wrote:

On Nov 14, 10:07 am, Joe wrote:

Owen Ransen wrote:

On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 02:17:52 -0600, Joe wrote:

Owen Ransen wrote:

Computers are good at this. That's what they were built for. Photoshop may not be able to do it automatically, but then Photoshop is not the only program in the world.

Then tell the OP which program to be able to detect and remove the WHITE area, and do everything the cropping automatically.

I'll do it, but not for free!

Then make a deal with the OP which seems like s/he is dead now <bg>

OK, you guys are going way off on a bunch of tangents (which I guess is pretty normal in newsgroups). I already know for a fact that Photoshop CS3 will do this for me. I have tried it, and it works well, so there is no need to belabour that point. It may not be 100% perfect - occasionally an image gets misinterpreted and mis-cropped, but at least 99% of the time it works great - this will save me a lot of time, even if I have to manually crop the occasional image.

That isn't really what CROP really is, but it's *accaptable* cuz at least it can trim off the white border.

What I am trying to do is have a very streamlined process for scanning in hundreds of photos (prints) at a time from my scanner. After scanning, I want to be able to auto-crop and straighten each picture. I know, my scanner can do a pre-scan to figure out the area to be scanned, but that at least doubles the amount of time to scan in the photos.

Well, instead of trying to give you some magical hope, I just try to let you aware that it won't be easy if not impossible. But if you think you can get not 99% but just 80-90% then I would say "GO FOR IT!" or even less than 60% because any thing you can get for free will be a good deal.

Regarding a sample image, take any random printed photo of your own, and scan it in on a scanner, leaving the scanned area a bit larger than the original photo. You'll have white space on the resulting JPG, which needs to be trimmed. For good measure, place the photo slightly crooked.

My real question is simple - do I need to buy Photoshop CS3, or is there a less expensive alternative. I am trying to minimize my cost. I know CS3 is awesome, but I can't justify spending $600+ for this one feature.

If you haven't known Photoshop then the answer is pretty much NO

- NO it won't cost you $600 if you can get your hand on the Educational deal available for high-school and college student that most America familes have. Unless you live in other country then it would be a different story

- NO, Photoshop is a great investment for people who deal with photo (graphic) which has so many great to unlimited of features/options (the more you know Photoshop the more personal features/options you can create for your own use). But Photoshop isn't designed for Cropping/Straighten crooked scanned photos, so you will need.

- Knowledge of Photoshop to know what command to use to get the job done, And because Photoshop has so many different ways to get similar result then you may need to know more command to come up with a better way.

- Batching, then you may need another level of knowledge to create an ACTION to send command to multiple commands automatically. Or ACTION is similar to Macro/Script you can RECORD the action then it will PLAY-BACK whatever you RECORDED, and that's pretty much what BATCH is.

IOW, you will need the combined knowledge of (1) Photoshop features/options (2) multiple choices to know which works best with ACTION (3) then you will need to create (RECORD and fine-tuning) an ACTION file etc..

But I can tell you this, the Action may be able to do 1-2 things at once, but it's pretty much impossible to create an Action to

- Exam all scanned photos to know which need to be cropped, straighten

- Then send cropping command to one photo then straighten to other

And I am not even talking about SIZE, and we need to realize that most programs can do just about anything they are programmed to do, but they all require human brain to tell them what they are programmed to do. And that is why most Photoshop experts here can't help you with the action, and few say YES can't help you either.

And I can pretty much tell you that trimming off with boarder and straighten hundreds of photos won't be that hard or won't take that long either. The first few photos may take you probably 30-40 seconds, and if you are quick learner then after around a dozen photos you should memorized all commands/steps then you can reduce the time to few seconds. Or around 1 minute per photo (I am talking about from Loading to Saving).

And I am talking about using Keyboard Command not clicking mouse to open MENU. Or here I often work with both hands at same time, and I often use Keyboard command.

Thanks!

Sorry that I can't be no help (especially I don't know much about ACTION but just the general), and just like you I am waiting for the answer from the ones who think it's possible. And I hope it would be Photoshop because it would be something new to learn.

TheComputerGuy

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