Scanning CD jewel case inserts

alt.binaries.sounds.music.classical

november 25, 2001, Version 0.02

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Purpose of this FAQ
1.2 You need...
1.3 Naming conventions

2. OPENING THE CASE

3. OUTLINE OF THE METHOD

4. THE SCANNING

5. THE EDITING

5.1 Image types

5.1.1 "gif" images
5.1.2 "jpeg" images

5.2 Steps for correcting the picture
5.3 Cropping the image
5.4 Enhancing the contrast
5.5 Enhancing the sharpness
5.6 Creating a small border around the scan
5.7 Saving the image

5.7.1 Saving the image as "jpeg"
5.7.2 Saving the image as "gif"

6. THE PRINTING

6.1 Printing your own art work
6.2 Printing someone elses art work

7. THE CUTTING

Scanning CD jewel case inserts

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Purpose of this FAQ

This faq describes how to scan, digitize and print CD inserts and booklets. It’s purpose is to give you a straightforward, practical method that yields good results. "Practical" means: it works for me. Yes, there are many other roads towards the same, desired result. This FAQ is for you if you want quality and exact copies of your CD inserts and booklets. The FAQ assumes you have little experience with image editing.

Not covered here is scanning the CD itself and printing CD labels.

I’m assuming you are using ordinary paper sizes like A4 and no special stuff, preformatted paper, special tools etc. Nor do you need a specialized program for editing and printing CD inserts.

1.2 You need ...

1. A scanner (I use an HP 4100C scanner)
2. A color inkjet printer (I use an Epson 740C inkjet color printer)
3. An image editor program for enhancing the scans (I use CorelPhotopaint 8.0). You only need some basic functions, so many image editors will serve well
4. A computer, obviously
5. A steel ruler and a knife, for cutting
6. Glossy or matted inkjet paper for color photo quality. You don't need a special size, just A4 or legal

1.3 Naming conventions

People use different words for referring to the few pieces that make op the CD case:

1. CD jewel case = the whole thing
2. the CD itself = you guess it
3. the front and the back = the two transparent moving pieces
4. tray = the container to fix the CD in its place, usually black
5. spine = is the small back or the small front edge

The following pieces of this CD jewel case contain text and image info:

1. CD-label - we are not going to scan this
2. front insert or front cover or front label (4.7188" x 4.75", 120 mm x 121 mm)
3. back insert or backliner or back cover, including end flaps (4.62" x 5.87", 117 mm x 150 mm)
4. booklet with booklet-cover, -back and -pages (same size as front cover)

Use these names when posting your scans to newsnet.

Size of front insert, booklet and back insert

2. OPENING THE CASE

Booklet and/or front insert are easy to remove from the CD case. To reach the back insert, however, poses some difficulties. With trial and error, you will learn this. But I might just as well give you my convenient method.

1. Open the lid of the CD case;
2. Take the case in your right hand, keeping hold of both front and back;
3. Press the nail of your left hand thumb between the transparent back and the black tray, in the top left corner (A);
4. Press the nails of your second and third fingers of your right hand between the transparent back and the black tray, also in the top left corner (B). With your right hand, lift the black CD tray from the transparent case; the top left corner will come loose;
5. With your right hand, gently pull the black CD container to the left (C); the top right corner will come loose;
6. Rest the CD case in your left hand, your thumb to the left side, your little finger and third finger to the right side. Now press the bottom of the back of the case with your second finger so it becomes hollow;
7. With your right hand, in one and the same movement lift the black tray up and pull it a little to the right; the bottom left corner (D) will come loose;
8. Now, lifting the final bottom right corner (E) is a piece of cake.

I hope you got it.

3. OUTLINE OF THE METHOD

The method followed here does not make use of special jewel case design programs nor does it involve the use of special formatted paper. Instead, we are using ordinary (inkjet) paper and a general purpose pixel oriented image editor.

1. We will scan the inserts and the booklet at a resolution of 350 dpi;
2. We will save it as a ".tif" picture;
3. Using the image editor, we will enhance the contrast and the sharpness;
4. We will save the enhanced picture as either ".jpg" or ".gif" image. The image has a reduced size now;
5. You can print the picture, using the same resolution as the scan (350 dpi) on inkjet photoquality paper;
6. Using a steel ruler and a sharp knife, we will cut out the insert from the paper.

Below, we follow each of these steps in some detail.

4. THE SCANNING

The dialogue windows of my printer driver are in Dutch, sorry for that. I'm giving a few suggestions for scanning your CD inserts here.

