Scanning 3-D objects

Here are four test objects for judging the capabilities of flatbed scanners to handle 3-D objects. Hairy Harry is a complex 3-D shape and his shoes are over 1 cm up in the air (off the surface of the flatbed completely). Baby Blue is rather "dimensional" because of the conical siphon where it resides.

What you see here are quickie previews. We will use these (and other more complex shapes) to test a variety of scanners. In the meantime, the Linotype-Hell Saphir Ultra 2 did rather well considering it has fixed focus. For its reasonable price (mid-range with professional color management software and other extras included) this Heidelberg CPS scanner did quite nicely (no correction on pre-scan whatsoever, I just pressed the SCAN button and did less than 1 minute cleanup in Adobe Photoshop).

Baby Blue popping out of his siphon (nice mid-range scanner). To see the same figure scanned with a high-end scanner, check out this page. Green Froggie, a pencil top decoration of Andrea Hairy Harry Wildman, a German mascot I found in Andrea's room back at her parent's house. Exploding Hair, a pencil top decoration on Andrea's desk.

These scans were done with no additional lighting whatsoever. We will be testing flatbed-side-lighting shortly, and show the differences (probably for the web site maya-archaeology.org since flatbed scanning of artifacts is a godsend for archaeologists who no longer need to photograph and draw every shard, just press the SCAN button, and everything is recorded at 1:1 scale in full color).

At present, the flatbed scanner with the best reputation for being able to handle 3-dimensional objects is the C-550 Lanovia from Fuji. Creo EverSmart scanners focus exclusively on the scanning plane (quite well) and hence cannot scan 3-D objects at all. For slides, photos, and all flat images, however, the Creo EverSmart Jazz, Jazz+, Pro II, and Supreme are excellent (Creo scanning software is outstanding).