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Tutorial: Scanning a deck of Tarot cards

Solitary Society

This small tutorial is focused on scanning Tarot cards, but may be useful for other similar purposes. If there are any corrections or improvements that can be made please contact me. This tutorial may seem long, but it is due to the amount of images and detail I have tried to include. With practice, a deck of Tarot cards can be scanned and processed in just over an hour.

Requirements:

  • deck of Tarot Cards
  • scanner
  • Adobe Photoshop CS4
  • 100-200mb hard disk space

Part I

Scanning the cards.

This part of the tutorial will show images of the software I use with my scanner. Yours may be different but the settings and parameters may be similar.

Set the image type for 24-bit color with a resolution of 300 dpi. We want a high DPI should we ever choose to print an image for publication or for use in any situation where a high resolution image is needed.

Resolution and DPI settings

My scanner bed will allow me to fit four cards side by side. After the cards are in place, click the scan button.

Scan Button

The resulting file is saved to my hard drive and I continue with scanning the next four cards. The image below is a greatly reduced example of what the scan looks like.

Reduced Scan

After scanning all cards, we can close our scanning software and open Photoshop.

Part II

Getting started in Photoshop.

From here on we will be working with Adobe's Photoshop CS4. Note: The more RAM you have in your computer, the smoother this process will go.

Start Photoshop and open the first scan image.

Open First Scan

With that scan open, press the buttons in the following sequence:

  1. ctrl-a (will select the entire image)
  2. ctrl-c (will copy the entire image to the clipboard)
  3. ctrl-n (will open the dialog to create a new document)
  4. enter (presses the Ok button - the settings will be inherited from the data on the clipboard)
  5. ctrl-v (will paste the contents of the clipboard to the new document as a new layer)

Ok, you can now go back and close the original scan image. Now save your new Untitled document as something meaningful, such as 'x-tarot-300dpi.psd', where x is a descriptor or title of the deck. This file will become our Master document.

Save and name the file

Once this file is saved, follow this process for each remaining scaned image file from Part I.

  1. Open the scanned image file from Part I.
  2. ctrl-a (will select the entire image)
  3. ctrl-c (will copy the entire image to the clipboard)
  4. Select the Master document
  5. ctrl-v (will paste the contents of the clipboard to the new document as a new layer)
  6. Close the scanned image file.

We now have a large .psd file containing layers of all the scans of the deck. Be sure that this file is saved before proceeding with the next step.

Part III

Processing in Photoshop

Our first step is to rotate the image so it is horizontal rather than vertical. Rotate the image by 90° counter clockwise (CCW), by going to the File Menu and click Image > Image Rotation > 90° CCW.

Rotate 90° CCW

Press ctrl-s to save our Master document.

Open the Image Size dialog window by pressing ctrl-alt-i. Change the resolution from 300 pixels/inch to 72 pixels/inch. This is the resolution which computers display images at. Select the checkbox Resample Image and choose Bicubic Sharper (best for reduction).

Change resolution and resample image

Save the Master as a new file with a filename such as 'x-tarot-72dpi.psd', like the previous Master file, but with 72 in place of the 300.

Save new Master file

We may need to zoom in on the image now. You can do so by pressing ctrl-+ to zoom in, or ctrl-- to zoom out.

Next we will want to sharpen the images. Go to the File Menu and click Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask...

Unsharp Mask

In the Unsharp Mask dialog window, check the Preview box. Adjust the Amount, Radius, and Threshold. For web display, we want to choose an Amount between 100 and 150. For the Radius, choose a setting somewhere between .1 and .5. Finally, for the Threshold choose a value between 2 and 10 or so. You will want to experiment with these settings while observing the preview over the images, until you get the best you feel you can find.

Unsharp Mask settings

Once you are satisfied with the settings in Unsharp Mask, press ok and apply it to the selected layer.

Select the next layer, and press ctrl-f to apply the last filter, which is our Unsharp Mask, to the selected layer. Repeat this step for each of the layers within the Master document.

Select next layer

Now we are ready to start creating images of the individual cards.

Part IV

Saving our card images.

From the toolbox, select the Rectangular Marquee Tool.

Rectangular Marquee Tool

With the Rectangular Marquee Tool, click and drag a box around the first card on the first layer. This will be our default card shape for the rest of the cards in the scans.

Select the card shape

Now we will create our individual card image. With the marquee box around the card image, press the following sequence of keys:

  1. ctrl-c (to copy the data within the selected area to the clipboard.)
  2. ctrl-n (to open the New File dialog window.)
  3. enter (presses the Ok button.)
  4. ctrl-v (pastes the data image from the clipboard to the new file as a new layer.)

We now have a new untitled document with a single card image. Press ctrl-alt-shift-s to open the Save For Web dialog window.

In the upper-right of this window, choose JPEG High in the Presets drop down menu. Place a check in the box below for the option progressive. Next click on the arrow next to the quality value and drag the newly appeared slider to 100.

Save for Web

You can see the file size displayed in the lower left corner. A card image should be anywhere from about 90k to 150k for an average display size.

If this image preview looks good, and the file size is small enough, click Save and give the final card image a descriptive and unique name, such as something like 'lt-maj-1.jpg' (in this example lt is the Lebanese Tarot, maj tells me it is a major arcana card or a suit title if it were a minor, and 1 is its card number). Click Save.

Save final image

If you have saved the card image you may now close the untitled image and go back to the Master document.

Press the Shift key and use the directional arrows on the keyboard to move the Marquee box to the next card. To fine tune the placement of the Marquee box, let go of the Shift key and press just the arrow keys. Once you have the next card selected, repeat the Copy, New, Paste, Save process from the previous step. Repeat this until each card is saved individually.

Tip: When you reach one side of the row of cards in the Master document, do not unselect the Marquee box. Instead, select the next layer and adjust the position of the Marquee box to fit the nearest card. This way, each card has the same exact height and width as every other card in the set.

Should you accidentally click and lose your Marquee box selection, you can press ctrl-shift-d to reselect the last selection shape.

Part V

Your digitaly scanned Tarot deck.

Though the previous part was boring, practice and become quick at it and the process will be less painful. At the least, the scanning and processing job should involve content that you find intersting, making the whole method a bit more tolerable.

Now that you have individual card images of your Tarot deck, be sure to back them up so you do not waste your efforts. And now you are ready to enjoy your images or share them. But also please respect the copyright owner and do not illegally distribute the content without permission.

I hope this tutorial has been useful, and has helped you protect and enjoy your Tarot cards. Please feel free to contact me with suggestions for improvements or corrections. Thank you.