A while back I had a home project converting prints from my photo albums to digital files.  At the time , my setup was fairly simple:  a 300 DPI UMAX scanner, and multiple SCSI hard disks of 2 or 4GB each.  I figured I had enough hard disk space and shouldn’t have any problems scanning the pictures.

Turns out that there were several problems, mainly from trying to make the job go faster.  I scanned the images to TIFF, and as part of the scan process, I also did some post-processing. During the scan process, I had multiple pictures laid on the scanning glass.  This allowed me to scan multiple pictures at the same time.  Unfortunately, not all of the pictures were set at right angles and I had to adjust the scans by rotating the pictures by several degrees.

Though not a very common occurence, it does happen that sometimes when taking pictures, the shot is not leveled.  This usually happens when the photographer is not paying attention and frames the picture at an angle.  Admittedly, there are some pictures which look better when skewed.  In fact, some purposely take skewed pictures.  But on the whole, a skewed picture does not make a good picture.

Making sure the picture is leveled is a simple matter of paying attention.  A beach scene for instance, or shooting a sunset are examples of pictures which focus is a level horizon.  In the case of a skewed picture, the eye notices that the picture is degree off by as little as a degree or two.  It’s enough to ruin a perfectly good picture.