(no subject)

[telophase]

I HAVE A SCANNNNNNNER!!



It picks up great subtleties in shading - I think I sold the marker piece I was thinking of testing, so I don't have that to show you, but I scanned in the cover of Minekura's Sugar Coat artbook so you can see:



I scanned that at 300ppi, then shrank it down for Web display. Here's an actual-pixel-size chunk of the scan. You can see the dots laid down by the printer as the book was printed, but they're fairly unobtrusive.



Wheeeeeeeeee!

Comments

[telophase.livejournal.com]

eBay. :) Used, did a Buy It Now for $350 + $90 shipping. I made sure that the listing said it worked great, because there are a lot of people who sell non-working ones for parts (which I may, one day, have to buy XD) or who only test to see if the scanner powers on and don't bother to scan anything, and that the seller had great feedback, and that all the necessary parts were included (SCSI card, SCSI cable, power cable). It's an Epson Expression 836XL. There are a few sellers selling new ones, which go for $1600+, so $350 + shipping for a used one in working order is a bargain.

I used to buy cheap scanners for $75 or so, use them til they broke or started scanning badly, and get a new one. Last time I bought one, I reasoned that if I bought a more expensive scanner, it would work better, so I spent $275 on one. The scan wasn't any better than the cheap ones, which was annoying. I'd done a bit of research (i.e., asked nyanko_chan over on DA XD) and found that this was a really good, reasonably affordable used, scanner, and after a year and a half of wiffling back and forth on it, decided that if I were going to spend $300 on a scanner, I might as well buy one that had very good reports on it, and went for it.

[flyingpeachbun.livejournal.com]

Wow that's a really good deal :3
Eeeee if only I was making money at this thing called art XP Wow, I so can't afford that... I'll have to stick to ones under 100 for now :PPPP
I really don't know how to tell if a scanner is good though until I've actually scanned with it... if it's good, it should scan without distoring colors or washing out my colors XP I hope I can find one soon!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I've yet to find one other than this one that didn't have contrast problem with subtle shading, because they're just not sensitive enough to pick up the nuances. I did scan a page that I'd practiced shading with markers on, and it scanned very well, far better than any of my other scanners would have.

Now I have to actually practice more with my markers because I can't blame the scanner for a crappy pic anymore. XD

[flyingpeachbun.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's those subtle shades that are very important to the image...
Hopefully they'll improve the less expensive scanners someday soon :P

LOL~ don't say that X3... but practice is good!