Scanning and scanning and scanning….part 2…..

I spent about four hours scanning illustrations for the retreat book today. When it was all said and done, there were about 75 images. I have a couple I’m waiting to get from JD, meaning that the final tally will be close to 80, which does not count the photos of the modern appearance of the sites along the driving tour routes. I don’t know if Ted will permit us to use all of them–there are 80 for the main text, close to 50 for the driving tours, and 16 maps–but I would rather give him too many and have him cull some out than not enough and have a deficient book.

I tried something new today. The computer that I had been using for the scanner has been in my office since I went back out on my own at the end of March. So, I was looking at disconnecting it and bringing it home, or coming up with a new solution. I checked and found a Mac OSX driver for the scanner, installed it on my Mac laptop, brought the scanner downstairs, and scanned all of the illustrations while I suffered through the misery of yet another horrible performance by the Philadelphia Eagles this afternoon. It literally took about four hours to get them all scanned (600 DPI, saved as TIFF files), but they’re done. I have to admit that I had been REALLY dreading this task, and am very happy indeed that it’s now over with.

Fortunately, I have a very large collection of images of my own that I’ve accumulated over the years. It makes the job of locating and identifying illustrations for my book projects much easier and also goes a long way toward expediting the process to the extent possible. Most of them have now been digitized, so I doubt I will have to go through another four hour marathon again any time soon. Which will be just fine by me. It’s a pain. But, it’s done, and that’s the important thing.

As I’ve said previously, this is going to be a BIG book, more than 500 pages plus all of the images and maps mentioned here. I can’t wait to see this one in print.