Scanned Pic of my Diamond!

[DancinGirl]

See if this pic loads - if not, I can try again.

Hey again all! Need the experts advice on this one?!

I just attempted numerous times to scan my diamond on my flatbed scanner here. I tried to make it a big image a few times to see detail, but failed miserably. I have the table flat down on it so I figured this would show up the best. Well - as you can see below, I have a large area of shadow (blackened) area in the pic. This actually isn''t what the diamond looks like - but for those experts out there, is this what happens when the cut isn''t IDEAL? Is this because of the light refraction? Or is it just not a good idea to scan stones face down on a scanner like I did? I do not have a digital camera, so this was the best idea I had.

Any advice or opinions?
Thanks!
DancinGirl

 

[Sierra Nevada]

Not an expert, but my guess is it's just very hard to get a good picture of a diamond from a flatbed scanner. Even the best photographs don't seem to truly capture the beauty of a diamond, since they can't capture the scintillation or the flashes of fire as it changes from color to color.

 

[optimized]

Hi DancinGirl,

A suspect you'll never get an extremely good scan of a diamond on a scanner for a couple of reasons...

The dark spot has to do with the fact that the imaging sensors in the scanner that "see" the item being scanned is actually slightly in front of the light source. This means that while the sensor is "reading" the diamond, the light source is actually very close to the diamond but slightly off to the side and illuminating the diamond at an extreme angle. It doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with the diamond, just that a scanner isn't the best way to make an image of a diamond.

Scanners typically don't have to show extremely great detail of very small items (like a diamond). I imagine that when you try to enlarge the image it becomes very "pixelated" (blocky looking). This is because most scanners have resolutions of anywhere from 300x300 dots per inch (for cheap/older scanners), up to 2400x2400 dpi (high-end). Most seem to be between 600-1200. This means that, with a 1 carat diamond being around 1/4 inch in diameter, chances are the scanner is only able to define it to a resolution of a few hundred pixels by a few hundred pixels, unless it is a very nice scanner. Not easy to enlarge an image of that type.

I noticed that your image is a bitmap of 112x114 pixels, which is not going to show a lot of detail. It's also a beefy 38Kb, which is due to the fact that it's a bitmap (BMP) file, which is not compressed at all. If you get some better images, you'll want to save them as (or convert them to) JPEGs for easier posting to the Internet.

If you don't have a digital camera but DO have a film camera, you may have better luck taking some regular photos of the diamond and scanning those into the computer.

Anyway, I think the scans you got, while small, actually came out pretty well. Purty! Unfortunately, you may have to find another way to get a picture of your gem.

Btw, be careful not to scratch the scanner's bed with your diamond, or everything else you scan will have some unsightly reminders of your diamond scanning experiment.

-Tim

 

[DancinGirl]

HAHAHA - so funny that you say that about the damaging the scanner during this experiment!!

After I finally took it out I realized that the top "spongy" part of the scanner had a nice pointy hole mark in it!!! WHOOPSIE! Hey at least I know it's got a nice pointed culet, right? HA!

Thanks very much for your info - yes I have an old scanner and I tried to see what would happen. When I originally tried to make it huge - it wouldn't save as a JPEG - so I just kept it in whatever format it would let me do!

Always an adventure with me I swear!
THANKS!

 

[Mara]

Well that stone looks pretty darn good to me....the half without the shadow that is. So if the other half in real life looks like the sparkly half...looks pretty gorgeous!

I have read on DT that scanning rings is a great way to get pictures..and actually I have to say that the pictures of some of these rings that have been scanned in (I like the eye-candy there) look pretty darn good--showcasing the stone very clearly and usually catching alot of sparkle in the stone due to the scanning light. I was planning to scan mine the next time I was at my friend's house with her scanner.

So maybe play around with the placement of the stone a bit...different angles or similar? See if the shadow goes away with different placements. You may also want to check out the DT post which was something like 'Post your engagement ring pictures here' or something...its like an 18 page post and somewhere inside of it people start talking about how to get pix by scanning your ring/diamond. The results were good...better than some with people's digi cameras even. Maybe it depends on your scanner too as Tim said.

But again..your diamond looks pretty hot--discounting the shadow which is probably just a trick of light.

 

[optimized]

I haven't read the threads on DT, but I would guess that any really good scans that might be there are probably done on relatively high-end scanners. Just judging by the size of the scan posted (114x112 including background), I would guess we're probably talking about a 600x600 scanner. This is great for common scanning tasks, but I'd guess may be a bit coarse for the type of stuff you're trying to do. Doesn't hurt to try though! Playing with diamonds is fun!

If more attempts are going to be attempted, I'd try keeping the lid of the scanner open and perhaps shining another light source into the scanner cabinet to try to illuminate the other side of the diamond. Maybe try a fairly powerful flashlight and try to reflect its light off the bottom of the cabinet back up into the stone? Maybe...

Another option may be to take a hike down to Kinko's (or similar) and asking them to use one of their professional scanners to make a few scans. Have them port the scans to a CD-ROM and you can then take it home and enlarge/modify the images. That would probably work pretty well, I would think. They might look at you funny while you're asking them to do it, but that could be half the fun, eh?

-Tim