Scanning Coins

Scanning doesn't show luster and gives it a washed out look. That being said, I've seen scans that come out better than some of my photos.

I use a scanner almost exclusively, for the coin pics I post here on the forum and for the pics I include in my coin club's magazine. Yes, scanners do wash-out the lustre and exaggerate defects, and you can get some strange coloured effects if, say, scanning a coin in a 2x2. But there are several reasons why I persist with scanning.

I have an old scanner (HP Scanjet 3770, 4 or 5 years old now). Older scanners tend to do a better job on coins than modern ones, and I've never heard anyone using one of those multi-function scanner/printer/photocopier/fax/coffeemaker things with any great success.

The scanner is also useful for capturing the real-life scale of a coin, too. When I take a camera pic of a coin, I've got to have a ruler or something else there for scale; the scanner already knows the scale, and saves that information into the picture file. Not such a useful feature for Internet pics, but great for my magazine, where I like putting pics either at true size or to a known scale.

For the scanner settings, I find 300 dpi quite adequate for colour pics for both magazine and Internet use. Smaller coins get bumped up to 600 dpi, and fine details come up great on 1200 or 2400 dpi scans.

Once scanned, the pics may need tweaking a bit. Especially dark-toned coppers, which almost always come up looking like a black blob. "Enhanced" scans never look as good as realistic as natural-light photos, but I find that boosting the contrast and brightness by the same amounts percentage-wise gives the "least un-natural" look. I find a 50% boost for "silvers" and an 80% boost for "coppers" is the most I need to do to get good contrast for my magazine pics. Bright shiny coppers, pure nickel, and gold coins rarely need adjusting at all.