Scanning

Bint Al Bahr Arabians

Preservation Breeders of Straight Babson Egyptians

Most important - Clean your scanning glass while the surface is cool, before plugging in the scanner and starting to scan, removing any dust and smears as they will otherwise appear on your scanning results. Dust specs on a scanned image will create extra labor to remove them with a photo program. You can use "canned air" to touch up between scans if needed.

First I save all my scans as 300 to 500 dpi JPGs for archiving (the smaller the photo, the more dpi).

I then crop out excess background (but not too close) and change the size to about 7 inches tall. I reduce resolution to 72 dpi and save it again for e-mailing. I use a separate file folder for the e-mail sized scans.

Next I crop again if needed and make the photo 4 inches tall and save it for the website again in a separate folder. I use a uniform height of 4 inches for my website saved photos to make it easier to use them together on a page. You might wish to use a different height in your collection.

When scanning from a magazine, a newspaper clipping or anything paper with something printed on the back side, I put a black piece of cardboard or thick paper against the backside or between the pages when scanning to keep the backside printing from showing up on the scan.

If the backside of a photograph has information you want to keep, scan it too and use the same file label adding a _r after the file name. It will be saved next to the photo front scan and be easy to find for future reference.

I also leave a small post-a-note on the upper magazine page edge of the magazine scanned from to make it easier to locate the original in the future. I write the month and year I scanned it on the post-a-note.

If there is a caption under or beside the photo that identifies the horse or provides information about it, include it in your scan. It will authenticate the photo and provide Identification if the photo label is later changed or missing.

example: Fadl_AHWoct65p56 - the source code translates to Arabian Horse World, October 1965, page 56

example: IbnRabdan_AHTfeb1989p65PR translates to Arabian Horse Times, February 1989, page 65, Pyramid Report. Note the capitalization in the horse's name eliminates the need for spaces to indicate separate words.

When saving a photo to your archive, include the photographer's name and when the photo was taken if known.

If the photo comes by e-mail with no other information other than name of the horse, note who it came from in your label so you can get more info when needed.

All of these source information notations will allow you or someone to go back to the source to rescan at a higher resolution, get more information related to the photo (see the article or ad that went with the photo) or credit the source in an article or on a website.

I set up file folders for each group of photos. For example I have a folder named BabsonDisc. It contains high resolution photos of Babson Arabians. The Disc part of the file name reminds me they are high resolution files to be stored on a disc. Within this file is a sub file named SavedCD which is for photos I have already saved to a CD. As photos are archived to CD they are moved to this file. I use alphabetical CDs in a binder for my Babson Disc file so that I can add to the proper letter disc rather than having to create new back up CDs each time I archive. I finalize only the CD session, not the whole CD, so I can keep adding photos until the CD is full.

For your own horses, you may wish to create a folder for each horse then add your best photos to it as you take them. You can store each horse's photos on it's own CD. You can create a file for other farm's horses under their farm name if you wish. Create a filing system that works well for you.

The low resolution Babson photos are in the BabsonStallions and the BabsonMares files. Geldings go in with the stallions. I have separate folders for BabsonSirecho, BlueStar, StEgyptian, GenList and other bloodgroups. That gives me a better chance of finding photos when I need them. These are also stored on CDs.

SAVE YOUR PHOTOS AND SCANNED IMAGES ON A CD so you won’t lose them in a computer crash. As I found out the hard way, there are two kinds of computers... ones that have crashed and ones that have not crashed YET.

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