How to get rid of black borders when you scan.

[celia]

Have you ever cursed those big black borders (& waste of ink) when you scan, then print out a single pages from a book or a document that is much smaller than A4. Even though you have framed the page but still get a black shadow.  I know I have, I never found out what coursed it, so I always used the scanners in the library because you don’t get them there. It was only recently the light went on, I had to scan & print out 6 single pages of text from a small book because, you cant print 2 at once as it ruins the spines of the book. Most won’t fit in open anyway.  I wanted to do this at home. I had to preview it 3 times, alter it and still I couldn't’t get rid of all the black shadow. That’s when it dawned on me what the black borders & shadows were, they are the scan of the uncovered glass.
To fix the problem I put one my A4 white sheets of thin card in the scanner,  put the page in the scanner, spine outside .Drew a line round the book then cut it out, put the book back and the just put the shape tight up  round the book. Bingo not a dot of Grey on the print out, it does take a bit of adjusting with fitting at first but it’s worth it. I now have L shapes to fit round most size books, no more wasted black ink;D

Celia

[Erato]

You might want to edit the title of this thread.

[hiraeth]

That's a great tip Celia    Thank you

Heather

[celia]

 

[Brambletye]

Here's a tip along similar lines - if you are getting "showthrough" from one page to the next, put a sheet of black paper between the page you are scanning, and the next one back that's causing the problem.

The showthrough will disappear, unless it is ink seepage from the back of the page you are scanning.

[Berlin-Bob]

Another tip, (but this depends on the scanner you are using):

some scanners will let you "choose" in a preview which bits of the whole A4 page you want to scan.  So you can adjust the scanned image to cut out (crop) the borders.

For photo-copying large amounts, then I also use Celia's tip.


And if you already have images, which you made before reading Celia's tip here, then try this topic:
Topic: Removing black border on Census Returns
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,178859.0.html

(I know the title says Census returns, but we won't tell if you use the ideas for other images  )

Bob

[celia]

some scanners will let you "choose" in a preview which bits of the whole A4 page you want to scan.  So you can adjust the scanned image to cut out (crop) the borders.

  Yes i can do it with mine,it was the shadow not on the page i couldn't get rid of( the bits of glass not covered with paper) and sometimes the border was to near the page.I thought when i posted the tip " I bet Bob come comes up with something simpler,actually i  have I have just put a much thicker book in my scanner so had to lay it flat inside.This time though i just folded to pieces of paper lengthways and put one each side because i was in a hurry,doing it that way is even easier

Brambletye
So far i have never had that problem but i will remember that tip if i do.

Celia

[celia]

Bob i have just read a post about cropping a photo, it reminded me of when i first tried that moons ago.I managed to keep cropping the photo. So Instead of the a photo of a grave stone with a small border of grass.I got a border of grass and no grave stone

Celia

[griz]

Thanks Celia,  that's very helpful.