Gauging Quality of Scans?

[C Barker]

Hi there,

I recently had some scans made of some LP covers and am not all that happy with the results. However, I am not sure if some of the problems may be limitations of the source material or with the scanning job itself. Please find attached examples at 600dpi and 100% size.

For instance the original material of Image 2 looks solid green to the eye but the scan introduces more colours (not sure if they're artifacts created by the scanner or just not visible) and moire (I'm not sure if this unavoidable). Image 1, when keyframed for motion and exported in Premiere creates problems (which seem to be related to the moire or cross-hatching look, which again I'm not sure if this is due to the source material or poor scanning).

1. http://postimg.org/image/rsprqkrn3/
2. http://postimg.org/image/3mf4fg5in/
3. http://postimg.org/image/nhidel9dn/

Any thoughts on how to tell if a scanning job has been optimal would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks...

 

[Marc Wielage]

Scanning screened photographs is never ideal, but there are experts who can de-alias them to a point with the tools available in Photoshop. A good touch-up artist could probably squeeze better results out of it.