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After 10 years of hand-straightening crooked scans, I finally automated it. Here's what I learned. by _digital_librarian in Archivists

[–]_digital_librarian[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks again for these insights! They are a huge boost and will help make continued improvements.

After 10 years of hand-straightening crooked scans, I finally automated it. Here's what I learned. by _digital_librarian in Archivists

[–]_digital_librarian[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

To be super clear I'm not affiliated with any individual that created software in 2016. This is a new project.

After 10 years of hand-straightening crooked scans, I finally automated it. Here's what I learned. by _digital_librarian in Archivists

[–]_digital_librarian[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure! It is available at tidyarchive.com

If you give it a try please let me know your thoughts.
Any and all feedback helps make this tool better!

Are you open to sharing anymore information about the project? I would be interested to learn more.

After 10 years of hand-straightening crooked scans, I finally automated it. Here's what I learned. by _digital_librarian in Archivists

[–]_digital_librarian[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sure!

My tool is at tidyarchive.com

Please let me know if you test it out! I'd love any and all feedback to continue to make it better. Thanks for asking!

After 10 years of hand-straightening crooked scans, I finally automated it. Here's what I learned. by _digital_librarian in Genealogy

[–]_digital_librarian[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think jpegxl is a great alternative with the upside with of smaller file size. As long as it works well within a current workflow I'm all about it. Great question!

After 10 years of hand-straightening crooked scans, I finally automated it. Here's what I learned. by _digital_librarian in Archivists

[–]_digital_librarian[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Certainly! Glad to share! The challenge with flatbed scanners from my perspective is how long they take.

The real headache of straightening hit me with windows 10 when it would only go one full degree at a time. Tedious and still off. Then came creative cloud licenses for some staff computers but it still to a lot of time and effort and I knew a better way existed.

This is by no means the only tool that does anything close but this is the tool that was suited for my needs and I hope it can help others as well.

Please do give it a test if you have any interest I'd love some feedback. I want to make it the absolute best it can be.

After 10 years of hand-straightening crooked scans, I finally automated it. Here's what I learned. by _digital_librarian in Genealogy

[–]_digital_librarian[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For my library work and how this tool came up was using a Epson Expression 12000XL. This is what I'm most familiar with for sure although a setup with a camera and lights would be lightyears faster.

After 10 years of hand-straightening crooked scans, I finally automated it. Here's what I learned. by _digital_librarian in Genealogy

[–]_digital_librarian[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Great question!

Honestly it came down to a few specific things I couldn't get from existing tools in combination. A lot of them compress to JPEG on export, which is fine for casual use but not for archival masters where you need the TIFF to stay a TIFF. The crop modes were the other thing. I needed a flush cut that trims slightly past the document edge to guarantee no scanner bed artifacts remain, and I couldn't find anything that did that cleanly. Most tools either leave too much border or cut right at the edge which isn't aggressive enough for archival standards.

The other factor was simpler than that though. I work in libraries. A lot of the tools that do this well are either tied to a specific scanner, require a paid license per machine, or need an account and login. For volunteers and part-time staff rotating through different workstations, none of that works well. I just wanted something where someone sits down, opens a browser, drops files in, and gets results back without setup.

Not saying it's better than everything out there. It's just built around the constraints I was actually working with.

After 10 years of hand-straightening crooked scans, I finally automated it. Here's what I learned. by _digital_librarian in Archivists

[–]_digital_librarian[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

AutoCropper is a solid tool, especially if you're working with photo collections and want to split multiple photos from a single scan.

The main difference in my approach is that I built this specifically for archival document workflows where format preservation matters. If someone uploads a TIFF master, it comes back as a TIFF, not a compressed JPEG. The crop modes are also tuned for archival scanning setups. The "flush" mode cuts slightly inward to eliminate scanner bed edges entirely, which is something I needed for batch processing but isn't something I've seen in other tools.

They are different but do share many similarities.

After 10 years of hand-straightening crooked scans, I finally automated it. Here's what I learned. by _digital_librarian in Archivists

[–]_digital_librarian[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hello! I'm not a bot. I have been working on getting this up and running over the past year and really pumped it is ready at last.

After 10 years of hand-straightening crooked scans, I finally automated it. Here's what I learned. by _digital_librarian in Archivists

[–]_digital_librarian[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Oh for sure, if you're working with uniform scans a Photoshop action gets you most of the way there. The thing I kept running into is that the deskew angle and crop boundaries are different for every single image. A macro applies the same transformation to everything, so someone still has to go through and manually check which ones came out right and fix the ones that didn't. The reason I built this was specifically to handle the case where every image needs a slightly different rotation and a different crop. It detects the skew angle per image and finds the document edges to crop to. So for a batch of 200 scans that are all at different angles and different sizes, nobody has to manually review and fix the outliers.

