Washington University Libraries
Department of Special Collections
Manuscript Division

FLAT BED SCANNING GUIDELINES

Prepared through modifiying guidelines produced by the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, University of California.

These procedures apply to creating digital images of materials from the manuscript collections at Washington University Libraries Department of Special Collections. All creation of images will be done solely by Special Collections Staff, and the guidelines below apply to images created from two-dimensional material. These procedures can be used ONLY for materials that have been determined by the Curator or the Head to be physically stable enough for scanning on a flat-bed scanner. Alternative procedures apply to items too delicate to scan on a flat-bed scanner.

These procedures will produce 3 digital image files from a transparent or opaque photograph of works of art from the collection (images just for WWW exhibitions will be done differently). The scanning is done only once, but then two copies of the image will be made, using different settings. The result will be a high-resolution "Master" file in TIFF format, one large "Access" JPEG (JFIF) image for viewing on the WWW, and one small JPEG thumbnail, also for the WWW.

We use the Agfa T2000 XL scanner (with transparency adapter when appropriate) operating with a Dell Optiplex GX300 (AT compatible, x86, Family 6, Model 8, Stepping 6), upgraded to 523,436k RAM. The software packages used are Adobe Photoshop and AGFA FotoLook 3.6.

Quick version of the whole procedure (see below for detailed version; step by step):

1. Prep for scanning . Clean Glass. Put slide template on scanbed, place object, photograph, or transparency squarely.

2. Scan  using Adobe Photoshop connected to FotoLook through TWAIN interface.

3. Name file (see naming guide below) and Save scanned image as Master file in TIFF format.

4. Create Access file from Master file.

• crop (see cropping guide below)
• resize to 600hx800w pixels
• sharpen
• Save AS (NOT just Save or you'll have to start over!) JPEG format, medium quality, and rename file (see naming guide).

5. Create Thumbnail from Access file

• resize to 250w x 286h pixels
• rename file (see naming guide) and Save AS (Save AS, not just Save, or you'll have to go back a step to creat Access file from Master file)

Full version of the whole procedure (with details on each step)

Preparation

1. Check source for dust, check scanner glass for dust, smears; clean with dry cloth. Do not use cleaners of any sort.

2. Check source to see if color/grayscale bars and ruler are included in photograph. If not, include color bar on scanner bed when scanning.

4. If item is a transparency 4x5 or smaller, get the black slide holders from the shelf/box of scanning equipment, and place the slide in it to scan. If it's larger, just put it in the upper left corner of the scan-bed. Handle transparencies by edges to avoid fingerprints.

5. If item is a photograph, place original on scan bed. Make sure top is facing front of scanner, face down, and the item is placed in the corner of the scan-bed.

6. If item is an original document, remove scanner cover before scanning and use supplied white backboard instead for all scans. Take care not to smudge backboard.

Scanning

1. Open Photoshop. Go the to File drop down menu and choose the Acquire option. Choose the Twain 32 Source option and make sure that FotoLook 3.6 has been selected.

2. Go the to File drop down menu and choose the Acquire option. Choose the Twain 32 option. That will bring up FotoLook 3.6. Set the following options in the FotoLook menus:

• Original: Choose Reflective for photographs or documents, Negative for negatives, Positive for positives.
• Mode: RGB
• Bits per Color: should be set to 8 bits per color (commonly called "24 bit color" because RGB has three color channels)
• Input: should be set to 600.
• Range: should be set to Auto
• Tone, Sharp, Descreen, Flavor, and W/B point: should be set to None

3. Click on preview. Crop scan area (dotted line) to the area of the whole slide, photograph or other source; do not include the black transparency holder if one is used.

4. Click on "scan". Wait. Read something. Do work on another computer to check off what work has been scanned, etc.

Creation of Master file

1. When scan is done, the image will open in Photoshop. Be aware that it may not be possible to edit the image in Photoshop until after the FotoLook window has been closed. Use the zoom tool (spyglass icon) to zoom into the image to quickly check that the image is satisfactory. You can check the color bars against the color bar we have in the scanner box to see if they are close. If widely incorrect contact a supervisor.

2. Select "Save" from the file menu.

3. In the dialog box that will come up, choose "IBM PC byte order" and make sure LZW is NOT selected.

4. Give the image a multipart name.

Naming

• The first part of the name will be the database ID number from the manuscripts database for that item. This means that no scans can be made until the item has been entered into the manuscripts database.
  It might look like this: 5046
• Add a period (.) at the end of the database ID number and after each of the next steps.
• The next part will be the type of image, "Master" "Access" or "Thumb". These should be shortened in the actual name to 'm', 'a', and 't'.
  Then you might have this: 5046.m
• The next part will be the color of image, "Color" or "Grayscale". These should be shortened in the actual name to 'c', or 'g',
  Then you might have this: 5046.m.c
• The next part of the file indicates the leaf number of the item.
  So you might have this: 5046.m.c.1
• The next part of the file indicates whether the scan is from the recto or verso of the item. These should be shortened in the actual name to 'r', or 'v',
  So you might have this: 5046.m.c.1.r
• The last part will be the file type. There will only be two types, TIFF and JPEG. If a TIFF image (as for the Master file) add a .tiff (in lower case), if a JPEG (as for Access and Thumb images) add a .jpg.
  So the final name might be: 5046.m.c.1.r.tiff. The database record id is 5046. The image is a master, color, first leaf, recto.

