Hi all,

Like a lot of people, I've been archiving the family's old printed photographs, and am finding it rather
tedious to say the least! (Wish I'd never offered now! ;-) )

I've been looking around for tips on bulk scanning / saving etc., but not really come up with anything
useful.

What I've been doing is laying four photos on the scanner, saving the scan as a single image, then
opening this in Paint Shop Pro and cropping it four times to produce the finished four photographs. (It
seems quicker that way than scanning / saving each photo separately, then opening each separately to
clean up the edges etc.

What I'm looking for (preferably freeware) is a tool that can "look" at an image, and crop out "shapes"
that are different from the "background", if you see what I mean.

Or in other words, I can feed it one of these four photograph scans, and it can process this and save four
separate files. Hopefully, it could be batched, so I can pipe it a whole load of four image scans etc.

I've seen plenty of border removing tools that must use algorithms that intelligently separate "border" from
"picture", but I've yet to find what I need...?

Anyone? Anything out there I've missed? Any coders want to undertake the challenge?

--
HTH

Regards

James UK
See http://www.pricelesswarehome.org
for recommended Freeware software.

James UK wrote:
I looked for a while a few years ago, didn't find anything. There
might be now - SHOULD be as it would be an easy thing to implement.

--

dadiOH
____________________________

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....a help file of info about MP3s, recording from
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Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico

dadiOH leapt out of the bath and screamed "EUREKA!" before typing in alt.comp.freeware:

That's what I keep thinking... it can't be a hard thing to do, yet nothing seems to exist!

Thanks anyway.

--
HTH

Regards

James UK
See http://www.pricelesswarehome.org
for recommended Freeware software.

James UK wrote:
Hi James,

If you are talk about batch cropping where you set the
grid-points, that is actually easy and I implemented it in
one of the applications I sell.

If you are talking about 'smart-cropping', that is a totally
different matter all together. There are engines now that
will analyze a digital image no-problem. The rub is creating
the 'parameter set' that would do the actual cropping. There
are heuristic sets that could theoretically do it, but then
you would need a ES to implement it on. I know that the VA
Hospital in Tacoma, WA has been scanning and running some
test with an ES that does that and the last paper on the
subject that I read said the they were only have about a 5%
success rate with it. That was a couple of years ago, so
things might be different and of course MRI reading is still
more of an art than a science, but I think if there had been
any major breakthroughs they would have been published.

Ciao . . . C.Joseph

"A promise is nothing more than an attempt,
to respond to an unreasonable request."

http://blog.tlerma.com/
(A Windows professional's view of entering the Linux world)

James UK wrote:
Pixcavator may be interesting (although not for batch processing)

http://www.pixcavator.com/

On the download page it says on June 3:

Pixcavator 2.3 coming soon! There will be quite a few new
features. The main is that Pixcavator will display contours of objects
not just squares as before. The difference is enormous! It is much
more revealing and fun. And now you can also select objects by
clicking on them. Then you can remove them one by one or save them
in a separate file. If you would like to be notified, leave your e-mail.

--
Cheers,
Sietse Fliege

C.Joseph Drayton leapt out of the bath and screamed "EUREKA!" before typing in alt.comp.freeware:

Hi C Joseph,

Thanks for all the information.

I was thinking of a "smart" tool as you say, and I did wonder if I was a bit "ahead of my time"!

I have a feeling you've hit the nail of the head with the 5% success rate, as I'm sure I read about tools
that could "do" the job, it's just that they weren't that good at it yet.

Thanks again.
--
HTH

Regards

James UK
See http://www.pricelesswarehome.org
for recommended Freeware software.

Sietse Fliege leapt out of the bath and screamed "EUREKA!" before
typing in alt.comp.freeware:

Hi,

Now that IS interesting! Thanks for the link!

I'll have a look and leave an email address, I think.

Thanks again.

--
HTH

Regards

James UK
See http://www.pricelesswarehome.org
for recommended Freeware software.

James UK wrote:
Unfortunately (for us) the author has now created a company and released
the new version 2.3 as payware.

--
Cheers,
Sietse Fliege

Sietse Fliege wrote:
rats and phooey, another one bites the dust.

but. . .
for now at least. the last Freeware version is still available
(and redistribution is allowed:

Program: Pixcavator
Company: Intelligent Perception
Author: Peter Saveliev; Yuri Yakovlev
W: LFW
Ware: (Freeware) LFW (v 2.2.2)
http://www.pixcavator.com/

v 2.2.2 (2007-03-25) last Freeware version
http://www.pixcavator.com/files/PixcavatorSetup.exe
1306 KB

Thanks for the heads-up Sietse.

Susan
--
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Pricelessware & ACF: http://www.pricelesswarehome.org
Pricelessware: http://www.pricelessware.org (not maintained)

But 2.2 is still available on the site as freeware.

Sietse Fliege leapt out of the bath and screamed "EUREKA!" before
typing in alt.comp.freeware:

Thanks for the info. Appreciated.

--
HTH

Regards

James UK
See http://www.pricelesswarehome.org
for recommended Freeware software.