Graded Card Scanning Guide - Take a Look!

Nic=The master of card scanning!!!

@NGS428 said:

@ReggieCleveland said:
Glad this got bumped. I'm adding the URL to my favorites so I never have to search for it again when I want to spread the word of the good book. This tutorial changed my life. I love you, Nic.

Arthur
xoxoxoxoxo

So much love! Thanks! A guy over on the BO forums requested the latest add. I love helping anyone out if they ask.

Nic, I went from pretty terrible to pretty good and you can basically see it happen in THIS thread 😂

Thanks again!

Newer efforts…

1947-66 Exhibits Jackie Robinson

@ReggieCleveland said:

@1951WheatiesPremium said:

@NGS428 said:

@ReggieCleveland said:
Glad this got bumped. I'm adding the URL to my favorites so I never have to search for it again when I want to spread the word of the good book. This tutorial changed my life. I love you, Nic.

Arthur
xoxoxoxoxo

So much love! Thanks! A guy over on the BO forums requested the latest add. I love helping anyone out if they ask.

Nic, I went from pretty terrible to pretty good and you can basically see it happen in THIS thread 😂

Thanks again!

Newer efforts…

1947-66 Exhibits Jackie Robinson

You need to splurge a little and get a CCD scanner. Makes all the difference in the world.

Arthur

As with just about every time you post, I’m
Sure you are right here too. But any extra money goes to cards and I am not a tech guy and it’s a three in one scanner-printer-copier. Here’s a small sample of the reason I even have it…





😂👍🤪😂
I make a point of rotating the real things in and out of storage often and these scans are good enough for me.

😉

Nic,

Thanks for pointing me to this - would have saved me a ton of time.

Great guide full of lots of excellent tips.

For foil cards (like the 93 SP Jeter) I recommend using a backlight correction technique. This would adjust the gain and bias of each pixel in the image.

If you assume that the original image has a alpha of 1.0 and a beta of 0. you will step the alpha up between about 1.0 and 3.0 and adjust the beta between 0 and 100. The alpha adjusts the contrast and the beta adjusts the brightness. You could probably go as high as 2.0 on alpha and 50 on brightness and get a "shimmery" result. Both of these will introduce a linear frequency response to the image improving the legibility and brightness.

Here's an example.

This is the output from the scanner. Pretty basic default scanner settings.

Here's the adjustment I am referring to above.

Here's what most scanners would do with a gamma adjustment.

I guess judge for yourself which is better. I think that the ab-scaling vs. gamma-scaling produces a more rich output for these image types. But, I guess it's like both are fine, and maybe only image-nerds care.

Here's a quick little example if anyone wants to try it.

`import numpy as np;
import cv2 as cv;
import math as m;
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

imgO_nom = "/mnt/e/cards/ebay/2024_DGPT_Tattar_S25_FR.png";

imgO = cv.imread(imgO_nom, cv.IMREAD_UNCHANGED);

h = m.floor(imgO.shape[1] / 4);
w = m.floor(imgO.shape[0] / 4);

imgO = cv.resize(imgO, (h,w), cv.INTER_LINEAR);

h,w = imgO.shape[:2];
print("Image: ", w,h);

cv.imshow("a", imgO);
cv.imwrite("/mnt/e/cards/example/a.png", imgO);

a = 2.2;
b = 30;

imgB = imgO.copy();

for y in range(imgB.shape[0]):
for x in range(imgB.shape[1]):
for z in range(imgB.shape[2]):
imgB[y,x,z] = np.clip(a * imgB[y,x,z] + b, 0, 255);

cv.imshow("b", imgB);
cv.imwrite("/mnt/e/cards/example/b.png", imgB);

lut = np.empty((1,256), np.uint8);
for i in range(256):
lut[0,i] = np.clip(pow(i/255.0, 0.3) * 255.0, 0, 255);

imgC = cv.LUT(imgO, lut);

cv.imshow("c", imgC);
cv.imwrite("/mnt/e/cards/example/c.png", imgC);

while True:
key = cv.waitKey(0);
if key == 27:
print("Exit");
break;
`

Here's a quick example with the Jeter.

Here's your image... enhanced.

My scanner was a little brighter than what I was expecting there so that is somewhat over-saturated and looks worse. But yours looks better I think.