1. First, thoroughly clean the surface of the scanner. Dust is your enemy. Use special screen cleaning wipes, or other cleaning products.
2. Put the cover on the scanner bed.
3. Set the scanning resolution to 350 dpi (dots per inch). Be sure this resolution is optic, not digital. Is 350 dpi essential? No, I think 300 or 250 is acceptible. Remember the mp3 discussion about encoding in 192 kbps versus 256 kbps? That's the same thing. You know that 128 kbps is insufficient. Likewise, scanning at resolutions lower than 250 dpi will affect the quality.
4. Be sure to include some of the white space around the cover. This can be done by preventing the scanner to define the border automatically. You should be able to define the border manually.
5. Be sure the picture is of the type "best color photograph", or 16,7 milion colors.
6. Save it as a ".tif" file. This will use some disk space, typically 5 to 8 MB, depending on the size of the scan.

   

Some remarks: often it is possible to scan from without your image editor. In that case, there is no need to save the scan as a "tif" file. Start editing after the scanning result is available in your image editor, as described below.

5. THE EDITING

Scans are imperfect. We need to improve them, in a few steps, using an image editing program. In the examples below, CorelPhotopaint is used for editing

5.1 Image types

First thing to know is that two compressed image types are useful for us because they can be posted over internet: gif images and jpeg images. Tiff images - the result of the scanning process - are useless, because they take up too much disk space.

5.1.1 Gif images

This type of image has a limited number of colors, maximum is 256 colors. In different gif images, the color pallet can be different. Gif images are useful for graphic pictures with a limited number of colors, and for text. For text pages, gif gives better result and uses less disk space.

5.1.2 Jpeg images

Jpeg (or jpg) pictures can display all 16,7 million colors of your scan that you saved as a tiff file. However, the compression makes the picture slightly blurred. Jpeg images typically are used for photographs, both black and white as well as color photographs.

We are going to use gif images for saving the text pages of the booklets, and jpeg images for saving the front and back inserts of the CD case. There could be exceptions on this rule, however, for instance when the back cover of the CD case is mainly black and white text in which case saving the scan as a gif file is more appropriate. Or vice versa, when the booklet contains color pictures in which case I would suggest you to save the scan as a jpeg file.

5.2 Steps for correcting the picture

Common to both gif and jpeg images are the following actions:

1. Cropping the image
2. Enhancing the contrast
3. Improving the sharpness
4. In some cases: creating a border around the scanned cover

5.3 Cropping the image

We are going to remove most of the white space around the scan. However, important is to keep a very small band of white, just enough to keep the border of the cover - usually a little gray line or the staples of the booklet - visible. Later, when printing and cutting, this little white band will be convenient for cutting along the edge. If the border of the cover is invisible, we will make a small border ourselves, as will be described later.

.

1. Cropping is done with the cropping tool, which typically looks like this . Drag the mouse indicator around the picture to be cropped.
2. Then pull the handles at sides and corner to neatly fit in the picture.
3. Confirm with "enter".

5.4 Enhancing the contrast

Most scanners, in my experience, produce rather dim pictures. Therefore, we will need to enhance the contrast and the sharpness. First the contrast. The best tool for this job is "Level Equalisation" (Image / Adjust / Level Equalisation).

1. Drag the triangles of "Input Vlaue Clipping" a little towards the middle. The left triangle makes the blacks more black. The right triangle makes the whites more white. Ideal is when in the graph below the blacks just touch the left window border, and the whites just touch the right window border. This is perfect.
2. Click "preview" in the window above to see if the action will have the desired result.
3. If you are satisfied, click "OK". Now the scan is brighter in contrast and will be more alike the original when printed.

5.5 Improving the sharpness

Sharpening the scan will dramatically improve your print. Be careful not to overdo! This will result in distortions.

1. The tool we will use is - paradoxically - called "Unsharp Mask" (Effects / Sharpen / Unsharp Mask).
2. Set "Percentage" somewhere between 100 and 200. "Radius" should be 1, and "Threshold" 0. Try out different settings using the preview functions.
3. If you are satisfied with the result, click "OK"

original scan	improved contrast	improved sharpness

5.6 Creating a small border around the scan

Sometimes, a case insert has white background. We won’t see the border between insert and the white paper we printed it on, and we will not be able to cut the image back to its right size. The solution: creating a small border around the picture.

1. Again with CorelPhotopaint: choose "Image / Paper size".
2. Make the paper a little bit larger, and choose a dark paper color. In the example below, I’m about to add 6 pixels to the width and the same number to the height of the picture.
3. Click "OK".

5.7 Saving the image

"Jpeg" compression is suitable for photograph-like pictures. "Gif" compression is more suitable for text and schematic pictures.

5.7.1 Saving the image as "jpeg"

Your original scan is in "tiff" format. This is an uncompressed digital image, which means that every pixel uses 24 or 32 bits. This "tiff"-image is several Megs large, typically. Before converting this tiff-image into an other, compressed, format, save the result of the previous steps.

