Flip-Pal Scrapbook Scanning is completed!

My sister, Nancy has just finished scanning and stitching 72 scrapbook pages - she even scanned Mom's handwritten notes that I used to create some of the narratives in the scrapbook.  She's a scanning diva!  She also took some photos of the scanning process which I'll post below to give you an idea of our process.  This is such a labor of love....

The Flip-Pal is about 6 inches by 8 inches.  Works like a normal scanner when you use the cover.  We've been getting about about 500 scans per set of rechargeable batteries. 

You can detach the cover, flip it upside down, and lay it on whatever you want to scan: 

 

Flip-Pal right side up

Flip-Pal flipped upside down

There are guide lines in the viewing window to help you line up your scan, but the Stitch program can deal with images that are a bit caddywhompus when it does its stitching thing.

Nancy put a white board down on the table and marked ledger lines on the sides to make a template (since she was scanning 72 pages, it simplified the task). Then with the scanner upside down, she scanned across the 12 x 12 scrapbook page in 3 steps, then moved down the page, making 12 scans in all for each page.  

First Scan

Second Scan

Third scan completes first horizontal pass

Fourth scan starts the second row. 

Note the overlap both vertically and horizontally as  you make the scanning pass.  

The Stitch program is on the SD card that you insert into your computer via your computer's card reader.  So you don't need to install any software on your computer. The images are also on the SD card.  Simply navigate to the SD card and open the Toolbox. Click on the Stitch Scans button and follow the prompts.  Follow the simple prompt for selecting the scans needed to complete your page and click on the Open button.  The software takes it from there and shows you the finished project.

 

To clean up the white space outside the image, open your favorite photo editing software and crop away the unneeded space.  I use Photoshop Elements 10 and this is my end result. 

  Happy high school graduation, Dad!

 We saved the finished scan in three places (we don't want to have to do this again!)  In the external drive we use as our photo master drive, we created a folder in the genealogy root called Scrapbook Scans.  Inside, we put the scan named as it came out of Flip-Pal.  Then we saved the same scan with a simple name, Scrapbook19.  In a separate folder on my desktop, we also saved the original scans and stitched image in case we should ever need to look at these again. Probably too redundant, but not that much work and maybe it will save some future work.

Just a note of warning:  When we made the paper scrapbook, we used the original photos.  Shame on us (but we didn't know much about research-based genealogy methods)!  For some photos, we have duplicate pictures, but for some, like my Dad's high school graduation photo, the original is in the scrapbook.  Of course, I use archival quality scrapbook supplies, so the photos should be OK.  But a future project will be to identify and scan the originals that only exist in this scrapbook.  A quick look tells me that this photo of Dad's graduating class will be one of them. Future scrapbook projects will use copies of important original photos and the originals will be saved with the genealogy records.  

Watch for these images to show up in future blog posts.  And beware that these pages are my Mom's memories and family lore and so, inaccuracies abound.  

But now that I've got my Mom's photos sorted and boxed away for future reference, I'm ready to tackle finding and sharing the sources to prove or disprove our family stories.  Can't wait.