Looking for ADF usage / calibration tips, and debinding advice

[Foxhack]

Through sheer luck, I managed to find a brand new Brother ADS-1700W in town for a very affordable price. It can do up to 600 DPI in color, which is more than enough for the stuff I'm thinking of scanning - game magazines from Mexico which are largely unpreserved. I think I sent a bunch of stuff here for scanning, but I should still have some stuff in storage.

My main concern right now is figuring out a way to calibrate the scans. Can I use one of those color targets in ADF scanners? I don't know how those work, so I'm pretty clueless.

Also, some of these magazines have glue binding. Will any hairdrier work to loosen the glue, or do I have to get something with a specific heat / speed?

[MigJmz]

For debinding with heat a clothing iron will give enough heat to loosen the glue without scorching the pages. Iron the spine up and down until its hot enough. Yea you can use a heat gun as well but you have to be careful not to burn the pages. Also be careful that the glue wont stick to the back cover pages when it loosens so have paper towels to wipe it before it sticks to it.

When the glue is hot you can remove pages with a simple yank. If some pages wont tear away then apply more heat. When all pages are removed use scissors to cut the spine so you can scan the back and front covers easily.

Here's a tutorial on how to remove with a box cutter if interested: https://www.retromags.com/guides/debinding/

[E-Day]

I didn't calibrate my ADF. It seems to have pretty accurate colours out of the gate. In Photoshop I tweaked the Levels, Saturation and Brightness/Contrast until the page on the screen was close to the page in my hand. I know this is not the best way to do it, but unless you have a pro monitor with high colour accuracy that photographers and videographers use and a color calibrator, you can't really get perfect colours. And even if you do, it will look different on everyone else's screen. Plus apps used to look at these scan can tweak things even more.

I think the best thing to do if start with a default scan and compare it to the actual page then tweak from there until you can get it as close as possible on your monitor. Maybe someone has a better way of doing it.

And I highly recommend debinding with a box cutter or a larger guillotine paper cutter. It saves a ton of time.

[MigJmz]

most scanning software let you calibrate the colours while you scan (like PaperScan) so adjusting isn't  too difficult.

[matrixman]

I also just purchased a fi7160 to begin contributing and noticed it crushes details in dark areas over the detail that my older ix500 shows perfectly.   I am not sure if can bring out those details on post as believe it can only scan to JPEG not TIF with included software.  And there is no darn manual to suggest tweaking it.  Colors and text look better on the fi7160 but honestly not that much better over the ix500.  

[E-Day]

What software are you using? I've tried PaperStream and wasn't a huge fan of it. I use ScanSnap for fi Series which gives me much better results than the other software options. Plus it's simple and quick to use.

Software Downloads: fi-7160 / fi-7260 : Fujitsu Global

[Melki]

1 hour ago, E-Day said:

What software are you using? I've tried PaperStream and wasn't a huge fan of it. I use ScanSnap for fi Series which gives me much better results than the other software options. Plus it's simple and quick to use.

Software Downloads: fi-7160 / fi-7260 : Fujitsu Global

ScanSnap Manager for fi Series 1.0.14?

[matrixman]

Using Paperstream as its only choice.  If I try to download the ScanSnap it asks for serial number and says not available.

If someone can share that would be great, please PM me.

[E-Day]

5 hours ago, Melki said:

ScanSnap Manager for fi Series 1.0.14?

That is what I am using with my fi-7160. It accepts my serial number just fine.

3 hours ago, matrixman said:

Using Paperstream as its only choice.  If I try to download the ScanSnap it asks for serial number and says not available.

If someone can share that would be great, please PM me.

Is your serial number blacklisted or something? Did you buy one that "fell off the back of a truck"?

[matrixman]

8 minutes ago, E-Day said:

That is what I am using with my fi-7160. It accepts my serial number just fine.

Is your serial number blacklisted or something? Did you buy one that "fell off the back of a truck"?

Ordered from Amazon from seller Amazon.com Services LLC.   Have you tried recently to obtain this software as maybe they changed what they allow to be downloaded.   If not then yes something is wrong with my serial # perhaps grey market.   So next will contact and call Fujitsu then as not happy with the results from PaperStream software at all.

