Scanner pics of your TRADITIONAL knives

There's a lot of helpful info in BRL's forum:

bernard_levine said:
Epson Perfection scanners have the best depth of field for scanning 3D objects, nearly 1/2 inch. Some others have little or none -- I suppose it has to do with the optical design of the scanning bar.

I have a very old 1200 and a very new 4490. The 1200 came with MUCH better software, which I still use for it. The 4490 has better color range so I just use it for graphics. I use the 1200 for knives. Dennis E. recently bought a 4490 for knives, and has had excellent results. Try not to scratch the glass.

If the Epson software is too much of a pain, there is some good 3rd party scanning software around, e.g. Lasersoft Silverfast -- but I have not tried it.

* * *

Scanning knives:

Do NOT use the scanner's own cover when scanning knives or other 3D objects.
Instead use a large piece of paper, to cover the knife and the *entire* glass (so the exposure will be right).

Usually white paper works best. Or light gray. Or sometimes tan.

DO NOT EVER use colored papers, or textured materials. Same rule applies to photography, unless you are a professional advertising photographer and know how to light the background separately. Colors contaminate the color of the item; textures distract from the item, and waste bandwitdth in compressed scans. They also look bad.

Try varying the angle of the knife lying on the glass, since the light of the scanner is directional. Make sure shadows do not fall on important details, such as markings.

Experiment. Pixels are free. All it costs is time...

If you are ambitious, raise the paper above the knife and glass on a frame, to darken it and put it out of focus. Downside: this can require more dust spotting of each scan. I now routinely raise my white paper 1-2 inches, so it goes gray, and out of focus.

Include a ruler, NOT touching the knife.

*

Scan at monitor resolution, either 96 or 100 dpi, NOT HIGHER (unless the scan is for magazine publication -- then follow their specs). 96 dpi is the maximum that any monitor can display; some older scanners offer 100 dpi, but newer ones offer 96 dpi. Use it! UPDATE: Some new hi-res or HD monitors, e.g. Mac, support higher resolutions.

Unsharp masking ON (usually a checkbox). This improves figure/ground separation.

Descreening ON (usually a menu item). This minimizes 'jaggies.'


Scan full knives at 100% size or larger. I have standarized on 200% now, because 100% images are too small to see clearly on my iMac.

For very large knives, make multiple overlapping scans WITHOUT rotating the knife. Then stitch them with panoramic software -- or by eye.

Always crop out empty background in the pre-scan, before the final scan.


Scan TIGHTLY CROPPED closeups of details such as markings at 300% size or larger, big enough to read easily. I have now standardized on 500%.

*

Save each scan to disk in its original format (my Epson scanner makes .TIF files).

If posting pictures to a website, or sending them by email, DO NOT USE .TIF or other raw files.

Convert them to compressed JPG format, using any image viewing/editing program. I use preview on the iMac, but anyone who says the Mac is graphics friendly has either never used one, or never used anything else.
On the PC I use ThumbsPlus, free download from www.cerious.com
It is the main reason I still have a PC.
Most such programs let you do color and contrast corrections, rectangular cropping, downsampling to reduce file size, and other fixes. But you don't have to do any of these, unless you want to. Some even let you add captions and labels to the photos, and create composite images.

When saving JPG files, you will (hopefully) be offered compression options.
Choose 2:2 subsampling and 75% quality. These are the maximum settings that a monitor can display. Any higher quality setting wastes bandwidth. Any lower and you'll start seeing 'tile' artifacts due to pixel averaging.

Use the corrected and CROPPED JPG files for websites and email.

*

BRL...
Click to expand...
 
Welp, time to plug in the scanner and see what I can do! This thread is absolutely wonderful.
 
Jake,

Its a canon mp990. Some combination printer/scanner etc. I scan on photo/600dpi/pdf format. I load file in pdf format to cs5. I crop and save as a tiff. I import tiff to lightroom and make adjustments. Once I adjusted the first I just loaded the same profile to following scans. The background is lighter because I glued a piece of epson lustre photo paper to the inside of the puzzle box lid.

Main adjustments were, remove chromatic aberrations, set white balance, exposure, contrast, tone, microcontrast, sharpness, noise. I'm sure I missed a few. I run through lightroom quickly :)

Thanks for the comment Jake, your scans always impressed me very much. I'm just trying to get as good of results as you all have been.

Kevin
 
I never get tired of saying it...one of the best things in this subforum is the amount of intellectual stimulation provided by forumites who know alot more than me (about knives, maintenance, history, photography, and so on).
Now I feel the urge to try scanning my knives...who would have thought that? :rolleyes:
Thanks for the pictures guys :)

Fausto
:cool:
 
Last one for a while

Gunstock_zps60a77463.jpg
 
richstag said:
Last one for a while

Gunstock_zps60a77463.jpg
Click to expand...

Sweet pic! The bone on the #76 looks wonderful. You carry that #85 quite a bit, I think I remember you saying that you gave it a satin finish on the bolsters at some point, is that pic what I might expect my #72 (I gave mine a 1000 grit satin finish) to look like after a while?
 
Hey Vic,

Nope, that pic is after getting beat up for a while after I gave it a mirror finish. I played with satin for Andi to try and get him a good number.

What I decided is I don't like satin finish on nickel silver. 1000 grit will look amazing though if you take the time to do it right.

Hope this helps you. Nickel is so easily scratched I just mirror polish it and then let it get its own character going :)
 
Agreed about a mirror finish, far easier to maintain. It they're looking really beat up a quick rub on some 1200grit paper followed by a couple of minutes on your strop (or jeans) and hey presto!
 
BigBill5953 said:
Great looking pictures! Is this a custom or a regular production?
Click to expand...

Thanks,
That is a GEC Northfield Scout made in 2008.

I could only find one scan I did with a background picture. I taped the pic inside the box lid I used to get the gray background

8008705858_fb19a49bcc_b.jpg
 
Good lord...I thought I lost time in this place just reading...now I'm scanning knives
 
All of the scanned pictures are nice; however, the ones with a light background are more pleasing to my eye. The knives scanned against a dark background are too sterile for my taste. Sure, they show sharp, defined, detail but that (to me anyway) draws attention from the knife overall.

Further, dust motes, scanner glass smudges and dirt show up much more on a dark background than on a light background.

I fiddle-farted around with a couple of scans this morning but with no patience and ham-fisted handling etc., it's a no go for me.

This is a scan I did in 2010 of my Case Folding Hunter. Not very good (terrible to be exact) so I decided no scans in the future.

casefoldinghunter2.jpg


This is a scan I did this morning of my GEC Linerlock. Terrible from the git-go and there will be no further scans in the future.

scanpic0010j.jpg


I suppose if I took the time to clean the scanner glass and then the knives themselves things would go better but I just don't have the patience for it.

Thanks Kevin, Stu, and you other guys. Keep them coming.
 
Last edited:
Hi Ed,

There is nice detail in the plane of focus, but it appears your scanner is one with almost zero depth of field, leaving almost no area of perceived focus outside of the plane of focus.

I took your advice and tried the whitest background I could get.

What do you think?? Better worse?

Ed_zps9b958d35.jpg


Thanks,

Kevin

BTW, I positioned the knife differently and it really changed the lighting.
 
Much better with the light background Kevin. I think the dark/black background competes with the knife for attention. For my .02¢. this is a great scan. Eye goes to the knife - not the background.

Oh, very nice knife.
 
I liked the first version Kevin, felt the contrast was better, drawing your eye to the texture of the scales and particularly the pattern of the blades:)

Sam
 
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