Scanning

[Emperor Oli]

Heyho chaps. For a while now I've only photographed my coins but I've found I can't pick up the fine detail on my, well, finer coins! So I'm going to have a bash at scanning them but I have a few questions (aimed at the older peeps here as they have more experience!):

• 1) Do you put some padding behind the coin. Say if you were scanning the obverse, would you put some padding behind the reverse to stop it being damaged by the top of the scanner?
  
• 2) Do you scan on the highest setting or do you find the middling ones do just as well?
  

Thanks in advance!

[Sylvester]

Well i very rarely use padding, only then for proofs... when i've been daring enought to scan them

I dunno if you can, but i find for silver a setting of Brightness 18 and contrast 20 works best.

Depending on your program that would work out as a middle range, with contrast just ever so slightly higher than the brightness.

Copper and bronze you need the brightness bit higher than the contrast.

Gold you want the contrast higher than the brightness.

you'll have to experiment a bit though.

[TomGoodheart]

I don't use padding. The colour balance I just fiddle about with. The detail is determined by the dpi setting. Trouble is the higher the dpi, the more memory the file takes up. I find a setting of 300dpi adequate. I have gone up to 800 but you can't email 10 or 12 MB without people whinging!

If you scan several coins on high resolution, I find you can cut out one you want with someting like Paint. This cuts down on size and it can then be posted etc. That Will IIII in Fave coins was scanned at 300 or 400dpi along with my other shillings and then edited like that.

Oh - I find I can do more with the pics if I save as JPEGs. I'm sure some young'un can tell me why. (No, no, that wasn't a request, I'm happy not to know!)

[kuhli]

I scan my coins at 600 dpi, and then reduce the size to a manageable level, usually 300 pixels square. The higher dpi captures better detail, and reducing it to 300X300 makes the size an easy 25-40k.

[Half Penny Jon]

Cool, I can't scan my coins at the moment beacuse my scanner is broken, but hopefully I will be able to soon!