Help: Need a High End Scanner $1000 or less

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fenderltd

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - July 2007
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Feb 10, 2004
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I am in need of a high end scanner for scanning drawings and importing them into Photoshop. My budget is $1000.00. Thanks for your help in advance!
 
I have no idea. Most people use a shitty scanner for drawings then paint over them in Photoshop. What are your plans for the drawings?
 
We have a konica bizhub 351 which is not a bad mass picture printer/scanner, but even at scanning at 600dpi to a tiff its garbage no matter what settings, its not scanning these drawings dark enough. My company designs and manufactures articles of clothing from NASCAR to damn near Ed Hardy... I need something to take my artist drawings and sketches and make them dark enough to actually import to illust. or photoshop. The konica is expensive but doing a shit job. Its like pulling teeth to get them to come out and actually fix something even though its under contract....
 
fenderltd said:
I need something to take my artist drawings and sketches and make them dark enough to actually import to illust. or photoshop.
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I don't understand...Are your lines not dark enough? You have Photoshop, so why not darken them in there? Also, you can select a color range (dark pen strokes) in Photoshop and export it as vector art for Illustrator. I think maybe I'm not understanding your problem right.

Generally, unless you use a pen for your drawings, they won't get scanned dark...you need to do some image editing after the scan to get that result. For best results, I draw (lightly) with a pencil (box method for most things) then when Im satisfied with my drawing, I draw over the "good" lines with ink then erase the pencil parts...and that scans perfectly.

If I scan a pencil drawing it looks terrible and the lines are completely undefined, since pencils doesn't actually draw continuous lines...so I'd have trace everything using the pen tool to get perfect lines. That's technically the best way to get very precise, defined curves, but it takes a lot less time to draw them by hand of course (although you'll be a lot less precise).
 
I'm also interested in finding a good scanner for scanning in my sketches.

I think I'll start out with testing inexpensive ($200 or less) scanners to see how those work out for me, and then pay more if they don't work...

I'd be scanning in drawings to paint over or to post sketch-book images of online.
 
Big D. said:
You have Photoshop, so why not darken them in there?
Click to expand...

agreed. I have an ancient scanner that often times doesnt work... (so - like the worst of the worst) - but when it does - I can pump up the 600dpi image (normally of my ink illustrations) in photoshop to something very resonable.

So im thinking its not the scanner per se.

In my experience all scanners in the sub $1000 range are pretty similar, as far as the overall resolution and potential image quality goes. What changes are the the features of the scanner (altering the price significantly). At about $6-700 - you make the jump from letter sized scanners to legal sized scanners. Scanning beds larger than legal are usually much more spendy.

Professional scanners (drum scanners and the like) - can only be considered "extremely expensive" - on the order of tens to hundreds of thousands.

As far as brands... I figure that companies who make cameras are likely to produce good scanners (as they have the expertise with the photo sensor) = I was looking at a $300 canon scanner not too long ago (forget the model) that looked pretty promising.

If your scanner really isnt working out - you might contact a local printer to farm the work out to. We had our printer do color correct scans (i think they had a drum scanner) of fabric swatches once - it was reasonably priced and came out perfect.

good luck
 
I'd go w/ Canon, but I wouldn't spend $1,000; they simply aren't that expensive any more.
 
i would start with what size do you need to scan

scanner range in price drastically based on size and quality.

find the size you need, and start looking for reviews on scanners in that size and hope you can find one that will fit your needs in your price range

i have used an average 80$ scanner and been very impressed. i was using it to scan 35mm film , i just set a light box on the scanner and was scanning in film at home because i didn't have have time to be in the lab for photography class and i was able to get some huge high quality images out of a 2-3 year old scanner. they where better then the film scanners at school.

the quality was noticeable not as good as my 10mp SLR but i for 35mm film on a flat bed i was impressed.
 
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