14 Replies Latest reply: Dec 31, 2013 12:14 PM by adobe-admin RSS

    Automating Bulk Scan Cropping/straightening

    portland_cards Community Member

      I am new to photoshop! I started a free trial today and would probably buy it if I can get it to do what I need. I have also spent hours searching the forums, google, and downloading many other imaging programs with absolutely no luck. Please be very specific because my mind is already cluttered from this and all the other work I have to do and all the other things I've had to learn over the years. Thanks!

       

      So basically, I routinely scan large stacks of sports cards (500+) in precise order (card names are in stack order in a spreadsheet). I scan 8 cards at a time in solft plastic sleeves and usually end up with 70+ large images.

       

      I would like to be able to take all those large scan images, create a new folder where they are saved, and crop all the individual cards and save them in the new folder using the file names provided in the spreadsheet.

       

      Another problem is that many cards are scanned slightly skewed in various directions and degrees. It would be great if they could be automatically aligned with the borders of the image.

       

      The 'straighten and crop' feature in PS did not crop the cards well enough. It only separated 2/8 cards and left 6/8 in one scan, for a total of 3 scans rather than 8. It may or may not have straightened some of the skewed images, but I couldn't really tell.

       

      That's it! Thanks for the help in advance!

       

      -Dean

        • 1. Re: Automating Bulk Scan Cropping/straightening
          Silkrooster Community Member

          Odds are the straighen and crop feature did not work well because the cards were still in their holder. I am betting it had a hard time trying to figure where the edge of the image is.

          Try removing them and scan just to see if it helps. If it does, then maybe you can fake removing them for those already scanned. By adjusting the levels, etc. Pushing the holder towards white, could help the straighten and crop feature more.

          I never tried scanning with a card holder, so for now I can only guess.

          • 2. Re: Automating Bulk Scan Cropping/straightening
            portland_cards Community Member

            The penny sleeves could be part of the problem, but they are so close to the actual card border... I'm talking 2px. Plus, I HAVE to scan them in sleeves. When I first started doing this I didn't use sleeves and it caused damage to the cards when taking them on and off the scanner, so I always use sleeves when handling them.

             

            As for changing the background and not the cards, I'm not sure how to do that. I was messing with the quick selection tool and actually got it to trace around the borders of each card. I then used the select->constrain tool to widen the borders around the cards by about 20px. Which is odd, because when I used the select->enlarge tool it pushed the card borders in 20px.

             

            I still want to be able to do all these actions in bulk somehow though, not one at a time. I could use Paint.net and a macro recorder like I've been doing if I have to do it one at a time.

             

            What if I started scanning the cards with a template around them to keep them in the same exact position for every scan? Is there a script or something to crop out eight fixed position images and save them in order sequentially? It doesn't even have to straighten the images or save the filenames with the spreadsheet names.

             

            Although I will still have to figure out how to straighten the individual card images in bulk. Most cards are skewed less than a degree and up to 10 degrees in either direction, so a single rotation value will not work. Somehow, it needs to detect that the image border is the ruler and the card border needs to match it.

             

            Thanks for the help Silky!

            • 3. Re: Automating Bulk Scan Cropping/straightening
              bkflash Community Member

              If the scans were all exactly in the same position you could simply record an action in Photoshop to do the first one. Then apply the action to the whole folder using File > Automate > Batch.

               

              Getting them all exactly in the same position might be a challenge however - I suppose your idea of using some kind of template to place the cards in the scanner seems like the sort of thing you would have to do to achieve that.

               

              Sorry but I don't think there is a way to use Photoshop with a spreadsheet document to name the files, but the Batch function has various options for naming the processed files.

              • 4. Re: Automating Bulk Scan Cropping/straightening
                portland_cards Community Member

                That sounds like it could work, I will have to make a template, scan a few in PS and report back. Too busy until next year though. As for the renaming, that isn't a big deal as long as PS could name the files sequentially in the precise order they were scanned (top to bottom, left to right). Then I could easily rename the files in bulk with the spreadsheet using another program.

                 

                Aside from those things, one thing I would like to figure out and apply right now is deskewing of previously cropped scans. As I said, a large number are skewed between 1 and 15 degrees in either direction. It's pretty random, but if there was a way to use the rectangular border of the image itself to align the straight borders of the cards, that would be tremendous.

                 

                Thank you so much for the assistance both of you!

                • 5. Re: Automating Bulk Scan Cropping/straightening
                  Silkrooster Community Member

                  Just a thought, but may work.

                  If you own photoshop CC or Lightroom 5 with the latest updates, they contain an auto straighten feature. For photoshop, the feature is located in the camera raw dialog.

                  Since camera raw and lightroom can do batches of images, it just may be possible. Since it is an auto feature, it wouldn't matter what the degree of rotation is.

                  This you could do as a secondard step after the images are divided up.

