Auto-straightening photo scans?

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.scanner (More info?)

I have scanned a large number of photos, which I now need to straighten
and crop. This is a tedious process to do by hand. In Paint Shop
Pro 7, I need to guess how much rotation is needed, apply the
rotation, re-guess and re-rotate as necessary to get the image straight,
then manually crop. Can anyone here recommend software that could
do this automatically?

Thanks
-Mark

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.scanner (More info?)

If you have Paper Port it will straighten automatically.
Gord

"Mark" <nospam@thanksanyway.org> wrote in message
news:MLSdndKlEsHOzuffRVn-sw@speakeasy.net...
>I have scanned a large number of photos, which I now need to straighten
> and crop. This is a tedious process to do by hand. In Paint Shop
> Pro 7, I need to guess how much rotation is needed, apply the
> rotation, re-guess and re-rotate as necessary to get the image straight,
> then manually crop. Can anyone here recommend software that could
> do this automatically?
>
> Thanks
> -Mark
>
>

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.scanner (More info?)

Several people suggested Photo Shop Elements. I tried this, and
it does do this automatically. Unfortunately, it takes just as long to
straighten automatically as it takes me to do it manually in PSP 7.
And the auto-crop feature won't reliably crop the image area of
a scanned print.

I guess I'm just hard to please.

So what I am _really_ looking for is software that can work in
batch mode, processing an entire directory full of scans of
photo prints, identify the image(s) from each scan, straighten
them, crop them, and output them to new files.

Is the proverbial "person in hell" wishing for a nice cool glass
of icewater here?

Thanks
-Mark

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.scanner (More info?)

Mark,

> So what I am _really_ looking for is software that can work in
> batch mode, processing an entire directory full of scans of
> photo prints, identify the image(s) from each scan, straighten
> them, crop them, and output them to new files.
>
> Is the proverbial "person in hell" wishing for a nice cool glass
> of icewater here?

No, it can be done, and the software tool to do it has existed for years.
The main issue your criteria for straightening.
I suspect that it's rotating the scanned print so that the white (?) border
region is correctly aligned. If its the content of the image area itself
that needs additional rotation, then no automated system can take the place
of your desired visual interpretation.

The other issue is, are you prepared to either
a) buy another piece of software and write some suitable easy-to-learn
command code; or
b) buy the same piece of software and have the author create the prototype
app for you.

Everything you want to do

- processing an entire directory full of scans of photo prints
- identify the image(s) from each scan (display them as they are being
processed if you want with one line of code)
- straighten them (maybe 20 lines of code), crop them (one line of code)
- output them to new files (perhaps 20 lines, depends on the desired new
naming convention).

is competely possible using PiXCL. Such a program prototype would take me in
the order of four hours to code, and I offer a development service. PiXCL
app source is supplied.


regards,
Stewart DIBBS
========================================
Developer of the PiXCL Image Processing and
Analysis Language for Windows 2000/XP

PiXCL 6.0 is available now !

www.pixcl.com Gatineau, Quebec, CANADA

========================================