DVD Cover Scanning: Hints and Tips
Have you ever lost a DVD, had your DVD collection stolen or damaged in an unforeseen accident? Strange things happen, which is why more people are backing up their precious DVD collection, potentially worth thousands of dollars. While people create backup copies of their movies, many forget to create backup copies of the DVD covers inside the boxes. If you want your DVD collection to look brilliant on display, then they must have covers. That is why it is a good practice to scan your collection of DVD covers, especially those rare covers that may be difficult to find on the Internet at a later stage.
Scanning a DVD cover is simple, however it does require you to have some basic Photoshop knowledge/skills. We need to do some basic image editing to make sure our covers are perfect if we ever need to print them to serve as replacements. Here are some tips to help you get the most out of your scans.
– The first tip does not require any computer. Instead, I recommend taking the DVD cover out of its box and placing it under a stack of heavy books. It is recommended that you leave it there for about a week, however even a day makes a difference. This step helps to flatten the spine of the cover and will make the editing process much easier.
– When scanning, be sure to set your dpi (dots per inch) to 600. This will give you a large image with a lot of image information and detail. This setting will help to better edit the cover.
– It is recommended that you disable all filters such as sharpness, brightness, contrast, etc. You will get best results by editing these settings once the cover is scanned into Photoshop.
– Select the screenless option. This setting helps eliminate the moiré pattern (streaking effect) that plagues so many scanned images.
– Once the scan is complete, you should immediately open the levels tool (image > adjustments > levels) to fix the black, medium and white tones on the DVD cover. For a more detailed explanation on how to use the levels tool, please refer to the following link.
– Fix any dust or tears on your cover using the clone tool. If you’re working on a solid color, you can use the Brush tool, which can sometimes be much faster and more efficient. Remember to play around with the opacity settings on these tools to ensure your repairs look authentic.
– Use the gaussian blur tool to remove the remaining effects of moiré patterns (not always necessary).
– Reduce your DVD cover to 300 DPI before saving. We don’t require 600 DPI to print and it also saves on storage.
These are the basic steps for creating high-quality backups. Remember that some DVD covers may require more work than others depending on the age, quality and color of the DVD cover.
