Help me learn to photograph jigsaw puzzle pieces

August 28, 2023 6:45 PM

I need to place orphaned jigsaw puzzle pieces into one of the 190 possible puzzles they came from. Getting the full puzzle art is largely handled, what I need now are really good pictures of the pieces.

We have a lending library of 190 jigsaw puzzles and over the years we have accumulated a collection of orphaned pieces. I wrote some software that'll match a picture of a piece to its puzzle, but it's fuzzy matching and the better the picture of the piece the better the software will do.

So far I've tried taking pictures of the pieces in various environments as well as scanning them but I'm sure I can do better than I have.

I'm imagining building a small enclosure with lighting and a mount for my iPhone that will let me get perfectly color matched, shadowless, and glareless pictures of the pieces. Or maybe that's overkill? Or impossible? Is there a good place to start reading up on this?

posted by Tell Me No Lies to Media & Arts (10 answers total)

Have you done any reading up about lightboxes? There are plenty of DIY instructions online. I haven't used them for jigsaw puzzle pieces specifically though.
posted by rivenwanderer at 7:59 PM on August 28, 2023

Scanning is certainly the easiest way, and assuming it's a decent scanner, you should get excellent results with minimal effort. What didn't you like about the scans you've done? Perhaps you just weren't;t using the most appropriate settings.

No matter what method you use, you're never going to get "perfectly color matched" prints. Even if a commercial printer was doing this with a completely color-calibrated system, there's still be some variation. And you're most likely using consumer level equipment, which might get you in the ballpark, but chances are, your printer is going to be the weak link.
posted by jonathanhughes at 9:41 PM on August 28, 2023

You can improve color matching by having a color registration card in the picture as well as the puzzle piece. (This will help less if you don’t have one associated with the main puzzle image, but the sooner you start using one, the better your color profiles will be overall)
posted by itesser at 10:41 PM on August 28, 2023

Response by poster: What didn't you like about the scans you've done?

Shadows. Scanning with manual shadow cleanup is my default mode right now.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:05 PM on August 28, 2023

> I'm imagining building a small enclosure with lighting and a mount for my iPhone that will let me get perfectly color matched, shadowless, and glareless pictures of the pieces.

For this, you might like the Scanner Bin Pro, a fold-up enclosure with two lighting panels. (I haven't used this.)

For shadows, perhaps something like a greenscreen, or just a black surface.
posted by Pronoiac at 1:49 AM on August 29, 2023

Have you tried scanning with the scanner lid open? That’ll give you scans on a dark background that may work better for automatic segmentation, or maybe at least allow quicker manual cleanup. You can use the scanner’s exposure curve settings or a bit of post-processing to get a nice pure black background.
posted by moonmilk at 5:17 AM on August 29, 2023

This might work with your scanned ones on an iPhone. I just tried it, the shadows disappear; more or less.
posted by dhruva at 5:51 AM on August 29, 2023

The photoScan app from google eliminates glare and shadows, does edge detetection, etc. by having you take 4 photos, from each corner.

https://www.google.com/photos/scan/
posted by at at 5:59 AM on August 29, 2023

Stuff Made Here on Youtube put out this video and a follow up which might be interesting. They’re about trying to fully solve a puzzle with software and robots, but there is lots of imaging involved of course.
posted by kiblinger at 6:54 AM on August 29, 2023

Pure conjecture, but maybe try putting a light box (like one would use for tracing) behind the puzzle piece when you scan it? (A flatbed with a built-in backlight for scanning film/transparencies might even have a setting that accomplishes the same thing). Alternately, open a white screen on a phone or tablet, and put that behind the puzzle piece—a sheet of tracing paper could be used to diffuse any weird pixelation from the screen.
posted by wreckingball at 10:26 PM on August 29, 2023