The Internet License Plate Gallery: Scanning - by Rich Wiggins

Scan Your Plate!

For best results, cruise on down to your local Kinko's (or local equivalent) and ask to rent the design station. This computer is usually the one the graphic artists fight over, as they have gobs of memory and most importantly a color scanner.

Clean your plate, and place it carefully on the scanner, with the left side of the plate facing the side of the scanner where the light starts scanning from (this will give you left to right lighting). Do a prescan and realign your plate. Scan the plate using the scanning software included on the design station. Save the file as a TIFF.

Photoshop Reduction Instructions

First switch to RGB mode (Mode | RGB). Now crop and clean the scanned plate up in Photoshop using increased saturation and contrast (Image | Adjust | Hue/Sat and Brightness/Contrast) to regain some of the color lost during the scan (but don't overdo it). Resize the plate to 120 pixels wide, using the "Image Size" command (Image | Image Size). Crop to 60 pixels tall. Sharpen using the unsharp mask filter at the default settings (Filter | Sharpen | Unsharp Mask). Save a copy as a Compuserve GIF. Reduce in GIF Wizard. Mix well. That's it! Also, send us the original unreduced scan/pix as a high quality JPEG, just in case.

Don't Have Photoshop?

For those of you without Photoshop, or equivalent graphics program, just send us the TIFF/Max JPEG and we'll take care of it.

Comments are welcome

Produced by Richard Wiggins and Andrew King and

Created: June 23, 1997
Revised: May 15, 2001