I am not sure if this has been done yet, but with the right software, any digital camera could act as a virtual scanner. All that is needed is some PC based software where the user can roughly align a series of photos, and the software would automatically adjust the size and angle of the respective images and perfectly align them to build up a composite image of any size.
This would allow even novices like myself to take easy panoramic shots (up to 360degrees), or to construct large format scans of any size (large format scanners are available, but they suffer from very real limitations, like finite sizes, high cost, feeders that could jam and tear the original, physical space requirements, etc.)
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In all fairness, dbg’s idea to use a camera as an A4 scanner for OCR applications has indirectly contributed to this concept. However, the basic idea was born some time ago when I had to scan a large painting, and Kinko’s could not guarantee to scan it without damaging the original.
Photoshop easily provides a method for integrating several scans of partial portions of a large piece of graphic into one total scan. By scanning a large piece in sections, the various pieces can be integrated back into a whole using this method.
Thanks, sand. Unfortunately Photoshop will cost me around $600 which is a tad much for what I require. However, following a PC Mag review on Adobe Photoshop Elements (from the Adobe web site) it appears that the panoramic stuff could easily be done with this $99 program. What is not clear from the review is if one could stitch photographs together vertically as well as horizontally. If that would be the case and if there are no arbitrary size limitations on the result, then this could be what I am looking for.
I will gather more info and report back later.
Maybe not relevant but until windows95 came out, it waspossible to make a scanner out of a printer with a phototransistor on the printhead connected to the game port, and printingblank spaces all over what you wanted to scan. I suppose thatthe people with less time on their hands than others couldhave used this method to make that ASCII-art wallpaper that was all around computers before 1980.
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Using an electronic camera as scanner just does not cut the cake. After some experimentation I have concluded that unless one can control the angle of the camera, and the lighting much better, this is pretty much a no go. Sure, the software will stitch the images together but it become pretty clear that the resulting image has been patched together, especially if the lighting or the angle have changed between shots.
Since I have posted this idea, HP has come out with a set of new see-through scanners (the 4600 and the 4670) that are designed to take care of the problem of scanning oversized prints. It also comes with stitching software, but does away with the traditional concept of how scanners are supposed to function.