5. Create a folder for your project on the shared manuscripts directory. Name the folder with the collection title for the items.  Save the files to the shared manuscripts volume.

6. The master TIFF files will be very large, so we will have to do only a few of these at a time. Monitor the total size of the different files, and back all them (TIFF, Full size JPEG and thumbnail JPEG) up onto CD-R disk for storage before the total size reaches 650mb. See saving files, below

Creating the Access image

1. Keep the Master File open in Photoshop, or open it if necessary.

2. Crop the image. Zoom out so you can see the entire image, and crop.

Cropping

• Choose the crop tool from the toolbar
• Using the mouse, draw a box around the image area itself. Leave out the picture frame and any background.
• If the image is not squarely within the crop box (selected area) hold down the OPTION key and grab one of the hollow boxes in the corner of the image and drag the dotted box (selected area) to straighten it.
• When the dotted lines of the crop box are parallel to the image boundaries, let go of the mouse button. The box will stay at an angle until the crop is complete and can be further adjusted (made taller or wider) by grabbing the hollow boxes in the corner and moving them up or down/left/right as necessary.
• Click inside the crop box to crop, click outside it to start over.
• If the image is not square or rectangular or has ragged edges, then leave a regular amount of background showing around the image, but not too much.
• Never crop the signature out. When unsure about cropping - ASK.

3. Resize the image. Under the "image" menu, select "image size". Access images will be a maximum of 600 vertical by 800 horizontal pixels. So if an image is a vertical image, set the height to 600 and the horizontal will be less than 800. If the horizontal is more than 800 at this point, set it to 800 instead, and the height will be less than 600.

4. Sharpen the image. Go under the "filter" menu and choose "Sharpen:sharpen"

5. SAVE AS. IMPORTANT!!!! THIS STEP MUST BE DONE EXACTLY OR YOU WILL HAVE TO DO THE SCAN OVER. You want to save a copy of this image, not save your changes to the original Master file. To do this, you must choose "Save AS" under the File menu. NEVER choose "Save" or you will overwrite the Master file and have to re-aquire the Master.

5a. If you do not get a dialog box at this point, asking for information for the copy image to save as, then that means the original has just been changed, and you'll have to start the scan over. If you get the Save dialog box, then continue......

6. Give the file a name, which will be database record number followed by an 'a' (for Access image) and other parameters if any, then .jpg. (this will be the same as the name of the master file, except replacing 'm' with 'a' to designate an Access file, and replacing .tiff with .jpg).

7. Choose the appropriate folder (ie. Finkel).

8. Select JPEG as the format from the pop up menu.

9. Click on Save.

10. Choose "Quality: high" then "save" in the dialog box.

Creating the Thumbnail image

1. Have the JPEG Access image open, or open it.

2. Resize the image.Under the "image" menu, select "image size". Thumbnail images will be a maximum of 250 vertical by 286 horizontal pixels. So if an image is a vertical image, set the height to 250 and the horizontal will be less than 286. If the horizontal is more than 286 at this point, set it to 286 instead, and the height will be less than 250.

3. SAVE AS. IMPORTANT!!!! THIS STEP MUST BE DONE EXACTLY OR YOU WILL HAVE TO START OVER AT THE ACCESS IMAGE STEP. Use "Save As" or else these changes will overwrite the Access image, and you'll have to re-open the Master file, and start with the steps to save that as an Access image, etc.

3a. If you do not get a dialog box at this point, asking for information for the copy image to save as, then that means the original has just been changed, and you'll have to start over with the Master file. If you get the Save dialog box, then continue......

4. Give the new image copy a name, which should keep the name of the old file, but just change the 'a' to 't' to designate that this is a thumbnail, not an Access image. Choose the appropriate folder (ie. Hofmann/Thumbnails)

5. Choose "Quality:low" in the dialog box and click Save or OK.

Saving the Scans

1. During the process the scans can be temporarily saved to the shared space for the ARC on Dubuque.

2. Monitor the size of the TIFF images, and when the total exceeds 600k, it is time to write the master files to a CD. Sequence the files by the database ID number.

3. Create table on the CD label. It should look like this:Project Name:Date Created:Operator:Master Back-Up# (1,2, or 3):

File Name	CRC Value

The table should have as many additional rows as files on the CD...

4. Write each file's name on the CD label. Run a CRC check on each of the files to be written to a CD. Record each file's CRC value in the table

5. Label the spine of the with the Project Name and a range of ID numbers from the database. If there is more than one CD for a project, label the CD's in sequence, with the CD's having the lowest numbered items starting at 1 and working upward.

6. Copy the CD two more times. Run a CRC check on each file to see that it matches the other copies. Label each successive copy of the CD with a back-up #.

7. The thumbnail and access images can remain on the manuscripts shared directories for eventual mounting on the web. It is only the master images that will need to be backed up right now.