filmscanners: Speeding up bulk scanning

[Mike Bloor <admin@seratel.ie>]

Bill Fernandez wrote

        Ed--

        What about doing a very fast thumbnail-creation scan of the whole
        strip, then let the user click some buttons to tell you which way to
        rotate the images when you do the real scans?

        I'd suggest three little buttons next to each thumbnail: [rotate left
        90deg]  [rotate 180deg] [rotate right 90deg].  Or if it's fast enough
        you could just rotate the thumbnail itself 90deg each time the user
        clicks on it.  Then the user just clicks until it's oriented
        correctly.

This would be great but can I suggest two things -

1) The thumbnails should not be too small. I currently use Paint Shop Pro 
to create a set of thumbnails for a film and then open the ones that need 
rotating.  In many cases (e.g. architectural details) I can't tell from the 
thumbnail and have to open the picture anyway to see.

2) Even if the processing would take longer, I would like the option to 
view and rotate thumbnails of an entire film at once (when going from raw 
file to processed).  The attraction of my current set up is that it allows 
unattended scanning in an evening.

I just load the appropriate INI file for Vuescan, set the film number and 
pop in the first strip of negatives.  Every 10-12 minutes I go back to my 
office, take the strip that the scanner has ejected and insert another 
strip.  After the last strip I load another INI file, set the file number 
again and the whole film is processed from raw TIFF to (first cut) viewable 
TIFF and JPEG.

For an automatic approach, I like Ed's idea that most frames are lighter at 
the top. This would work even where there is no sky visible.





Mike Bloor