Scanning directions based on Adobe Photoshop 4.0.

These instructions are not perfect, use at your own risk!

Commands will differ slightly on earlier versions. I think they are the same for Macs and PCs.

Open photoshop, go to file-preferences-units and rulers and change the units to pixels under rulers.

Then go file-import (used to be aquire in earlier versions) and choose your scanner. This will depend upon your setup as to how this is done, you may need to ask. Try file-import-twain.

Again, depending upon what software interfaces between your scanner and photoshop the technique may vary. Best off to ask someone as to how to get the best results. Usually prior to scanning in the image you can crop out the parts of the image that are unnecessary. Typically, we try and include all of the fish and just a little bit more. Any more than this is just wasted bytes. For habitat photos cut out most of the sky, or other views that contribute little to what the overall image is supposed to present. If you need to do any croping post scanning it is the top left button on the tool window. Just draw the rectangle, go edit-crop and it is done. If further clipping is required post scanning just click on the top left button on the tool window, draw the rectangle on the image, then go edit-clip and it is done.

For fish, we usually try to face the fish to the left just to follow convention, even though it may not really be the left side. With habitat shots and others, be careful to ensure you get the image the right way round. Use the image-rotate canvas command if neccessary. Then go image-image size, and set the width to 600 pixels. It is usually best to constrain proportions, it is the top, bottom left box in the image size window. Do this before setting it to 600 pixels.

Probably best to save it at this point. Go file-save, choose jpeg, select medium quality (it may be different in earlier versions of photoshop).

There are many tools for making publishing quality images, for our web needs it is not that critical, so we tend to do things a little quick and dirty.  Hence, this is not the best way to do it, but it is probably the easiest and quickest and gives ok results.

Then go filter-sharpen-unsharp mask. Once you have used this command it will be at the very top of the menu drop down (it puts the last command from that menu that you used there--however, it just runs the command, you cannot change the settings unless you go the long way via the menu). Unsharp mask is quite powerful in what it can do, but it requires some experimentation. If you screw up, close the file, don't save it, and reopen it. A threshold of 0 seemed best, although between 2 and 5 may be ok too. Try a couple of different ways and see what works! Depending upon the image, a radius of 1 or 2 is probably best. Once you get over 10 it starts to look a little odd. For the %, try lower values first, and then work up. Eventually you will reach a point where things start to look weird. 50-75 is probably in the range. Again, experimentation will be your best judge. Another thing worth doing is saving it to another name, then open both and go stepwise so you can compare side by side what looks better.

You can also use the brightness tool to mess with the image, in earlier photoshop versions you can just hit control-b, in the newer version I think it is under filters. Photoshop people consider this to be pretty brutal on an image though.

If you are really clever, don't touch the brightness, mess around with image-adjust and some of the commands under it. By adjusting the levels you can do amazing things to images. Color balanace, hue/saturation and curves are also useful ones to try. All these adjustments can make the difference between an ok image and a great image.

Next we need to add the photo credit to the image. Change foreground colour to white, it is the third from the bottom "window" on the little tool window. Click on the top box (there are two, the top overlays the top left quarter of the bottom one), make the colour white or black (depending upon the colour of the image) (put the circle in the top left of the colour selection). Once colour is set click on the T (for text) in the tool window. I usually use times new roman as the font, font size will depend on the image, try 14-18. You will need to figure out how to add the copyright symbol (©). In windows I did it by opening character map under accessories (from the start menu), and finding the symbol, copying it to the clipboard and then pasting it into the text window in photoshop. On a Mac there is a keyboard command for adding it, I forget what it is though. If text is too big or too small just go to edit-undo and try it again using a different value. You'll have to look at pre-existing images on our web site to judge size. It shouldn't dominate the image, but it should be clearly visible too. If the text is not in the right place on the image, click on the top right button on the tool window (I think it is called move selection or something similar), click on the text, hold down the mouse button and drag it to where you want it to go.

You should now be able to do the final save on the jpeg.

Now we create our thumbnail image.

Go image-mode-indexed colour, just accept the default settings (I've never messed with them).

Now, resize the image to 80 pixels wide. Go file-save as, change format to gif, accept the defaults and you are done!!  Just do file save as, choose gif.

Naming conventions

For images of fish species we use the initial of the genus, the first six letters of the species name, and then a sequential number. i.e., Xyrauchen texanus would be xtexanu1.jpg or .gif. Ensure all letters are lower case. Best to check on the web site to determine what number we are up to. If there are none start with one.

For naming of image files, we prefix it with i_, the genus initial, and then the first five letter of the species, i.e., Xyrauchen texanus would be i_xtexan.html

Happy scanning, you can direct question by clicking on comment just below.

DFC	Home	Search	Species Index		Area Index	What's New	Comment
(Dean Hendrickson)				General information:   (E. Phil Pister)

This page last modified:  09 December 2003