1. Choose "File / Save as".
2. In the dialogue window choose file type "jpeg" or "jpg" and click "Save".
3. A new dialogue window opens, "Jpeg export"; set "compression" to 10. Keep "smoothing" to 0 and don’t enable the check boxes "progressive" or "optimize".
4. Click "OK".

That’s it. Now, if you think your jpeg image uses to much space, you can set compression to a higher number than 10. The file will be smaller, but the quality will be worse. Don’t set compression too high (i.e. above 30 or so) , or the image will become too blurred. This FAQ points you towards quality.

5.7.2 Saving the image as "gif"

Saving your original picture in "gif" format is a bit more complicated. You can’t just save the tiff as a gif. First you need to make a conversion. The color depth of your tiff file is 24 or 32 bits. This should be reduced to 8 bits or less. Yes, this means that the picture can only hold up to 256 color. The color palette is not fixed, but can be manipulated. For instance, you can choose shades of black.

1. Choose "Image / Convert to / Paletted (8-bit)".
2. In the dialogue window, set "smoothing" to 0, "palette" to optimized, "dithering" to none. You can set the number of colors to a a value between 0 and 256. The larger the number, the more realistic the image and the larger the resulting file. I suggest you choose 32 if you have only shades of one color, 64 if you have shades of two colors etc. If the image is only black and white, set "palette" to grayscale.
3. Click "OK".

The biggest mistake with text images is to think they are made up of black pixels and white pixels. Wrong, the edges of the text will also have gray pixels. Therefore, do not convert text images to black and white only. This will result in jagged edges and the print will not look smooth.

1. Once converted to a paletted image, you can save the picture.
2. Choose "File / Save as" and select "CompuServe bitmap (GIF) in the dialogue window.
3. A second dialogue window pops up. Keep the "Interlace" box unchecked, and set "transparency" to "none".
4. Click "OK"

6. THE PRINTING

6.1 Printing your own art work

The printing is done on glossy or matted ink-jet paper. Choose a paper brand that allows printing 600 and more dpi (dots per inch) color, although 300 dpi might satisfy you. Usually, these sheets are coated at only one side, so you must insert the paper into your printer in the right way. Choose stiff paper, 80 grams or more.

We are going to print using the image editing program. In my case, I use CorelPhotopaint. Open the image. If all went right, the image still has the same resolution as the original scan, i.e. 350 dpi. You can check this with "File / Document info".

1. Choose "File / Print preview". In the "Image position" selection field, select "top center". You can also drag the picture to the position you want on the page.
2. Now choose the correct printer options. First click on "Options" (or "Setting / General").
3. Then click on "Properties". This opens a dialogue window where you can choose options for your printer. The specific options and the interface are dependent on your printer manufacturer. Below I will describe the options that I’m allowed to give with my printer (Epson 740).

 



• "Media type" - Choose "Photo Quality Ink Jet Paper" or comparable papers. Of course, this should match the paper you are using.
• "Print Quality" - The higher, the better. 720 dpi is a good quality. The specification of the paper should match this quality more or less.
• "Halftoning" - Choose "Error Diffusion ", if possible with your printer. This gives better results than the traditional dithering methods.

If your printer does not give you detailed control over the different options, choose best quality printing and be sure you selected the right type of paper.

Well, you should be gazing at your first jewel case front insert by now! Ready for posting above all! Part of the paper is still unused. Re-enter it in your printer and print the back tray insert on the bottom of the paper.

6.2 Printing someone elses art work

Changes are, you have received a scan from someone else. Sometimes, these scans have a good quality. Often, they are poor in quality. Then, improve the scan before printing it. Remember the steps: 1) Level Equalisation, 2) unsharp mask.

However, if someone posts a tiny image, measuring less pixels than the pixels on your screen, improving it does not make much sense. You can still print it of course:

1. Check the size in millimeters or inches of the scan. In CorelPhotopaint: File / Document Info;
2. If the image is too large or little (see table below), scale the image: Image / Resample
3. In the dialogue window, you must check the "Maintain original size" box, since this prevents the program from actually resampling the image. Instead, it will just say to the picture that the resolution should be interpreted higher or lower. In the example below a correct with of 150 mm is entered, and the other fields are corrected automatically. The resolution is automatically set to 417 dpi in this example.
4. Start the printing as described above. The print size will be exactly the size you entered in step 3 above. This saves the tricky handle pulling in the print preview window.

7. THE CUTTING

Use a steel ruler and a sharp knife to cut out the inserts. If you printed them on relatively thin paper, let’s say 80 grams, it is best to support them with the original inserts in the jewel case. If you printed them on 120 grams paper, they will be stiff enough to stay in place.