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SCANNING IMAGES There are flatbed scanners, fancy drum scanners, and scanners for snapshot size photos and for slides and transparencies. Because the flatbed scanner is by far the mostly widely used, this tutorial is geared toward the flatbed. Even so, with so many brands of flatbed scanners, this is necessarily a general overview. Refer to the documentation that came with your scanner for more specific instructions. What can be scanned? You can scan anything that has at least one flat surface. This covers photographs, drawings, old letters, pages from books, an album cover, a piece of fabric or clothing, a maple leaf: things we typically think of as flat and two dimensional. You can also scan some three-dimensional objects, as long as one surface is flat: a cereal box, a box lid, a cigarette lighter, a watch. Figuring out what is scannable can be part of the creativity of the project. The primary limitation in flatbed scanning seems to be one of size. Items larger than the scanning area can sometimes be scanned in pieces and the parts knit together digitally in Photoshop, but that is an undertaking that requires a bit of skill in Photoshop and some extra time. A faster approach would be to take a photograph of a large item and scan in the photograph. When considering bigger images, think about the level of detail you want to show. A typical digital story is produced at a size that takes up not even one-quarter of a 15-inch monitor's screen. Not even all of a 3 x 5 inch card would be visible in that space! Flatbed scanners The scanner itself is simple to operate. Lay your image down on the glass. Make sure it's straight against the edge of the glass. Maybe put two or three snapshots on the glass at once to save scanning time. Close the cover. That's as much control as you have over the scanning hardware. The controls for scanning are in the software you install when you hook up your scanner. The features available depend on how fancy a scanner you have, but most will give you an option to preview the image first before you really scan it in. Take advantage of that feature not only to make sure the image is straight but also to crop out any blank space or unneeded parts of the image. Some cropping tool should be available to draw a dotted rectangle on the preview screen to mark the part of the image you want scanned. Cropping saves disk space; use it regularly and your hard drive will thank you. Another setting you'll want to make before you scan is the dots per inch (or dpi). That tells you how close together you can squeeze printed dots into a one-inch space. It's the difference between the printing of a cheap comic book (where you can see every dot) and the printing of a fine art book (it's as if you're standing in front of the painting). Knowing that higher dpi gives more rich detail might tempt you to scan at a higher rate. Some scanners can go up to 1200 dpi! However, think again about the small size of the finished movie. As with using big original images, the detail of high dpi would be lost. And since higher dpi images take up a lot of disk space, you'll be opening yourself up to all the perils of dealing with large files: slow image-processing time in both Photoshop and Premiere, quickly eaten-up hard disk space. You'll see excellent results with images scanned in at 150 dpi. Anything above 150 dpi is really wasted in Premiere. How to save scans? Once you scan your image, you'll need to give the file a name,
choose a file format, and store it on your hard drive. Some students label their scans by number: scan1, scan2, etc. That may seem organized, but it's also meaningless. How can you remember which scan is which with such a naming scheme? Giving the file a descriptive name will make it easier to find later.
Because you organized your story project before you started scanning, you already have a place to store your files: in your Scanned Images subfolder. SIZING IMAGESA brief intro to Photoshop Why do we use Photoshop? One, although many other image manipulation tools are cheaper and a bit more user friendly, Photoshop is the leading tool for digital image manipulation. Using Photoshop for the simple tasks we need to complete might seem like using a sledgehammer to crack a peanut. Even though we think you might be able to do some of our simple things in another application, sooner or later you are going to want to do some seriously cool things that require a tool like Photoshop. Two, Photoshop and Premiere (our editing tool) are kissing cousins: they work together easily and consistently. As you will see, our uses of Photoshop are basic, but for the introductory student they do require a little bit of work. We encourage students in our workshops not to become bogged down in Photoshop. Complete these simple tasks and move on. Four by three: that's for me! That's the slogan Premiere lives by. The projection area for a Premiere movie is always four units wide by three units high. Later, when you're introduced to Premiere, you'll see that the first thing it'll ask you is what size movie you'll be making: it may seem like a lot of choices, but they all boil down to multiples of four and three: 160 x 120, 240 x 180, or 320 x 240. If you measure television screens, don't be too surprised to learn that their width and height work out to a 4 x 3 proportion too. If you plan to put your movie on videotape, you'll find that's a happy coincidence! Premiere likes the 4 x 3 format so much that, if you give it something
that's a different size, Premiere will scrunch the image into
its preferred shape. That can introduce a lot of unintended distortions. Poor kid! Now let's send a wide image to Premiere (2W x 1H):
Open Photoshop. We’ll start with a vertical image. Pull down IMAGE to IMAGE SIZE. Up will pop the Image Size window. CHANGE RESOLUTION to 72, then CHANGE HEIGHT to 240. Click on OK.
Pull down IMAGE to CANVAS SIZE. Up will pop the Canvas Size window. CHANGE WIDTH to 320.
Finally, save the image as a new file using SAVE AS in the FILE pull down menu.
Name the file “your_filename320” to differentiate it from your original unsized image and store it in your Sized Picts folder. For a horizontal file that is wider than the 4 x 3 aspect ratio (like a wide panoramic shot), just reverse the settings. In IMAGE SIZE set the width first to 320, then click OK. In CANVAS SIZE, set the height to 240, click OK. The border is now at the top and bottom of the image. And then remember to SAVE AS “yourfilename320”. You also have a quick and easy way to set the file size to the 320 x 240 size using the cropping tool. 1. At the top left corner of the tool bar is the Marquee Tool. Select and hold down your mouse button on the Marquee tool. A popup window of five choices comes up. Pick the far right icon that looks like this. This is the Cropping tool. 2. The options window at the top right of your screen will change to the Cropping Tool Options. Select Fixed Target Size by clicking on the box. 3. Set the cropping tool to 320 WIDTH, 240 HEIGHT, and 72 pixels/inch. 4. Make a selection by clicking and dragging diagonally across your image. Marching ants will surround the image, with open squares on each corner. That's Photoshop's way of telling you that you can change the image before you finally make your crop. You can select a smaller or larger segment of your original image (when the cursor looks like this, usually when you're close to the corners) or you can tilt the image to the left or right (to make corrections for a not entirely straight image) when the cursor looks like this, usually when the cursor is along the sides of the image. 5. Hit the RETURN key and Photoshop will crop your image. 6. Again, remember to save the file as “yourfilename320” using SAVE AS in the FILE menu. These are the basic steps that will carry you through sizing images for your digital story. If you want to go just a little further with Photoshop, investigate these topics:
Once you understand the procedure, sizing images for a project with any more than a few images can become tedious and mechanical. Photoshop 4.0 has a special feature available called Actions, which can largely automate the process. Let's go back and set up a sizing action. On this page goes all the information on scanners and sizing in Photoshop. Subpages will address color correction and some other basic image adjustments. Done scanning and sizing? Perhaps you still have haven't covered these steps: Done all these steps?
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