Advice on scanning old documents

[JustinL]

I have just been lent a family pedigree in booket form that was started on 23 Oct 1837 and continued in to the 1840s.

The notebook is about 8" high and 3" wide, i.e. 6" when opened, and is bound so that I can place it on a flatbed scanner (Epson GT-30000)

The paper is fairly thick with a vertical 'grain'. In places ink can be seen through the page.

Could anyone please advise me about the optimum settings? Should I go for colour or grayscale? What resolution would be best - storage would not be a problem.

I shall be sharing the images with other family members and I want to do it properly.

Thanks, Justin

[Les de B]

Not so much an answer to your scanning query, but another option which I use when I can't scan.

I use my digitial camera and take a close up, normally without flash but in good natural light. If need be, I can then crop, straighten and use the original colour or make it B/W or sepia. The camera comes in handy when the document can't be scanned on a flat surface.

I suppose a digital camera is the same as a scanner

Les

[mike175]

I wouldn't pretend to be an expert, but I have scanned quite a lot of old documents and photos. I usually scan at 300dpi in colour mode, which produces a better reproduction, either on screen or paper. I normally use 600dpi when I intend to enlarge part of the original.

Sometimes I find you need to play around with different settings until you find the best for the job in hand.

Mike.

[downside]

Usually colour is best, even for black and white documents or photographs.

If you have some kind of photographic program like Paintshop Pro then you can manipulate an image and change it to greyscale to compare the difference.  Of course you always scan the document twice using colour and greyscale and compare images.

I don't know how to prevent writing appearing from the reverse side of the page.  If you hold the page up to natural sunlight and can see it then the scanner will also reveal the reverse side.   You may be able to remove it using a photographic manipulation program or ask someone on the rootschat photographic restoration forum to see if they can work wonders on it.

[Nick29]

I agree - colour is best.  You can always convert colour to mono, but not vice-versa, and some things can show up in colour (like faded or over-written text) that won't show up in mono.  I'd also agree that you should scan in the highest resolution that is practical, because you can reduce the resolution with image editing software.

[JustinL]

Thanks folks for your advice.

However, my first disappointing attempts were in colour at 300 dpi. You can see some snippets in this topic:


http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,301032.0.html

Although, the writing is very clear, I do not like how the paper itself comes up. Am I hoping for too much?


Should I be using 24-bit true colour do you think?

[Nick29]

I think your scan settings are fine - I think all you really need is to edit the image with a photo editor.  I spent about 5 minutes with your original image with ACDSee 10, and transformed your original.........




into this......




Please bear in mind that this was just a few minutes playing around - you could achieve better with more time.

[JustinL]

The only problem is - there are 50 pages to be scanned!

I'll try some gray-scale scanning at 400 dpi.

Justin

[Nick29]

Some scanners will allow some global changes to the brightness and contrast settings before scanning, but the problem with very old documents is that what works on page 1 won't necessarily be optimal for all the other pages.