Getting High Quality Scans from BW Prints

[Technorama]

Apologies for a newbie question, but appreciate any guidance. I am traditional film and paper BW photographer, and now am suffering with how to make high quality scans of my finished traditional darkroom produced BW prints, to send along to friends and other folks. My digital illiteracy is starting to hurt. When I try to scan the images, I fail to get a scan that reproduces the subtle nuances of detail and tone satisfactorily. Probably a combination of equipment and my own inexperience. I am using just my simple desktop office all-in-one copier and scanner, which is probably not optimal for high-grade photo scanning. My new dilemma is whether to have the scans done professionally, or to get a dedicated photo scanner. I would rather do the scans myself, but am clueless on which scanner may be appropriate. Rather broad and open ended questions, I know, but I've got to start somewhere. What are your experiences and advice ?

Thanks.

Mike

[Oren Grad]

I am traditional film and paper BW photographer, and now am suffering with how to make high quality scans of my finished traditional darkroom produced BW prints, to send along to friends and other folks. My digital illiteracy is starting to hurt.

What is the intended use of these scans that you send to friends and others? How do you expect that they will view or otherwise use them, and for what purposes?

[Technorama]

Some are just for viewing on their computers. However, at times I have been asked to provide scans of the BW prints for use in printed media such as brochures, catalogs, magazines etc. For those uses, the requests have specified files that are about 6000 pixels on their longest edge, with JPEG preferred, but also TIF possible. Again, this is the aprt tha is very foreign to me, so hopefully this helps explain what I need.

[Oren Grad]

Thanks, that does help clarify. A quick comment for now to broaden your thinking on this: for those uses you'll probably do as well or better photographing your prints with a digital camera.

[Technorama]

Well, there ! You've just anticipated what was going to be my next question after getting some feedback on scanners.

[Doremus Scudder]

For decades, the standard for duplicating art works for publication was to photograph them on transparency film and then do 4-color printing. Nowadays, digital photography has taken over that role. So, for duplicating your prints, get a decent digital camera and learn the basics of some digital photo-editing software (Lightroom, Photoshop, whatever).

Heck, I have images on my website that I made with an iPhone and then edited a tiny bit in PS.

Scanning seems like way too much work, especially if you have large prints.

Doremus

[Ulophot]

I know enough to know that there is a lot I don't know about scanning. When I scan prints (up to 8x10), I know I will have to tweak the contrast and improve the sharpness slightly. My scanner is an older model already dimming at the out edges a bit, thought this doesn't much affect my approx 7 x 9 image area. I use GIMP on my scan images, a free photo editor with far more features than I'll ever use. I do not have a calibrated monitor, but neither do most people who will ever see my scans. Nonetheless, I never get the subtleties of the print.

For sharpening, there are many approaches. I keep it very simple, using what's call a high-pass filter to automatically create a kind of mask that is then combined with my many image. Each is on a layer, if you're familiar with editing software, and then merged. The sharpening is subtle and deals mainly with edges; effect on appearance if grain tends to be less, I'm told, than using a filter such as "unsharp mask."

Re: photographing your prints: If you have not photographed artwork before, you will find some prior research useful. I'll just note here that glossy to semi-matte surfaces are prone to reflections from you, the camera, what is behind you. It should all be very dark in relation to the level of illumination of the print. Depending on print size, you'll need to consider lighting carefully for evenness and absence of glare. A longer than normal focal length will be to your advantage.

[Peter De Smidt]

Scanning prints should be fairly straightforward, as long as the print is smaller than the scanning bed. What scanner are you using? What software? What size and kind of prints? Scanning prints over about 600 spi doesn't lead to improved quality in most cases.

[Jim Andrada]

I guess I'd wonder why you would scan a print instead of the negative/positive used to make the print in the first place. Unless of course because the print represents the final product if there's been significant "editing" during the printing process that you feel would be difficult to duplicate digitally for some reason (including unfamiliarity with the digital editing process,) although ease and capability of digital editing has been one of the main attractions of a hybrid (or even fully digital) workflow for many years now.

Camera scanning of prints sounds simple but as has been said there are a raft of "small details" that make it a bit more involved than just snapping a few quick pix with your cellphone (or somewhat higher end camera.) Lighting is pretty critical, eliminating reflections, getting even lighting, good camera support, maintaining parallelism between camera and artwork to ensure sharpest overall focus and eliminate unwanted distortions of the image, etc.

There are actually companies that make rather expensive systems for museum digitization and archiving of artwork. You probably don't need that level of sophistication given the intended use case, and it can certainly be done well, just don't be surprised at the effort (and space) required to get results you'd be as proud of as the original prints themselves. And you'll probably want to do some digital editing of the scan anyway, even if only to adjust contrast a bit.

[Technorama]

Thanks for the guidance and suggestions. As stated above, I am using just a simple HP office "all-in-one" printer/scanner. Nothing geared specifically to photography, with only very limited scanning/editing software. Also, my knowledge and skill on the software end is basic to non-existent. I want to scan the finished prints, because they are darkroom-made prints with considerable dodging, burning etc already done, and so a finished product. I am experienced in copying techniques, so will try that with a pro-level digital camera and a true copying set up. Also, I will take a couple of test prints to my local pro lab and have them do a scan, and then compare results and costs in terms of time, effort and money.