Help!! I bought a Hp photosmart S20xi scanner and am having problems scanning in pictures from magazines even when using their photosleeve. Negatives, color photos came out great. However, when I scan a picture from a magazine I get excessive moire or diagonal lines through my picture. It looks just like you're looking at the picture though a screen door. I've tried everything,calibration, cleaning, changing the resolution and file size, nothing. HP says its magnetic interference from the monitor and computer cables, but I doubt it, their too far away. Any ideas?

-- James Combo (cdacombo@aol.com), February 26, 2000

Answers

Thats where descreening comes in, most magazines are hard to scan really well from. Try to scan your picture at an angle, in other words tilt the actual picture in the document carrier so that it doesn't accentuate the problem. Under a loupe most (even without one sometimes!) magazine images are pretty trashy compared to a real photo or heaven forbid a negative. Your final scan will only be as good as the source.

-- Cris Daniels (danfla@gte.net), February 27, 2000.

Unfortunately the s20 has no provision for tilting the image. I'm not next to my s20 right now - but I recommend you try varying the resolution settings when scanning. The moire you are getting is a result of the scan resolution and the half screen printing "dots" of the image in the magazine. You may also try to use different software to drive your scanner - such as the software available at Hamrick's VuePrint Site - I know it does work on the s20 - but I'm not sure if it works on the s20 when it's set for scanning pictures (as opposed to slides and negatives).

Des

-- Dan Desjardins (dan.desjardins@avstarnews.com), February 27, 2000.

My S10 Photosmart came with a corny document carrier to scan smaller than 5x7 photos and if the picture was smaller than the carrier you could tilt the image within the carrier and scan and then fix it up in an image editor. Scanning like that is one of the easiest ways I've found to get rid of moire patterns. Maybe you could get the document carrier from HP if it doesn't come with the S20.

-- Cis Daniels (danfla@gte.net), February 29, 2000.