soft grey shadow around scanned image

ES
Posted By
elizabeth_swan
Aug 2, 2004
Views
975
Replies
6
Status
Closed
I am scanning a color image with a lot of white background. Once scanned the image appears on the screen and printed out with a soft grey shadow around the outside edge of the image. The paper is slightly larger than the glass of the scanner bed and thinking that I was getting ambient light perhaps, I covered the scanner with a navy blue towel with no improvement in the image. I also lowered the scanning resolution from 400 to 300. I am thinking the space between the glass and the edge of the paper where it overlaps the scanner bed, which is maybe 1/16th of an inch, is creating the shadow. I also lightly pushed down on the scanner lid with no success. I adjusted the grey balance but it threw the color off on the whole image.

I am scanning on an Epson Perfection 1650, Mac OS 9, Photoshop 6.0.
Related Tags
gray image scan shadow soft

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AS
Ann_Shelbourne
Aug 2, 2004
Try covering the print which you are scanning with Black card.

Can’t you just crop the edge off the image: it doesn’t sound as though there is any usable data in that area anyway.

And scan at the scanner’s optical resolution.
NK
Neil_Keller
Aug 2, 2004
elizabeth,

Is this soft grey shadow around the color portion of the scan, or the white edge of the sheet? What happens if you back up the image with a piece of black illustration board? Is it just one image, or many? What scanner and settings are you using? How are you importing the image into Photoshop?

The causes can be many, from defective scanner driver, weak lamps (used for scanning), defective scanner, something unusal about the substrate that your original image is on….

Neil
ES
elizabeth_swan
Aug 2, 2004
Neil,

More specifically this is a botanical painting. So the grey area is darkest around the outside edge of the painting (where the paper overlaps the edge the scanner bed) and fades to white in the center of the image (where the paper is touching the glass of the scanner bed), so the outside petals and leaves show up with a soft grey background. I hadn’t had this problem before (as my paper fit onto my scanner bed completely) and after your message I rescanned three other paintings and they look wonderful, so I do believe it is a physical issue of the paper being larger than the glass of the scanner bed. I too had thought about trimming it a bit, but I have $50 worth of matting and framing waiting. I just wanted to have a copy of this piece in my portfolio. I had the local printer do a "so-called" high quality color copy but it is not acceptable.
AS
Ann_Shelbourne
Aug 2, 2004
There might also be a problem if your painting is covering the narrow slot-window on the front edge of your scanner.

Couldn’t you just Layer-mask out the grey pixels?
Or increase the scanning resolution then crop and resize the image to fit your required dimensions?
NK
Neil_Keller
Aug 3, 2004
Yep, sounds like a problem with the oversize matting, etc. This is not unusual when you cannot be in 100% contact with the scanner’s glass. You can set up the painting on an easel, use a high-quality digital camera on a stable tripod (be careful if you are using direct flash). This should be fine as long as you are exactly centered and squared up to the painting. Using bubble levels and equal lengths of string from the camera to the corners of the painting may be helpful.

Neil
TT
tim_t7
Aug 3, 2004
wrote in message news:…
Yep, sounds like a problem with the oversize matting, etc. This is
not unusual when you cannot be in 100% contact with the scanner’s glass. You can set up the painting on an easel, use a high-quality digital camera on a stable tripod (be careful if you are using direct flash). This should be fine as long as you are exactly centered and squared up to the painting. Using bubble levels and equal lengths of string from the camera to the corners of the painting may be helpful.
Neil

Why not scan then increase the canvas size in PhotoShop? If this is just white background it should be no problem.

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