Final Fantasy Online

Home Articles Games Forums Shop
You are not logged in. Log In or Sign Up.
Browse Online Now Directory New Posts Achievements Help/FAQ
Search


Final Fantasy Online Forums  >  Community Discussion  >  The Dork Squad

I need a good scanner.





0
 03.23.2012 11:40am
Thread Creator (Edited on 03.23.2012 at 3:12pm)

Free Spirit
Zetta Member



So, I want to finally start scanning my FF artbooks(since Square-Enix apparently decided NOT to bother releasing the new edition of The Sky after cock-teasing me for a year with delays). I have been putting off getting a new scanner, and thus getting this project off my bucket list, for a few years now because every time I try and find a suitable scanner for larger, unwieldy hardcover books, I come up so frustrated that I shelf the whole idea for another day.

Well not today! I recently quit my shitty job and am in the process of going back to school in the fall, or possibly next spring depending how the cards fall. This means that as of Monday, I will have at least three months, possibly as much as nine months of nothing but free time, which I plan on taking advantage of accordingly. One of my goals is scanning my copy of The Sky, the big, fat trilogy of books with over a thousand pieces of Amano FF art that is damn near impossible to find nowadays.

To do this, I need a scanner that can handle the job. My current scanner can do it, but grudgingly, and I've had to jury-rig it to scan what I want out of the massive artbook. It's also old, and doesn't scan as well as it used to. I want a scanner specifically designed to scan large, cumbersome books. I've looked on Amazon and a few other places, and I can never find something that works for me. Anything I find that actually fits my specifications almost invariably has horrible reviews or some other fatal drawback that makes me extremely wary about dropping several hundred dollars on it.

Hopefully someone here has some experience with scanners and can point me in the direction of one that will fit my needs.

For reference, this is the book in question:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Final-Fantasy-Art-book-Yoshitaka-Amano-Sky-2001-/251014136057?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a719bc0f9

It's roughly a set of three 12 in. x 11 in. books, hard cover, with large, full-page artwork that sometimes goes straight to the spine of the book. And as you can see from the eBay pricing, the books ain't cheap, so I don't want to destroy my copy in the process of scanning.

Now, I also intend to scan my copy of The Art of Final Fantasy IX, which I actually have two copies of, one of which I have since broken the spine of and separated into individual pages for better scanning. So, I want a scanner that can scan individual sheets as well as large books, if possible.

Right now, I have my eye on this scanner: http://www.amazon.com/Plustek-OpticBook-3800-Book-Scanner/dp/B005AHBGZ6/ref=dp_cp_ob_e_title_0, but I'm not sure if it will be able to scan something as large as my book. That is the main issue I have when looking for a suitable scanner - most really good ones are too small for me, and the ones that are big enough seem to be garbage with tons of horrible reviews. Or they're business-class behemoths that cost over $5,000. Yes, even I have a limit to how much I'm willing to spend on something Final Fantasy related, and $5,000 for a scanner that takes up half a room is too much. As long as the thing's under a thousand bucks, I'm willing to buy it, provided it truly is exactly what I'm looking for.

Help?

EDIT:  After a few hours of searching, this scanner (http://www.amazon.com/Epson-Expression-10000XL-Graphic-Scanner/dp/B0002LC9TC/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top) seems to be beyond perfect for everything I ask of it...but it's pricetag is disheartening.  It's not completely out of my acceptable price range like some of the multi-thousand $$$ scanners I've seen, but it's far enough that I don't want to get it if there's anything cheaper that can handle A3 format book scanning reliably.




 Jump to Post







0
 03.23.2012 5:25pm


Kal
yes



I've heard very good things about this one :  http://www.amazon.com/Epson-GT-20000-B11B195011-Performance-Scanner/dp/B001AZDI3A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332508789&sr=8-1  A lot of my illustrator friends use it.
It's just above 1000$, but you get what you pay for. A professional A3 scanner, like you said, costs from 2000 to... 20'000 ? bucks so yeah, for 1000 this one is very reasonnably priced for its quality. 




