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So a few weeks ago, my MIL stopped in and dropped off a stack of photo albums asking if I could scan all the pics in for her. Not wanting to disappoint, I agreed, letting my wife know that she owed me for this. Many of the albums have the sticky back with the cellophane cover across the photos, So pulling back the cellophane on most wasn't an option and the binding on the books made it a real pain to hold up on the scanner and still push buttons.
Well, I came up with the idea to simply photograph the pages and then crop the individual pages from the overall photograph. I made and alignment jig to align the books to, made some stands for some clip lights I had (with long ago missing clips) with some cfl bulbs in them, and a remote shutter release on the camera.
The photographing of the pages wasn't bad, but the cropping of the individual images was going to take a very looooongggg time to get done. So, again, did a little brainstorming and googling and came up with some free software that will let you open a scanned image and select the images to be cropped, and even orientate each to output individual photos of each. It tries to do a best selection as you go to the main image, but you can manually change the selections, delete them, and even select at an angle to straighten out a crooked image in the album.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/scannedimageextractor/
I ended up getting all of the albums done on Sunday, and as they say, "no good deed goes unpunished!" I was chatting with my own mom Sunday night and I made the mistake of telling her what I was doing. Low and behold, she showed up with 3 tubs of albums, photos, slides, and negatives for me to scan for her. And my MIL has a few more albums to scan yet, about 4 tubs worth.
I did find a couple of pieces of artwork I did out of high school which I totally don't remember, but this is one I did of my brother's car at the time.
Well, I came up with the idea to simply photograph the pages and then crop the individual pages from the overall photograph. I made and alignment jig to align the books to, made some stands for some clip lights I had (with long ago missing clips) with some cfl bulbs in them, and a remote shutter release on the camera.
The photographing of the pages wasn't bad, but the cropping of the individual images was going to take a very looooongggg time to get done. So, again, did a little brainstorming and googling and came up with some free software that will let you open a scanned image and select the images to be cropped, and even orientate each to output individual photos of each. It tries to do a best selection as you go to the main image, but you can manually change the selections, delete them, and even select at an angle to straighten out a crooked image in the album.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/scannedimageextractor/
I ended up getting all of the albums done on Sunday, and as they say, "no good deed goes unpunished!" I was chatting with my own mom Sunday night and I made the mistake of telling her what I was doing. Low and behold, she showed up with 3 tubs of albums, photos, slides, and negatives for me to scan for her. And my MIL has a few more albums to scan yet, about 4 tubs worth.
I did find a couple of pieces of artwork I did out of high school which I totally don't remember, but this is one I did of my brother's car at the time.