Without Photoshop program/ question

[Bablefish]

I have a bit of a question/ problem which I hope someone here can at least give me some advice. You see I don't have a copy of Photoshop for the simple reason I can't afford it. Money is tight with me, I frankly don't have a lot of it. I have been needing some RAM for this old laptop of mine but other expenses get in the way.

My first submission here did not quite go as well as planned. I tried uploading to Megaupload and all I got was error messages but I figured out a way around it, namely 4shared.com . Also I did not shrink the pixels or fix the pages, thankfully E-Day is quite understanding, even with the 2 pages I missed. I can fix the pages meaning over scanning and rough edges with a combo of Photostudio 5 and GIMP, Photostudio actually came with my Cannon Scanner and I really like to program, it is very easy to use. The real problem I am asking about is the shrinking of pixels The only program I have to do this is MS Paint I found the setting of 60 for both horizontal and vertical does it. I get 1450 x 1935 which is well within this site's guideline. My only question it seems is file size you see MS Paint also brings down the file size to 491K and that's on a 300 dpi scan. Would there be any problems submitting an issue?

[Vladi]

Why don't you try Pain Shop Pro 7 or Corel's Paint Shop Pro X? better than MS Paint, easier to handle than Photoshop and others.

I use it with a homemade script to work on scans: I get a 2500px X 3200px from the scanner then I run the script to apply the "Salt and pepper" correction -> Resize to 1400x1900 -> optimize JPG size under 1MB. It saves me tons of time!

Oh and not to mention how cheap the license is (was?)

PS. I have the a full copy for the 7 version but it doesn't come with the scripts option.

[E-Day]

You can reduce the pixel width of the images GIMP, as far as I know. I use Photoshop at home. I have the "unlimited trial version", if you get my drift.

For the record, I am willing to help anyone who can scan but can't edit. I'll gladly do the editing and stuff for anyone who isn't able to because they either don't know how or don't have the resources.

[Vladi]

You can reduce the pixel width of the images GIMP, as far as I know. I use Photoshop at home. I have the "unlimited trial version", if you get my drift.

For the record, I am willing to help anyone who can scan but can't edit. I'll gladly do the editing and stuff for anyone who isn't able to because they either don't know how or don't have the resources.

I can join you with that. I can't scan 2 pages per run and that suuuuuuuucks big time. It usually takes me 1.5-2 hours to scan 40 pages... If I just had a bigger scanner...

Edited September 15, 2010 by Vladi

[KiwiArcader]

I have an A3 scanner and even then I wouldn't consider scanning 2 side by side pages as if the pages are letter/A4 you will lose several milimetres on either side of the platen. Mini-sized mags like the RISC Users are fine as they don't get near the size of an A3 page.

What the A3 IS good for is scanning a whole A4 or oversized page in one go. No having to do two passes per page to fix the cropping issue a typical A4 scanner gives you. That and the fact that being a LED scanner it does a 300dpi A3 scan in 10 seconds or less

[E-Day]

I can join you with that. I can't scan 2 pages per run and that suuuuuuuucks big time. It usually takes me 1.5-2 hours to scan 40 pages... If I just had a bigger scanner...

I can scan about 80 pages in just over an hour. The problem is that my scanner is connected to my computer through wifi. Andd because of that, the scans don't show up on my computer until I tell the scanner I don't want to scan anymore. Every now and then the program and scanner will just stop working. When that happens, I lose all the previous scans I had just done.

It happened just now, actually. I spent an hour scannign 62 pages. On the last page I was scanning before telling the program to stop, it stopped responding. So I lost all those scans and now have to do them over.

If I was rich and had the room I would buy a dedicated scanner that would be connected by a cable just to my computer.

[KiwiArcader]

My scanner is a Brother MFC6890CDW A3 all-in-one connected via ethernet to the network switch but also has USB & wifi.

It can scan to FTP, memcard or USB stick, or PC via their software [not great] or via TWAIN directly into Paintshop [my preferred option]

[E-Day]

I can scan to a memory, since it has a slot for every kind of card there is. But when doing that, you can only save the scan as a JPEG.

[Guest s1500]

Heh. I used to work for JASC, the original creators of Paint Shop Pro. My name's in the credits. Nice to see it still get namedropped.

[Bablefish]

For the record I have 2 scanners a flat bed Cannon and a HP 2120 all in one at 300 dpi I can do roughly 40 pages straight to jpeg per hour, but due to a bad back I limit my scanning to just an hour or so at a time. I love your suggestions I check that out with GIMP. My computer is a but old too run Photoshop it frankly can't handle it.

I got a question for you experts around here, about how small should be the image file after I reduce it. Like the 1.8 to 2.7 MB files I have seen on magazines I downloaded or what?

[E-Day]

How old is your computer? I am sure an older version of Photoshop will run on it.

[Bablefish]

actually 5 years old and I only have 512MB of RAM which is the real problem, and btw GIMP works. I tested out a few pages and once I reduce them down below 1600 wide right around 1MB of course I forgot I scanned the Dec 1990 issue of Game Pro at 150 dpi. Now the only real problem is cleaning up the pages...they are a mess, this is going to take time. I think the real problem is when you have the money your used to a real good program. But when you work for min. wage like me and haven't got a lot of cash to spare you have to make do with what you got, and free programs. I did not even buy my 1st digital camera until last year.

[Vladi]

Heh. I used to work for JASC, the original creators of Paint Shop Pro. My name's in the credits. Nice to see it still get namedropped.

Nice, I'm a big big fan of Paint Shop Pro.

[KiwiArcader]

Nice, I'm a big big fan of Paint Shop Pro.

Paintshop Pro 8 is my favorite program but under Vista or Win 7 is unusable due to crashing. Using X3 now which fixes a lot of random crashing with X2 but have had to start using Photoshop x64 for some OoPA stuff.

[Guest s1500]

IMO the last good version of PSP was 9. That's the last version with the browser, as opposed to the problematic Organizer.

8 was not stable.

[Thor]

I used to use PSP until I learned about GIMP not only is it free but it's worlds better than PSP and right up there on par with PhotoShop.

[Guest s1500]

I sometimes give GIMP a try every few years. The lack of a centralized "canvas" window killed it for me. It fills up your Windows taskbar. This has probably changed over the years, but the devs were stubborn about it.

[Bablefish]

GIMP works!!!!

[Thor]

I sometimes give GIMP a try every few years. The lack of a centralized "canvas" window killed it for me. It fills up your Windows taskbar. This has probably changed over the years, but the devs were stubborn about it.

Well it did take a bit of getting used to but then I realized they do that so you can arrange it in just about anyway you need rather than having a it set the way the creator wants it to be.

This is how mine is set up BTW. And it helps to have a widescreen monitor.

By DarakuTenshi at 2010-09-18

Here is a picture I drew today using GIMP.

By darakutenshi at 2010-09-18

[johndoee]

GIMP is open source image control, i have used for many years and it is working great for me. i also tried other free trial package for image application, withouth photoshop, we can still make good picture.