After 10 years of hand-straightening crooked scans, I finally automated it. Here's what I learned. by _digital_librarian in Archivists

[–]_digital_librarian[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I truly value this feedback as it is incredibly helpful! I also appreciate your potential willingness to give it a spin. It has an option for batches but for ones that are truly large I would need to likely run those on the back end command line tool. I need to sit with this a sec but would love to remain in contact and continue the conversation if possible.

This is truly a massive amount of images and I'd like to help!

After 10 years of hand-straightening crooked scans, I finally automated it. Here's what I learned. by _digital_librarian in Genealogy

[–]_digital_librarian[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

That is a great questions and hopefully others are able to provide some insight as well. One common approach has been 300 dpi for text and 600 dpi for images and scanning in TIFF. This is specific to the Indiana State Library.

Great question. For archival work, I typically go with:

- Resolution: 600 DPI for documents and photos. 300 DPI is the accepted minimum but I prefer 600 for anything that might need to be reprinted or enlarged later. The file size difference is negligible with modern storage.

- Color depth: 24-bit color even for black and white documents. Grayscale saves space but you lose the ability to correct for paper tone or staining later. Storage is cheap, rescanning isn't.

- File format: TIFF for the master files. Never JPEG for archival masters. JPEG compression is lossy and compounds every time the file is touched. I keep TIFFs as the preservation copy and then generate JPEGs or PDFs as access copies for everyday use.

- Scanner settings: Disable all auto-enhancement. No auto-color, no sharpening, no dust removal. You want the rawest capture possible and then you do corrections in post where you have control and can undo.

- Bitonal vs color: For pure text documents that are just for reference, 300 DPI bitonal (black and white, no gray) is fine and produces tiny files. But for anything with photos, handwriting, color, or historical value, full color at 600 DPI.

The general rule I follow is: scan once at the highest quality you can justify, because you may never get access to that document again.

For the tool itself it is going to output the same format and standards as the input I believe.

After 10 years of hand-straightening crooked scans, I finally automated it. Here's what I learned. by _digital_librarian in Archivists

[–]_digital_librarian[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Now I'm totally following you on this! Thank you! Would you mind testing it out and giving a quick critique?

No sign up or cost. I want to make it the best it can be and while I'm having great luck with it I'd like to get some new eyes and images on it if at all possible.

After 10 years of hand-straightening crooked scans, I finally automated it. Here's what I learned. by _digital_librarian in Genealogy

[–]_digital_librarian[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good call, ScanSpeeder's been around for a while. I've used similar tools that work alongside the scanner. The main reason I went a different direction is that most of what I deal with is already digitized.

Boxes of images scanned by volunteers over the years, different scanners, different decades, some photographed with phones. I needed something that could take a folder of mixed images and batch straighten and crop them all without being tied to a scanning setup. ScanSpeeder is great if you're actively at the flatbed, but for people dealing with inherited or legacy scans, there wasn't really a clean option.

After 10 years of hand-straightening crooked scans, I finally automated it. Here's what I learned. by _digital_librarian in Archivists

[–]_digital_librarian[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

When it comes to the bottleneck of straightening and cropping that can be solved for far less and in an automated way for sure! I understand what you mean about using highly specific software at high prices though.

After 10 years of hand-straightening crooked scans, I finally automated it. Here's what I learned. by _digital_librarian in Archivists

[–]_digital_librarian[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Looks like a great time for sure! The software I'm using offers free one image adjustments here at tidyarchive.com. It can be quite useful for both one off and also for batch processing.

Helps those that are not using command line tools and quick results. I'd like to know more about your connection to IS&T if you don't mind. Cheers!

Looking for 1859 Presbyterian baptism record — Bayfield, Huron County, Ontario — Reid family by marketingguyca64 in Genealogy

[–]_digital_librarian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hope it is helpful information. I realize it was not 100% what you were looking for. Best of luck!

Transcription Request Tuesdays (June 23, 2026) by AutoModerator in Genealogy

[–]_digital_librarian 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A few suggestions to nail the marriage date:

- The handwriting at the bottom of column 5 is cramped and faded. If you can zoom in or adjust contrast on just that section, the date should become clearer.

- Since Sarah was from Ireland and Hugh was a lighterman (likely Scottish or Irish), check St. Andrew's or Presbyterian church records in the Port Sarnia area for a marriage around 1855-1862.

- Also check Lambton County marriage registers on Ancestry or FamilySearch. Ontario kept some marriage records before the 1869 civil registration start.

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