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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dsmith52, post: 3037907, member: 94338&quot;]I&#039;ve been scanning my coins for a fairly long time and I have come to the conclusion that simply because I do not own a DSLR camera, and because I&#039;ve tried mounting my iPhone in such a way that it was more trouble than it should have been worth, and that photographing coins using point and shoot do not work for me, that a flatbed scanner is my desired method.</p><p><br /></p><p>This is not to say that it is the<i> correct</i> method of scanning my coins, it simply means that I am forced to use my scanner because I lack the necessary resources to achieve ultimate quality and lighting settings to scan my coins.&nbsp; However, I will tell you how I do it with Windows 10 and my HP Deskjet 3522 flatbed scanner.</p><p><br /></p><p>Each of my coins is encased in a cardboard coin holder like this:</p><p><img src="http://www.dansmith.ca/images/coin-holders.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>This poses a problem for my scanner when 3 of the edges are stapled together.&nbsp; I must either a) flatten the staples, b) remove the coin from the holder, or c) hold the coin down firmly on the scanning surface.&nbsp; Since it is not feasible to flatten the staples with a hammer, or to remove each coin from the holder and replace it with another one, I press firmly on the coin during scanning.&nbsp; This is not ideal, but because the scanner only scans the relief surface of the coin, not the entire coin surface, which may result in a blurry image, but in most cases it works for me as you can see on my website.</p><p><br /></p><p>Only attempt this if you are not fussy about your scan quality, or seeing the occasional speck of dust on the image.&nbsp; You can easily remove these with the stamp tool of any photo editing software. I do not scan my coins for quality, I scan it because I only want to scan the coin so I can recall it in my catalog without having to dig out all of my heavy binders.</p><p><br /></p><p>As for software, I use Windows 10 with the Scan app that I found on the Microsoft Store.&nbsp; This seems to work very well for me, because you can scan the image after your preview, then if the coin is a coin of the same type, you do not have to keep doing previews of each scan, you can scan each coin you have using one preview image.</p><p><br /></p><p>As for editing software, I use PhotoScape, because it crops round images. This is a godsend, if you&#039;ve ever been troubled by apps that don&#039;t scan round images.&nbsp; I do not do any photo correction, auto-this or auto-that, I just scan, crop and save and occasionally clean up the odd dust particle.&nbsp; Other than that, I do not remove all of the blemishes or scratches of each coin.</p><p><br /></p><p>As for my cataloging software, I have a Joomla website, and use a free Content Construction Kit app called FlexiContent.&nbsp; I built what you see if you follow the link to my site on my profile page, from scratch, and have it set up to upload an image of the reverse and obverse of each coin, along with all of the coin&#039;s details that I think are necessary. I can even scan my paper money, and each of the coins is searchable by any bit of text.</p><p><br /></p><p>That&#039;s pretty much it.&nbsp; If you just want to catalogue your coins and you wan to be able to check it without pulling out a 25-pound binder filled with quarter and dollar coins, this is the way to do it.&nbsp; This method works for me.&nbsp; It doesn&#039;t mean it will work for you, but I encourage you to give it a try.</p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;d be glad to help anyone who would like help.&nbsp; Please just ask me!</p><p><br /></p><p>Cheers,</p><p>Dan[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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