I have a card game with 500+ cards. I want to scan all those and have them as individual PNG files, with transparent rounded corners.
I have a simple consumer scanner. I can fit 8 cards with ease and still have a lot of white space around the cards.
This has a few downsides.
- chopping them up is hard
- cards are skewed (at least a bit)
- After chopping them up I need to export them to new files ans same each individually.
Scanning individual cards won't improve this much.
I have quite a bit of Photoshop experience but not a lot of scanning.
Can anybody help me make this process smoother?
Best Answer
In my opinion it would be better if you scann them one by one.
This way they will be aligned the same in respect of the corner of the scanner and can be named with a specific file name.
After that you can prepare a Photoshop batch action to crop them and to make the round borders, and as they are all aligned the action will be aplied correctly.
Look for the specific steps you want, but some tutorials can be found arround: https://www.google.com.mx/search?q=batch+action+photoshop
And here is one for Photoshop esentials for the rounded corners, for example http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/rounded-corners/
Some time is wasted on a "preview" where you pre scann your image and select the part you want to scann. You can skip this step. Make it only once for the first scann each session.
One recomendation is that you prepare your workspace so you can in some extend do that in a series of optimized arm moves.
One important thing: Deactivate any post process during the scann. For example some scanners have some feature to remove the screen of the print. But this would be applied during each scann making it last longer. Make any de-screening as part of your batch action. This way you can go and see a movie whiloe yhe computer makes this adjustments.
An aditional tip, scann at the real resolution you want. Some people like to use the maximum scanning resolution. Make some tests, probably you can use the standard 300 ppi or probably 200 ppi are just fine for you. But probably scanning with more ppi is just a waste of time.