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?