sfr table hockey
New Member
This is a bit long..........
This has been a project I finally had a chance to do this weekend. I wanted to be able to scan a larger canvas 16 x 20 and bigger and have it sit flat against the scanner glass.
I bought a fairly cheap Mustek scanner 11 x 17. I do a lot of printing canvas art reproductions and some customers don't have the money to get a professional scan done (can be $200 and up with color management). If the image was small enough to fit in a regular 8 1/2 x 11 scanner that worked fine and results were quite good. But when trying to do a larger 16 x 20 canvas it was taking too many passes in the scanner but did work. I picked up the 11 x 17 scanner and tried a regular scan that fit in the 11 x 17 window and it scanned remarkably well and gave incredible detail. The Mustek scanner has a lip around the glass that was higher than my small 8 1/2 x 11 scanner and when you had to set a piece across the scanner that did not sit right on the glass, you did loose quality with a blurred result. There was no way to shave the frame of the scanner down so a new frame would need to be made. I had read that you could not replace scanner glass with regular glass as it would not work.
Inside this scanner the bar that scans the image has two outside edges that have a white plastic piece that sits under the glass and rides against the bottom of the glass. The bar is spring loaded so as long as the new surface glass sits just a little lower than that bar the bar will ride flush with the new surface and allow a bit of error if your new glass does not sit perfectly level.
What I have found out is that regular picture framing glass will work, at least with this brand of scanner. So I took the cover off the Mustek scanner (two screws) and made a new frame out of MDF and made it about 2” high, just enough so that when the glass was set on top, the glass would just rest on the scanner bar guide tabs. Then I marked out the scan window with the scan area (approx 11 x 17) and just stuck vinyl to mark the opening.
Now when the scanner starts to scan it needs something white and clean to read or initialize. If the bar reads any marks in that white space it messes up the scan or if its black it won’t work. Pure white works the best. Also light coming in on the edges of the glass can cause issues so you have to cover the (flatbed of glass) with something to block light getting at the scanner bar on the initialize. The initialize happens with every scan and the bar moves back and forth an inch or so for the first few second, then continues the scan. From there on you can have open areas of the glass and the scan still works fine.
My end results were, with scanning through Photoshop, I could scan a canvas and take that file and do no color correcting and print it and have it be quite close to the original. Almost to the point that no color correcting would be needed. Of course with a bit of color correction you could get things even better, but the quality of the scan is quite remarkable at 300 or 400 dpi. You can go higher (1200 dpi) but the file size is mega. The few I have done so far have been around 400. I am doing an old aerial photo of the town that was 16 x 20 and I hope to be able to print a wall mural that might be 8’ x 10’ and at a distance of 10 feet look ok. The test print on a 2 x 2 foot section looks not too bad. The original photo is quite beat up. The key is to keep your image parallel as you move it about for the scans and that helps a lot lining up the panels after the scans are done.
So for a scanner under $200 I now can scan any image flat and as long as you don’t mind piecing together in Photoshop, almost any size.
This has been a project I finally had a chance to do this weekend. I wanted to be able to scan a larger canvas 16 x 20 and bigger and have it sit flat against the scanner glass.
I bought a fairly cheap Mustek scanner 11 x 17. I do a lot of printing canvas art reproductions and some customers don't have the money to get a professional scan done (can be $200 and up with color management). If the image was small enough to fit in a regular 8 1/2 x 11 scanner that worked fine and results were quite good. But when trying to do a larger 16 x 20 canvas it was taking too many passes in the scanner but did work. I picked up the 11 x 17 scanner and tried a regular scan that fit in the 11 x 17 window and it scanned remarkably well and gave incredible detail. The Mustek scanner has a lip around the glass that was higher than my small 8 1/2 x 11 scanner and when you had to set a piece across the scanner that did not sit right on the glass, you did loose quality with a blurred result. There was no way to shave the frame of the scanner down so a new frame would need to be made. I had read that you could not replace scanner glass with regular glass as it would not work.
Inside this scanner the bar that scans the image has two outside edges that have a white plastic piece that sits under the glass and rides against the bottom of the glass. The bar is spring loaded so as long as the new surface glass sits just a little lower than that bar the bar will ride flush with the new surface and allow a bit of error if your new glass does not sit perfectly level.
What I have found out is that regular picture framing glass will work, at least with this brand of scanner. So I took the cover off the Mustek scanner (two screws) and made a new frame out of MDF and made it about 2” high, just enough so that when the glass was set on top, the glass would just rest on the scanner bar guide tabs. Then I marked out the scan window with the scan area (approx 11 x 17) and just stuck vinyl to mark the opening.
Now when the scanner starts to scan it needs something white and clean to read or initialize. If the bar reads any marks in that white space it messes up the scan or if its black it won’t work. Pure white works the best. Also light coming in on the edges of the glass can cause issues so you have to cover the (flatbed of glass) with something to block light getting at the scanner bar on the initialize. The initialize happens with every scan and the bar moves back and forth an inch or so for the first few second, then continues the scan. From there on you can have open areas of the glass and the scan still works fine.
My end results were, with scanning through Photoshop, I could scan a canvas and take that file and do no color correcting and print it and have it be quite close to the original. Almost to the point that no color correcting would be needed. Of course with a bit of color correction you could get things even better, but the quality of the scan is quite remarkable at 300 or 400 dpi. You can go higher (1200 dpi) but the file size is mega. The few I have done so far have been around 400. I am doing an old aerial photo of the town that was 16 x 20 and I hope to be able to print a wall mural that might be 8’ x 10’ and at a distance of 10 feet look ok. The test print on a 2 x 2 foot section looks not too bad. The original photo is quite beat up. The key is to keep your image parallel as you move it about for the scans and that helps a lot lining up the panels after the scans are done.
So for a scanner under $200 I now can scan any image flat and as long as you don’t mind piecing together in Photoshop, almost any size.