                  • 6. Re: Automating Bulk Scan Cropping/straightening
                    Laubender Community Member

                    Sorry for the delay in response. On top of everything my laptop had been unusable the past week because of a failing HDD, but it looks like it's fixed for now.

                     

                    So how do you get to the camera raw dialog? I am using PS CC 14.1.2 trial. Looked through all the menus for it and still haven't seen anything that would work for bulk deskewing. A brief walkthrough would be helpful for me since I am only 10 days in to my PS trial and only 2 of those days I've been able to work on it. Thanks.

                    • 7. Re: Automating Bulk Scan Cropping/straightening
                      portland_cards Community Member

                      I posted the previous reply, not Laubender! Never seen that before on a website. I just clicked sign in (which it did automatically) and replied, then I noticed it was someone else's username. Weird!

                      • 8. Re: Automating Bulk Scan Cropping/straightening
                        Laubender Community Member

                        Huh?
                        What's going on here?


                        This post #6 is signed with my name, but obviously user portland_cards wrote it?!

                         

                        Uwe Laubender

                        • 9. Re: Automating Bulk Scan Cropping/straightening
                          portland_cards Community Member

                          I did write it, but I have no idea how it was your username either! It must have been a glitch in the matrix. No worries, Uwe. I am only registered to get help using PS for a faster way to crop and deskew scans of my trading cards.

                          • 10. Re: Automating Bulk Scan Cropping/straightening
                            Laubender Community Member

                            @portland_cards – no doubt about it.

                            Who is moderating this forum?


                            Perhaps someone can give a reasonable answer…

                            ( A glitch in the matrix? Boy, oh boy. )

                             

                            Uwe

                            • 11. Re: Automating Bulk Scan Cropping/straightening
                              Silkrooster Community Member

                              1) I recommend that both of you contact the forum administrator about this issue and change your passwords. It looks like either the site was hacked or a bug cropped up. Frankly I am prefering the later, much easier to fix.

                               

                              2) @ Portlander_cards,

                              To access the camera raw dialog box, you have a few choices. Depending on how you start with your image and preference.

                              • You can in bridge select your image(s) {more than one can be selected} then press ctrl-r or cmd-r depending on if you are on a windows or mac system.
                              • In photoshop you can open a raw image which will load the image into camera raw first.
                              • In photoshop you can select open as then select camera raw as the type then the file name.
                              • In photoshop CC and higher, you can select the image layer then in the filters select camera raw.

                               

                              Camera raw supports png, tiff and jpg.

                              Camera raw filter has no limitation since the file is already loaded into photoshop therefore the file format is irrelevent.

                               

                              In camera raw, you set the auto rotation option. Select the 6th tab (lens correction) then select the manual tab.

                              In this panel you have four choices -

                               

                              • Auto
                              • Level
                              • Vertical level/perspective
                              • Full (level, vertical and horizonal)

                               

                              Plus below you can alter any of the transformations.

                               

                              If you have multiple images loaded into camera raw (easiest way is bridge) then the settings to the first image can be synced to the remaining images, once they are all selected. (Meaning you can sync just a few images that were loaded if you choose to).

                               

                              camera-raw-dialog-box.jpg

                               

                              Added bullets for easier reading Message was edited by: Silkrooster

                              • 12. Re: Automating Bulk Scan Cropping/straightening
                                Laubender Community Member

                                @portland_cards – I sent you a personal message (PM).

                                 

                                Uwe

                                • 13. Re: Automating Bulk Scan Cropping/straightening
                                  portland_cards Community Member

                                  @ Uwe: got it, thanks!

                                   

                                  @ Silkrooster: This worked pretty well actually! I did notice in the bridge I could not load the selected images into camera raw using ctrl-r  because the images were in .png format, but once I converted them to .jpg, it worked pretty well.

                                   

                                  I did everything like you said and used the full vertical and horizontal align. Unfortunately, it does miss a few, or in some cases, turn a straight image crooked and distorted. Which means I have to use another program to cycle through every image and manually fix the ones that didn't deskew correctly. But it only seems like 1 in 50 are that messed up.

                                   

                                  I did notice a couple of other small things that I can live with but are kind of strange:

                                   

                                  1) it slightly recolored every image as it deskewed them (not sure if it's an improvement or not)

                                  2) it seems to distort more than rotate. For instance, an image may be aligned to the image borders vertically on the left and right, but still crooked on the top and bottom, which shouldn't be possible with perfect rectangles like my trading cards.

                                   

                                  That being said, this process will still take less time than it would to manually straighten them as they are being cropped, so thank you very much for that!

                                   

                                  Now I still need to make a template for my scanner to scan at fixed positions. Once that is done, I will reply with a scanned image to figure out how to batch crop eight images each out of multiple scans.

                                   

                                  Thank you so much!!! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!

                                   

                                  -Dean

                                  • 14. Re: Automating Bulk Scan Cropping/straightening
                                    adobe-admin Adobe Employee

                                    Can anyone tell me if this thread was moved from another forum into this one?

                                     

                                    Thanks!