[matrixman]

Looks like they must have removed this software for newer serial numbers.  You might be grandfathered in for yours.  

My serial # works for all the other applications but it will not allow ScanSnap.

Unless someone here can provide this ScanSnap software package for me to try with scanner, its going back to Amazon as a return next week.  Which will be unfortunate as I cannot contribute without an ADF scanner due to it being to time consuming otherwise.  Thanks.

[E-Day]

That is a possibility. I did get my scanner in 2019. I did reinstall the software the other month and it worked just fine.

If Fujitsu isn't helpful or you do have a grey market scanner, then I would return it. Grab the ScanSnap ix1600 and save yourself some cash (and it's 15% off right now). The difference between the ScanSnap scanners and the fi when it comes to quality isn't really noticeable. I remember comparing a scan Phillyman made on his ix500 to one I made on my fi-7160 of the same page and I could not really tell the difference. The consumables last longer on the fi-series but otherwise the quality difference is negligible.

[matrixman]

Well good news is that I was able to get a much better scan out of it using the TWAIN driver and another software called Paperscan Pro but it crashed once I tried several pages but I have not updated this software in 2 years so perhaps that memory error is fixed since my machine has ample memory.

That 15% off is really tempting though as I really like the ScanSnap software and the ix1600 looks like a nice unit.  But its also nice having a TWAIN driver giving ability to use any scanning software.  Also I do have a ton of computer magazines, movie magazines, and some gaming mags to scan so the faster speed might be nice but have a feeling 40ppm vs 60ppm is not a huge difference for me.

The TWAIN advanced settings allows for Tone Adjustment with custom setting for each Brightness, Contrast, Shadow, Highlight, Gamma.  Or can also import some pattern gma file which I have no idea on what that is.  I wonder if anyone here has some suggested settings that have worked well for magazines for that Tone adjustment.  The current custom settings are 

Brightness: 82
Contrast: 128
Shadow: 10
Highlight: 230
Gamma: 1.00

[matrixman]

E-day took your advice and returned the fi and got a ix1600 at 15% off instead as I really could not tell the difference when it arrived from the scans the fi did and the speed increase in fi vs ix1600 was not that huge a difference overall.

So also been using Scansnap manager as that does still work with both my old ix500 and the new ix1600 and I prefer it.

However, I notice even after just one magazine scan that lines begin to appear in scans.  I clean the rollers and the glass and they go away.  Do you have this same common experience as I hate having to do this after every scan?  Is the lines from the rollers or the glass area?

Starting slow with some magazines I own and have de-binded with guillotine.  But will need some help figuring out post processing tweaks in Photoshop to make the image pop and text more readable.  I viewed the guides here and will experiment but might need some guidance if thats okay.

Looking forward to contributing soon!

[E-Day]

The main difference between the ix and fi series is the durability. The consumables will last longer on the fi series, but otherwise it's hard to tell the difference between the scans.

Dust lines are a big nuisance and completely normal. I wipe down the glass between every magazine or sometimes more often. I also spot check the scans as they get saved in case their are dust lines and I have to wipe the scanner and start again. As annoying as it can be some days, it's an easy trade off I am willing to make for the speed over scanning with a flatbed.

For Photoshop processing, I've attached two Photoshop Actions to this post. One is for my fi-7160 using ScanSnap Manager, and the other is the one I would use for Phillyman's scans as he has an ix500. You can use either as a starting off point to tweak the settings to your liking, assuming your scans come out the same as ours. I only adjust the Brightness/Contrast, Levels, and Hue/Saturation; you may feel you want to tweak more settings.

ScanSnap Manager.atn Magazine - Phillyman.atn

[matrixman]

Thanks will give these a try.  I only have Photoshop Elements but I think actions from main PS work in them also.

Otherwise might have to break out my old Photoshop v7.

What version are these from?

[E-Day]

CC 2018. None of the functions use anything exclusive to that version so they should work in v7.