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#228605 - 03/05/08 01:15 AM What settings work best for scanning?
Scott Langholff Offline
Senior Member

Registered: 06/09/02
Posts: 3163
Loc: Pensacola, Florida, USA
Hello

Am wondering what you have found to be the best settings for scanning sheet music.

Settings that are avaiable on my scanner are:

Gray/Lineart

Resolution

Descreen: Newspaper, magazine, art print, custom>lines per square inch.

Enhance: Brightness, contrast, Gamma.

Filter, where sharpen seems to be the only option that makes sense to use for music.

What about dpi?

Will one setting work best with saving as pdf, jpeg, printing, etc?

Hope someone can help me save lots of time experimenting on this

Best
Scott




[This message has been edited by Scott Langholff (edited 03-05-2008).]

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#228606 - 03/05/08 07:55 AM Re: What settings work best for scanning?
travlin'easy Offline
Senior Member

Registered: 12/08/02
Posts: 15556
Loc: Forest Hill, MD USA
Scott,

Most flatbed scanners have a Text option, which is usually the best for sheet music.

For the resolution, I suggest using a mid range. High resolution settings usually pick up every piece of clutter on the page, tiny dots, creases, etc.., all of which produce black marks when scanned.

Brightness and contrast settings will depend upon both the document being scanned and the scanner itself. These settings will vary to some degree, but must scanners will usually allow you to preview the end product and make the needed adjustments to produce sharp lines and high contrast.

The sharpen tool should be set to mid range. When it is set higher it tends to produce clutter, thereby making the image almost unreadable.

The DPI setting is another that you will have to play by ear. Of course, the higher the setting the larger the document size. The larger documents take a bit longer to load. Most printed material is very readable at 80 to 150 dpi. Settings above 300 dpi seem to be overkill.

The PDF format is for Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is a bit slow and cumbersome. The jpg setting is the easiest to work with, and the scanned document can be inserted into any word processor as a graphic. Additionally, jpg images can be stretched to fit various screen sizes. And, they are much smaller files, which makes them easier to email.

Hope this helps,

Gary

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Travlin' Easy
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PSR-S950, TC Helicon Harmony-M, Digitech VR, Samson Q7, Sennheiser E855, Custom Console, and lots of other silly stuff!

K+E=W (Knowledge Plus Experience = Wisdom.)

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#228607 - 03/05/08 10:19 AM Re: What settings work best for scanning?
MacAllcock Offline
Senior Member

Registered: 03/02/02
Posts: 1221
Loc: Preston, Lancashire, England
I rarely scan music; but when I do I tend to find that using a monochrome scan with a threshhold is either really good or really bad.

Usually I scan in full colour and (if possible with the scanner) adjust the exposure settings to reduce bleed-through from the music on the back, as the paper can be really thin. I then reduce down to a suitable colour depth using Photoshop.

In terms of resolution I don't find theres much to be gained by going past 300 dpi. On older scanners they get higher resolution using software interpolation anyhow so you don't gain anything in real terms!

What can sometimes help to clean up rough edges is to use Photoshop or similar to resample the scan to a much higher resolution then apply smoothing and resample back down again. Overdoing this can reduce clarity, however.
_________________________
John Allcock

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