Promo and Box Set Cards

[charlequin]

Given that these cards are a) FTV foiled and b) pretty hard to get ahold of, I took a crack at them based on a combination of high-res photos. Consider these a "fill-in" for more precise scanned images if you like, though I'm not sure we'll actually get better source material for these. 200 and 300 DPI images in More Releases, under "Promos/pSDCC - San Diego Comic Con".

[kudit]

Given that these cards are a) FTV foiled and b) pretty hard to get ahold of, I took a crack at them based on a combination of high-res photos. Consider these a "fill-in" for more precise scanned images if you like, though I'm not sure we'll actually get better source material for these. 200 and 300 DPI images in More Releases, under "Promos/pSDCC - San Diego Comic Con".

Thanks!

BTW, I'd love to take a crack at scanning some of the FTV foiled cards with my scanner as it seems to scan normal foils fine without any sort of banding. If anyone wants to send me some, I'd be happy to scan and send back.

[dragsamou]

Hi Charlequin

This is the answer from the person who did the majority of the wonderful scans on Magiclibrarities (with zoom version) as I told you I will ask him:

Regarding the scanner for scanning foil cards I can tell you that all these new consumer LED scanner are not able to scan reflecting surfaces in good quality.
To scan foil cards there are several conditions that you should observe:

1. you have to use a scanner with a halogen lamp. Only Halogen lamps provide a 'soft' light that can handle reflecting surfaces.
2. All low budget consumer scanner provide only a very bad scan quality. Look for a scanner between 250-500 Euro. Or try to get an old used scanner with halogen lamp.
3. The scanner must have a good native scan resolution (1200dpi, nativ, not interpolated.)

I remember that especially the cards 'From the Vault' ´has a very bad quality of the foil layer that doesn't allow an easy scanning (as an example: The Dragons were produced completely in China, to scan these card takes several hours). I have had to make a lot of several tests until I found a reasonably result.

For all my scans I used a Canon scanner: CanoScan 9950F.

[kudit]

2. All low budget consumer scanner provide only a very bad scan quality. Look for a scanner between 250-500 Euro. Or try to get an old used scanner with halogen lamp.

This may not still be true. A lot can change in technology in 8 years.

[skibulk]

I theorize that difficult foil cards could be photographed with near-perfect results. Later I'll post my proposed setup.

Hi Charlequin

This is the answer from the person who did the majority of the wonderful scans on Magiclibrarities (with zoom version) as I told you I will ask him:

Regarding the scanner for scanning foil cards I can tell you that all these new consumer LED scanner are not able to scan reflecting surfaces in good quality.
To scan foil cards there are several conditions that you should observe:

1. you have to use a scanner with a halogen lamp. Only Halogen lamps provide a 'soft' light that can handle reflecting surfaces.
2. All low budget consumer scanner provide only a very bad scan quality. Look for a scanner between 250-500 Euro. Or try to get an old used scanner with halogen lamp.
3. The scanner must have a good native scan resolution (1200dpi, nativ, not interpolated.)

I remember that especially the cards 'From the Vault' ´has a very bad quality of the foil layer that doesn't allow an easy scanning (as an example: The Dragons were produced completely in China, to scan these card takes several hours). I have had to make a lot of several tests until I found a reasonably result.

For all my scans I used a Canon scanner: CanoScan 9950F.

This confirms my assumptions from viewtopic.php?f=15&t=16555&hilit=cheap+scanner&start=15#p191474

2. All low budget consumer scanner provide only a very bad scan quality. Look for a scanner between 250-500 Euro. Or try to get an old used scanner with halogen lamp.

This may not still be true. A lot can change in technology in 8 years.

Although in this case, halogen scanners have all but been replaced by LED scanners. LEDs work faster and are cheaper, unfortunately for us.

[charlequin]

I agree that they could be photographed pretty effectively. I'm not sure we'd even necessarily need a light box, just a room with diffuse light and a consumer DSLR.

