Best scanner for large illustrations?

September 11, 2006 9:27 PM

My crappy, old scanner is on the way out and I'm looking for a superior replacement. Specifically I'm looking for something that will make scanning my oversized illustrations less irritating.

Honestly, something that works like this HP scanner would be optimal, but I've heard lots of bad reviews regarding its scan quality and it appears to be discontinued besides that.

While a larger scanner would be nice, they seem to be quite expensive and even then some of my illustrations would still be too big to fit on the scanner bed. I'm sure I'll always have to do multiple scans for one image.

I'd probably settle for something that had the glass bed flush with the surrounding plastic frame (to prevent bending) and a removable lid. I usually work in black and white, so colour fidelity isn't a huge issue here.

Does anyone have any recommendations? I'd prefer not to spend over $300. I'm also happy to hear any tips from fellow artists on how they cope with uncooperative scanners, and opinions of the HP scanjet 4670, linked above.

posted by picea to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

I personnally would advise you to forget about a cheap scanner that fulfills all your expectations and get yourself a decent digital camera, preferably with a remote-control release, as well as a reliable tripod to mount the camera on. I have made pretty good experience with a setup like this. As experienced showed, daylight suffices - you do not need some extra light souce -. However, one must pay attention not to produce any shadows. After taking the pictures I can even put them into an OCR program and get really good results. Furthermore, this way you want have to do any multiple scans anytime soon again. And believe me: it is fairly easy to adjust the tripod. And best of all: the whole setup costs you nothing more than above-mentioned 300 bucks, as long as you get by with standard equipment like I do.
Hopefully I could help you

P.S.: I apologize for my bad English.
posted by pu9iad at 9:06 AM on September 12, 2006

That's a great idea, pu9iad. I got some drawings professionally scanned once, but found taking pictures gave me much better resolution. Get a camera with a short focal distance (for close-ups), a large lens (for detail), and a good pixel count (also for detail). Daylight worked well for me, too.
posted by Eringatang at 2:17 PM on September 12, 2006