Cover Art Scanning Tips

Cover Scanning Tips

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Here are some general scanning tips that have proven to yield the best results.

Scan in at least 200 - 300 DPI.

If you have a descreening option to your scanning software, set it to "Magazine" or 150 LPI.

Set the scanner software so that blacks are blacks and whites are whites. This is usually called "Levels" and is very important to ensure that the image is scanned properly.

Don't make any corrections such as color, sharpening, filters, contrast, etc.

When scanning a case cover (keep case, jewel case, etc.), please remove it from the case before scanning.

When scanning media, use a white piece of printer paper behind the disc/cartridge to create a white background.

Once the image is scanned, use a paint program such as Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop to align the image straight up/down. Try picking a straight line on the image and line it up with the cropping lines. (In Photoshop, you can use the Ruler tool to trace a line on the scanned image, then go to Image- > Rotate -> Arbitrary and the correct rotation angle will automatically be input for you, calculated from the ruler measurement.)

Once the image is aligned, crop the image so only the desired area is shown. For example, on a Keep Case game cover, crop so that the spine does not show at all. On a disc, crop so that a little bit outside of the disc's edge is shown, leaving a little bit of a white border.

Do not resize the scanned image down to a set size; we would like the actual optical scan resolution. Resizing introduces artifacts when shrinking, and doesn't add detail when expanding.

Keep the image uncompressed during scanning and editing until the final conversion to JPG for the best quality.

After scanning a Keep Case cover, you must split them into a Front and Back cover, do not include any part of the spine (middle portion). Detailed How To prepare scanned covers using Macromedia Fireworks MX.