[kudit]

Here is a photo I took today of an invention with my cell phone. Not perfect or ideal, but skibulk or Charlequin might be able to work their magic. If so, I can probably get many more of the prerelease promo cards, inventions, and FTV cards this way from my local store which has most things and would probably let me photograph but it's awkward to bring the scanner there.

[charlequin]

It's pretty decent at first approximation (200 DPI version below, with WotC image for comparison):



While it's far from perfect, the quality we've gotten from scans is sometimes so low that this might be an improvement. The biggest issue is that the ink grain is getting lost, which in turn results in lesser detail overall.

If we were going to do more like this, I'd suggest we tweak the actual photography process a little bit. kudit, I see this was taken with an iPhone SE. There are now a few apps that let you shoot photos in RAW format on that phone, which the default camera app doesn't allow; I suspect that might get us closer. Could you take one picture each of a foil and nonfoil card you own (doesn't need to be the Invention again yet) using one of those apps in RAW format (the resulting images will be something like 30MB each) and send those to me?

EDIT: I'm wrong! Examining some scans of Inventions right next to scans of normal foils from the same scanner, it seems like the Inventions are printed with a completely different process, such that the rosettes common to normal cards aren't visible at all. It might still be worth trying a RAW image with one of the Inventions, but we're not missing a level of detail the way I thought.

EDIT2: This is what a processed image (before more tweaks to color correction) from a good scan looks like, for comparison:

[kudit]

I took some RAW photos with the Adobe Lightroom iOS app but it seems impossible to get the RAW DNG file out of it!

I uploaded the "Maximum" exports to the "Foil Photos" folder on the FTP server which shows a foil and non-foil version of the same card, and one of the prerelease cards. I'm hesitant to spend any money on apps not knowing for sure if they'll produce the results we need or not, but if we can find a process that will work with my phone, I can probably get a lot of the prerelease cards we're missing and anything else we need at the trade booths when I'm working GP Atlanta next month.

[skibulk]

You have to think of foil cards like mirrors. Reflection causes light/dark banding, and colorization. To achieve the whitest reflection possible, you must photograph the cards at a slight angle with a white background above and to the sides of the card. If I hold a sheet of paper near a From the Vault card, I can completely eliminate banding. However I did see some of the of the paper texture in the reflection on the card! A uniform, plastic background might work better. Bright but diffused lighting will produce a better histogram.

I was looking at disposable flower pots as a possible backer. A square pot would produce more even lighting. You could cut them diagonally from corner to corner, and you'd have self-propping edges. https://www.amazon.com/Inch-Square-Pres ... anter&th=1

[charlequin]

I took some RAW photos with the Adobe Lightroom iOS app but it seems impossible to get the RAW DNG file out of it!

Yeah that's fine, now that I've verified there are no visible rosettes in even a scan of an Invention I don't think there's actually any quality issue with this approach.

If you're gonna be at a booth with a lot of opportunity to photograph different cards, let me put together a target list you can check off somewhere so you can spot quickly what would be good to snap. You could probably get one of those white flower pots for like two bucks at Home Depot rather than order 15 for $15 on Amazon, lol.

[skibulk]

I think there's a loss in text quality with cheap camera photos. I made some more observations today. It is actually harder to eliminate banding if there are multiple light sources (and there would be many at a convention). I took the following photo using my iPhone 4 regular. This isn't a very good image, but it demonstrates lighting. Range of focus is a little problematic when shooting at an angle. I had one light source with a sheet of paper as my "reflection backdrop". The paper glows and diffuses the stronger light. As you can see, no banding. The glow of the paper makes a nice result so I'm not sure if an opaque flower pot will work that well. In FTV relics, there is a printing pattern, although it's not the normal one.

[charlequin]

More examples of photo-based images.

[skibulk]

More examples of photo-based images.

How do the 300 DPI images look?

[charlequin]