Who's Used the Magic Wand Scanner?

anubisdeath6

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Well..if anyone here has been reading my thread about making stencils, I've been talking about picking up a new scanner to do some sideart scanning...At my work we sell the Magic Wand Scanner, so I decided to borrow one for the night and test it out...I'm really hoping I get good enough results to use to create vector images of my side art. This can scan in both 300dpi and 600dpi. The only drawback for me is that it can only scan in .jpeg files, I would much prefer uncompressed .tiff files. Anyone else ever try one? I'll post my thoughts about it after I do some work with it.
 
Well, after getting used to the awkward motions needed to control the scanner, I was able to scan the side of my pinball backbox. It took 4 scans and then I stitched them together and came up with this...I'd say this should suffice, the dimensions are correct and that's all that matters, now I can trace it in Illustrator.
 

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Well, after getting used to the awkward motions needed to control the scanner, I was able to scan the side of my pinball backbox. It took 4 scans and then I stitched them together and came up with this...I'd say this should suffice, the dimensions are correct and that's all that matters, now I can trace it in Illustrator.

wow thats pretty good where can you buy one and how much do they cost?
 
It cost $99 and you can buy it at Office Depot. I'm still on the fence if it's worth it or not. When I get home from work today I'll post another update on how well it fared on the pinball cabinet side.
 
I'm going to have to look into that. Sounds pretty cool.

For stitching the images together i would suggest Huggin. It's a free program that is used to put together panoramic pictures, but it works pretty good for scans too.
 
I really like photoshop for stitching. I've been using it for years so I really prefer doing it manually myself. But to each his own. Now, as far as scanning the SIDE of the cabinet...didn't work out so well. I think I'm going to end up buying and trying the HP ScanJet 4600. The magic wand is just too inconsistent for doing something this large. If you don't scan it PERFECTLY straight, you get weird artifacts in the scans and it will not stitch properly.
 
That's good to hear. I'm hoping to pick one up because the scans from the Magic Wand on my Cabinet were quite awful. Oh well, live and learn. Good think I just borrowed it and not bought it haha.
 
yep I just started using this and was going to do a tutorial as soon as my blog is up and going again.
I did the entire EDOT sideart in less than 30 min!

it works quite well once you get the knack of it.
and for pins its great as its max scan length is around 50 or 60 inches
so it cuts the stitch time down ALOT.

The biggest Key is keeping it straight and moving
Id recomend a staright edge for one.
a pinball side rail works great with the lip pointed up also a nice square piece of plexi
about 8x8 to use as a "push" will keep it straight and aligned while moving you almost dont even need to hold on to it if you working flat.

But buyer beware on cheaper and even more expensive models
some only do b/w and only 8.5x11
this one mentioned above from depot does 300dpi and 600dpi at 24" and 50" scans
for $99
 
I'll be looking forward to your tutorial. I just had bad luck with it. I couldn't keep it straight at all, but I guess using a straight edge would have helped haha.
 
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