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Scanning Large Amounts of Pictures?
ClintJCL asks: "My wife & I are involved in scanning every photo I've ever taken in my life. She can lay down 4 or 5 pictures into the flatbed scanner at once, thereby saving the scanning time which is the bottleneck. But then she has to split them with Photoshop, which is also somewhat time-consuming. I've searched on the net for hours for a piece of software that would automatically split these 'Batch image scans' into single images and it just doesn't seem to exist. There are plenty of pieces of software to split a single image arbitrarily into sections for the purpose of loading faster on an HTML page (which I disagree with anyway and is not what I'm looking for). But -nothing- that seems to do any sort of edge-detection to determine what pictures exist in a given 'scan batch'. I'm out of resources. I've nowhere else to go. Perhaps someone can clue me in on a piece of software that can do this for me."
Sounds like it's time to bust out your favorite compiler...
:)
The start of any great open source project is a useful idea.
anybody up for the challenge?
Finding the image edges from her bulk scans is one of the more trivial operations you can do on an image. Grab a handy-dandy image library for your chosen format (pnglib, jpeg, whatever) and write a couple pages of code and you're done. GPL it and help others with the same problem.
11*43+456^2
I was asked just yesterday to find something very much like this (except for some text processing and databasing thrown in). I haven't found anything out of the box that fits (not that I was smart enough to do an ask slashdot on it), so I think that I may have to code my own in the next week. Are you willing to pay a little cash for a custom solution?
You should be able to instruct your scanner software to see arbitrarily many fields in the "preview" stage... you select each photo with a marquee tool, and then you can give instructions unique to each photo, such as rotate 90 Degrees, color depth, and so on. If your scanner software can't do this, get better scanner software or a better scanner; its an elementary feature and you shouldn't have to pay much for it.
This is not a signature.
into piles of same sized pictures, and then having a photoshop action that crops to a and saves them acordingly.
------ Work is so much easier when you don't
It's been quite a while since I scanned anything, but I remember that with whatever scanner I was using at the time, in Photoshop you would do file->acquire->twain and it would bring up the scanning program. This program scanned the image lightly as a preview, and then let you select however many "jobs" you wanted at once, so you could select 1 square as job 1, another as job 2, another as job 3. Then it would make one pass and generate an image for each job.
As I said, this was a while ago and I don't remember the scanner, but it was probably some UMAX. The name "Mira scanner" stands out in my mind as the scanning software. You scanner may have this capability also; poke around a bit.
rooooar
1) Most of your pictures are standard size, right? Come up with a grid to lay them on your scanner. Stick to that grid.
:)
2) get ppm tools (bunch of image manipulation programs callable from command line or scripts).
I assume you have access to a UNIX/Linux command line, huh?
3) Find the tool which makes cuts from larger image, write a four line script to automatically cut out, say, all four corners of your large scan.
4) Run another script to apply "aggressive crop" to cut out any remaining white margins (you did not place original photos too close to each other on step one, right?)
5) Burn that CD!
Paul B.
Why not get a automatic document feeder for the scanner?
Why not just set up a Photoshop action to make 6 copies of the current image and set the action to crop each to an individual image. I don't know if you can script the name to save under automatically, but even if you can't you can just set up the actions to work on 10 or so original images and say to specific filenames and then just batch rename between scanning batches.
What? You say your clipboard only holds one image? Not if you're using a clipboard extender. I use Clipmate, though you might prefer one that's specially oriented towards handling graphics.
Bitmaps are simple data structures. Write some code.
I have a higher end scanner (powerlook 3000) It allows you to do multiple scans in one pass.
ie you preview
you box all the pictures
you click scan
you can adjust each box color/exposure separate.
it scans each image as a separate file. Of course you have to preview each image which takes times.
You could write some software to do it. It might help to use a background matt of a consistant color though.
I think you really should consider scaning only images you care about and adjusting each one individually. If you really care about your images get a negative scanner. Scanning negatives is far far fat better than scanning prints.
Just to verify what other have been saying about typical scanner software:
I haven't run into a scanner that didn't let you define jobs or a batch scan feature. Everything from an HP SCSI monster 8 years ago, to a slick new USB scanner, to my $35 UBid special Mustek parallel scanner. It is a pretty basic feature.
Just check through the TWAIN interface and look for something involving batch scanning. Just out of curiosity, did you buy your copy of Photoshop? Or are you using a "lite" version that came with the scanner? I just ask because GIMP has given me all the tools I've ever needed.
Yet again, an Ask Slashdot question appears to be a stumper, but really is something that a tech support operator (or small child) should deal with.
...
Photoshop should be just fine for what you want to do.
There should be a pallete around that lets you create actions. You basically hit the record button and go through the steps you want to do. Map that to a keystroke and voila.
When selecting the picture, you could even used a fixed width box, so all of the pictures will have the same dimensions. For the action, you could have it copy what you've selected, create a new image and paste the selection into it. Then have it merge layers and auto-adjust the levels/contrast and then have it bring up the save dialog box.