 Jump to Post



0
 03.23.2012 10:21pm


Southern Comfort
silently judging all of you



The hard part of scanning books is the format - you either need a large scanner with sophisticated software to demangle the page fold ($$$), or you need to take a razor blade to the binding of the book, to cut the pages to lay flat.

Apparently, most companies that scan books prefer rigs built to use digital cameras rather than actual scanners, and a cheap-but-good camera and a little bit of Plexiglass can make a phenominal book scanner without breaking the bank.  Wikipedia seems to be a good starting place.




 Jump to Post



0
 03.24.2012 6:25am


Arckanghel
Pirate.



Go on my Facebook, ( https://www.ckj411.com ) and find my friend Audra Van Lanen. She works in the large format print industry and should know right off the top of her head what you need.




 Jump to Post



0
 03.24.2012 6:47am
Thread Creator (Edited on 03.25.2012 at 2:34am)

Free Spirit
Zetta Member



I like that 1000$ one, Kal. Although I have to wonder what the difference is between it and the 2000$ model?

And Arckanghel...is that the right link? It took me to a gibberish site. :P

EDIT:  I went ahead and bought the 1000$ Epson Kal linked to.  It looks like the only difference between the 2000$ one and this one is software and style.  The cheaper one seems to be basically everything the 2000$ one is, but without all the unecessary bells and whistles.

A little pricier than I had wanted, but in the end I think it'll be worth it.  Huzzah!  Here's to finally having an online version of The Sky for the masses!  Maybe I could make it a part of Final Fantasy Society once I have everything scanned and uploaded?




 Jump to Post



0
 03.25.2012 4:32am


Arckanghel
Pirate.



ooops, meant https://facebook.com/CKJ411




 Jump to Post



0
 03.30.2012 5:53pm
Thread Creator

Free Spirit
Zetta Member



Got my scanner, got it hooked up, and everything looks good! As a test, I scanned the cover of my largest artbook, the FFIV Amano artbook, Dawn. This book is actually larger, dimension-wise, than The Sky, and it still fit perfectly and scanned beautifully. No touch up necessary beyond cropping the edges of the actual book.  Oh, and I never noticed until now that the dragon's body on the cover actually spells out the word DAWN.  That's awesome.

Now...I do still have one odd problem with this scanner that I don't recall ever having with my others. I was scanning some test pages from The Art of FFIX, and I found that it actually scans through the page, and you can see the images on the other side of the page slightly showing through to the front. I've tried some different settings and minimized it pretty well, but I can't find any way to completely get rid of this effect. It seems like something that should be pretty easy to fix, though.




 Jump to Post



0
 03.30.2012 7:05pm


Kal
yes



Glad to have been of help.
As for the see-through thing, there is no perfect solution but you can avoid or at least diminish that (depending on the thickness of the page you're scanning) by putting a black sheet of paper behind the page you're scanning and pressing down firmly when you scan.




 Jump to Post



0
 04.02.2012 6:47am
Thread Creator

Free Spirit
Zetta Member



Hah, I think I've got this thing down now.  I went ahead and scanned the largest Amano artwork in existence, and had no troubles getting it fully scanned. It has no name, and just goes by "artwork drawn for Dawn", so I call it "The Primal Scene of Japan that Amano Saw", and yes, that's a Touhou reference.

The actual full-sized image is cut into chunks in the book and if it were put together would span 14 pages, making it roughly 14 feet long.  There is a resized version spread across four pages, which is what I used, although I did scan all the full-sied pieces as well without any problems.  I reduced the final image's size by a further 50% to keep it in full vertical view in a browser.  It's still an impressive piece of artwork, and if I can scan this, I can scan anything from any book.




 Jump to Post












Jump to

Go




© Copyright 2024 Final Fantasy Online, All Rights Reserved
Home  |  Articles  |  Games  |  Forums  |  Shop  |  Contact Us  |  Terms of Use  |  Privacy Policy
Become a Facebook FanFollow us on Twitter