure to enable is a screensaver. This art form isn’t as important with the Liquid Crystal Displays permeating the market these days, but on old Cathode Ray Tubes, they would prevent a static image from burning itself into the surface of the vacuum tube if left alone too long. The pickings were a little slim on Debian, so I installed the xscreensaver package and picked one called Galaxy.

Using this older aspect ratio brings to light a few design decisions I’ve called into question on a few older pieces of software, namely XSANE, GIMP, and the default panel settings on GNOME2/MATE. On a wide screen, XSANE feels needlessly skinny and lost. GIMP looks silly with its tools detached from the main program body to the point where it doesn’t look like a cohesive program. And panels in MATE flat out waste space when hogging both the top and bottom.

But with a narrower aspect ratio, I find I’m only paying attention to the middle strip of the screen. XSANE windows can be rearranged with the important one taking up roughly half the screen and the others put where needed on the other. While I’ve yet to try GIMP in fragmented mode, I expect it too makes more sense this way. I even found myself restoring MATE’s upper panel to alleviate the icon traffic jam my one panel at the bottom was suffering from.

The Internet Connection

The Internet Connection was about the one part I had already figured out months ago. I grabbed my Pi 400 router from where it has been serving a more permanent workstation. I already copied the card and assigned it one a different IP address.

I tried going straight from Pi to tower without a switch in-between. I wasn’t expecting it to work because of the way I understand network cables to work, but it would seem one system or the other has figured the arrangement out.

Takeaway

The nineties… I can hear them calling… but no, they can’t have their workstation back because I have enough of an anchor in the twenties that spontaneous, meme-powered time travel will not be happening in the foreseeable future. I’m just excited to finally see the last bits of hardware fitting into place after over a year of planning.

Final Question

Have you ever amused yourself by spinning a trackball faster than the computer knew what to do with it?

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