All you're really left doing is scanning the set of pictures, clicking the mouse once (for the fixed width box), hitting the keystroke and then typing in the name of the file.
- The border around every image shows a high contrast against the scanner background (which is usually white). This shouldn't be too much of a problem, unless you take lots of pictures of very light things.
- Your photographs are rectangular. This may sound silly, but it's a lot easier to find a rectangle than some arbitrary n-gon.
- Your photographs are placed so that edges of the photograph run parallel to the bed (i.e. you put the pictures down squarely)
If (1), (2) and (3) hold, then implementing this shouldn't be too bad --- I would use this algorithm:- take a scan of the background of the scanner (i.e. hit the scan button with no pictures on the bed) and remember this background image
- for each image in the input set
- perform edge detection
- use a Hough transform to detect lines in the edge map
- calculate the difference image D. If B[k](i,j) is the value of the k color band at pixel (i,j) in the background image and F[k](i,j) is the value of the k color band at pixel (i,j), then D(i,j) = max(abs(F[r](i,j)-B[r](i,j)),abs(F[g](i,j)-B[g](i
, j)),abs(F[b](i,j)-B[b](i,j))
- divide the difference image and the input image into rectangular regions using the lines that were detected with the Hough transform. For each region, calculate the average difference; if this value is large enough (i.e. over ~ 8-16), then consider that region to be a picture, otherwise it's blank space.
Intel's OpenCV library (look it up at SourceForge) can do most of the "tough" stuff for you (i.e. the edge detection and the Hough Transform). Hope this helpsYou probably want to right a script to do:
(1) scan the composite image,
(2) copy 4 rectangular regions into 4 new images.
(3) save 4 images as imagename_[1,2,3,4].png
You could then go back and crop to perfection afterwards. There are with filehandling in ScriptFu (Gimp) but maybe the PhotoShop scripting can handle this kind of thing.
-crop widthxheight +-xoffset +- yoffset
or somthing like that. Figure out what it should be for the tapped down grid, and make it a script to auto slice all your scanned images.
t.
Nikon makes nice badass batch scanners for slides and negatives, and they may make some for normal prints. If they don't, try getting a small fast scanner that you can slide images through, so you can just scan 20-30 in a row, and not have to seperate them.
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Of course there are ways to do this on Windows. But it's hard to believe that no one has yet implemented it the unix way. There should be a utility where you type "picsplit *.jpg", and you get a directory of split files, sequentially numbered.
Programmers are always looking for projects, this sounds like a relatively easy one.
Most slide and negative scanners will do automatic image splitting for you. I have the attatchment for my Epson flatbed scanner that does slides and negatives and i can easily scan 4-6 all at once and they will each come up as seperate files. You can then make actions to do certain things (auto levels etc) to them and make them a certain heighth or width
I'm scanning in old magazines, mostly 80s and 90s electronics mags. Besides the fact that every issue of Radio-Electronics was the same and half of it was ads, the various years have different qualities of paper that have aged differently.
Basically re-adjust your colors for every batch of pictures you have, some will be different. How will you ensure that the colors will match the original print on any monitor?
Also, I hope that you don't intend on throwing away those pictures and relying on 50 cent CDs made in ????
I'll bet 50 years from now, those pictures will still be in perfect condition with a minimum of care, but your entire computer-related-stuff will be unusable.
Why give the future you and your kids trouble? Imagine a family gathering. You reach for the photo album, and people huddle around. You open the book, everyone can see it, you can even take some out and pass them around.
Picture it with a PC or whatever replaces it in 50 years.... Yikes.
I just find we have so much free time and resources in our society that we dedicate to the most trivial of tasks.
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ImageMagick comes with some command line utils that you can use to pull sections out of an image. Since you are scanning photos, I assume they are all the same size and have the same placement on the scanner. You could just write a script to grab 5 sections (or however many you are scanning) out of the image produced by the scanner. It won't automatically find the boundaries between each photo, but if you place them on the scanner carefully, you should be able to get consistent results.
The NetPBM package may have similar capabilities.
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This is almost exactly what I was about to suggest, except that I would use string taped down at the edges (& pulled tight) instead of sticks. Why? It makes it easier to remove the pictures afterwards. You'll probably want to do the following:
Make a point to check that your strings haven't moved every hundred scans or so, and periodically check the cut images as well, just to save yourself from plunging ahead with a miscalibrated setup.
-- MarkusQ
Why don't you just scan the negatives? (that is if you still have them) It would be more economical than spending the next 2 years chopping up 8"x10"x150dpi.
Just a thought.
Dave
It is useful to have individual files to share with other people. But these might not be the same files you originally captured. You'd probably scan in the photos at the highest resolution and color depth your scanner can do. But when you attach an image to an email, you probably need to step it down a bit.
Anyway, you just have to have some kind of organizing software, if you've got so many photos that optimizing scanner time becomes an issue. If I were designing software that did this, I'd use a database, like the biolife example that comes with Delphi and Kylix. But now that I look at what's available, I see that most apps do store images as individual files.
Still, the principles the same. A good organizer can capture new images from your clipboard. So the procedure works out like this:
- Set organizer to automatically capture from clipboard.
- Place a bunch of images on the scanner.
- Scan. (This is the time-consuming part we need to minimize.)
- Drag a rectangle around an image, and click "copy".
- Repeat previous step for all images we just scanned.
- Go to step 2.
I guess that is a little less efficient than software that recognizes all the image boundaries. But the slight extra effort might not be as hard as finding software with the right kind of boundary recognition feature.Where possible, you should re-shoot some of your homemade porn with a digital camera...
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somewhere near to this topic, once if u do have lots of images and u want them to make html image galleries, there is a cool tool called arles from digital dutch, sadly there is no eqivalent program under GPL. Anyone knows ?
VueScan from Hamrick software supports this. There is a Linux, Windows and Mac (9 & 10) version available. I have been using this with my film scanner for quite a while. Work great. Not free, but not expensive either and updates come out very frequently, adding support for new scanners and new features.
From the manual:
Scan multiple photos, slides, film strips at once on a flatbed
VueScan provides a feature that allows you to scan multiple photos, slides or film strips in a single pass of your scanner. Lay the prints or slides on the scanner bed in a grid, edge to edge, then use the "Device|X/Y images" and "Device|X/Y spacing" options. From a single scan, VueScan will produce multiple files, all cropped and color balanced automatically.
How about using transparancy markers to mark off where you'll plonk down the pictures, then calibrate a script to snip/rotate/whatever the pieces?
wonk!
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I've never done any graphics programming, but my ignorant approach would start by backing the photos with a unique color. Assuming that color is "unique enough" (and scans as such, ignoring variances in the background medium's texture), one should be able to extract the images with greater ease and speed.
#19845
First, scanning negatives with a film scanner will give you better results, but you state that you're poor, so that's out.
Second, you can split the image files from the scanner by size. This would require that you setup the photos that you scan groups of photos that are all the same size together, and get them placed in the same place on the scanner. Even then, you'd end up with either some white space around the photos, or they'd be cropped a tiny bit.
The third option (the one I think you had in mind) is image processing. pnmcrop (http://netpbm.sourceforge.net/doc/pnmcrop.html) will crop off the white or black border around a photo, but probably won't handle 4 photos at once. If you can fit your 4 photos within 4 static boxes, you can crop to those boxes by size, then use pnmcrop to chop off the extra white border.
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this is an interesting problem, and since I've got GIMP installed and know a bit of Lisp (similiar to the Scheme that "Script-Fu" uses) I'm going to try and see what I can do using gimp's built-in functions. i'll set up a page at www.parseerror.com/split/ with my progress. i wouldn't gamble on when i'll have something worth using, but hey, you never know. i'll post back to this thread if i make any major break-throughs.
notes:1) i don't work for cerious sw. 2)had no sleep in a day so post is a bit fuzzy. I am sysadmin at a scanning company. We run in to this a lot. For dividing the pics, use thumbs plus and make a batch process for it. You'll need the same # of batch processes (5 i think in this case, 1 per photo). you can link the batches together. Yeah, i know.. its slashdot and i'm recommending a really kick butt (but )windows app. It is worth every penny though. You can use the auto crop feature after they are divided. Sometimes it flakes so write the output file to a different directory. I strongly suggest using a template for laying the photos on the scan bed. A matte board cutter is a handy thing for this and gives you a colored border. Lay out the template so many corners meet at the top/center. This will allow for quick manual cropping later if necessary and make it easy to divide the pix. To help further, sort your pix by size then you can get a pre- programmed crop to work better. We did (on flatbeds) over 100,000 pics of children from other countries this way. Other countries have interesting film sizes. thumbs makes it very easy to crop and deskew a large # of pics. BTW; the new fujitsu color scanner is pretty nice for photos in batch mode. it cannot compare to flatbed, but it can feed 100 photos in a few mins. at 600dpi. I would equate its 600dpi to a flatbed 300dpi, and a bit blurry. Hope this helps! -erics
Firefox &
The most painless, and least fuss route is to simply have a service bureau do it for you. Just provide them with the negs as they've got the equipment to handle massive batch scanning jobs.
Debabelizer is the way to go. Check it out.
Now if only I could get my file cabinets organized that easily. * Sigh *
Rustin
Data is the lever, rigor the fulcrum, brains the force that drives it all.
The Canon N670U flatbed scanner I have will scan multiple pictures and automatically crop them. I tried it once, and seemed to work ok. YMMV.
the pictures were scanned at 300 DPI by default. I'm not sure how configurable the settings are.
The process was more time consuming, as the computer had to analyze and crop the images.