( 
)How To Create Eye-Catching Scans Of Your Sports Cards
Note: This is my first eBay guide so I don't have any experience with it whatsoever. I used large pictures while writing this, but it looks like eBay might be resizing them anyways. I apologize in advance if this automatic resizing brings down the quality of the pictures included in this guide. I'm just working with what I've got.
When you're scanning your sports cards, it's important to remember that customers will only see what is shown to them. If your scans are dark, discolored, uncentered, or just plain ugly, they might hesitate to buy from you, causing lower bids and in some cases, none at all. Customers want to see what they buy, and something as condition-sensitive as sports cards should have the most descriptive pictures available. You'd be surprised how much presentation plays a part in your eBay sales. If you need help creating beautiful, eye-catching scans, then this guide is for you.
What you will need to follow the steps in this guide:
1) Adobe Photoshop (I used Adobe Photoshop CS2 for the examples in this guide)
2) A working, installed flatbed scanner.
STEP 1 - Raw or Protected?
Take your card out of it's protective sleeve and top-loader and place it in the flatbed scanner. Be very careful with it as it is condition-sensitive merchandise. I usually put the card on the sleeve, slip it into the scanner, and when it comes time to pick it back up, slip the sleeve underneath the card as carefully as possible and lift it up out of the scanner. Many sellers scan their cards while they are still inside their protective sleeves/toploaders, which is understandable, but that extra plastic in the scan negatively affects the scan. Here is an example of a card that was scanned while still in it's sleeve/toploader:
Now here's that same card, but scanned "raw", or without it's sleeve/toploader:
See the difference? The first scan has shiny plastic all over it, and the colors are dulled. The second scan is a lot clearer, and you can see how the light of the scanner shines on certain parts of the card, which just looks cool.
STEP 2 - Open the Scanner Window
Open Adobe Photoshop. Click on File --> Import --> and choose the scanner that you are going to use. I have a scanner that connects via USB, so it just says "USB scanner," but it might be different for you.
STEP 3 - Change the Resolution and Scan the Card
The scanner window should be open now. Change the resolution to 150 dpi and click the "Scan" button. I choose 150 dpi because it provides a large, crisp picture, which is what you want on your auction. You can preview it or try to crop it here, but there really is no need. You'll be cropping it later anyways. When it's done scanning, exit out of the scanner window by pressing the "Exit" button.
STEP 4 - Center the Card
You should now be in photoshop, with a window open showing your scan. Right now it looks ugly; it's probably uncentered. the color is a bit off, and you have the rest of the scanner scanned along with it. It's time to fix all of that.
First, we are going to center the card so when you crop it, you're not cutting off any edges of the card in the scan. Click and hold the Eyedropper Tool in Photoshop. It gives you three options: Eyedropper Tool, Color Sampler Tool, and the Measure Tool. Choose the Measure Tool. Now click on View --> Actual Pixels and then manually resize the workspace so you can see your entire card. You might have to move around the workspace to find the card, depending on where it was in the scanner when you scanned it.
Now, with the Measure Tool selected, click and hold on one corner of the card and drag a line all the way to another corner of the card. Make sure it is on the very edge of the corners, and make sure the line goes across 1/4 of the perimiter of the card (1/4 as in 1 out of the four sides of the card). Do not drag the line across the card diagonally. It should look like this:
With the line now drawn, click on Image --> Rotate Canvas --> Arbitrary. A window will pop up that lets you input a numerical angle and choose clockwise or counter-clockwise, but since you used the Measure Tool before, that info should already be adjusted, so just click on OK. The card should now be centered perfectly, depending on your accuracy with the Measure Tool. Here is my card again, only perfectly centered:
STEP 5 - "Crop" the Card
Although you now have a perfectly centered scan, you still want to eliminate any whitespace. This clears up memory (the more whitespace, the larger the picture; the larger the picture, the larger the file is when it's saved), and leaves more room for the card itself when eBay resizes your picture. I say "crop" because we're not actually going to use the crop tool, yet what we are doing, in a sense, is cropping it.
Click on the Rectangular Marquee Tool. Click on one corner of the card (make sure it is the very edge of the corner), and drag your mouse diagonally across the card to the opposite corner. You should now have a perforated box, perfectly encasing your card. Here is an example of what it should look like:
STEP 6 - Tweak the Levels
Note: Tweaking the levels may be construed as doctoring an image, but when done right, as shown in this guide, it only helps make the scan look like the actual card. Photoshop and other programs should NEVER be used to actually doctor auction scans to make them look better than they actually are.Our next step is to tweak the levels. To tell the truth, I don't really know what this does. It was just a tip given to me from a professional graphic artist. I'm only assuming it messes with the greyscale, but whatever it does, it's very noticeable. Hit Ctrl+L to bring up the Levels window. In that window, you should see a graph that looks similar to this:
See that black stuff? It doesn't always look like this. Many times the black stuff will be towards the middle, with none touching the sides. See the markers on the bottom? You can drag those across the line to tweak the levels. General rule of thumb is to move the left marker to the right until it touches the black stuff, and then move the right marker to the left until it touches the black stuff. Then move the middle marker to the left, just to lighten the image a bit. You will see the changes to the scan as you drag the markers. Remember: Only alter it until it looks like the actual card to the naked eye. Don't make it darker or lighter than it actually is. My example is actually different from the norm, with the black stuff touching the sides, but we can still tweak it a little bit. This is what the graph looks like when I'm done:
As you can see I just brought the sides in a little bit, and lightened it by moving the middle marker to the left a bit. Not much needed to be done with the levels just because this particular card doesn't need that much. Other cards will need more drastic changes than what I just made here. Here's the end result:
STEP 7 - Tweak the Hue
The last thing we need to do in order to fix the discoloration of the scan is to tweak the hue. Hit Ctrl+U to bring up the Hue window. You should see different options; the two you should pay most attention to is saturation and lightness. Here are the changes I made to my card:
I noticed the colors in the scan weren't nearly as intense as the colors on the actual card, so I increased the saturation a good amount. I then brought lightness up a bit just so everything doesn't look so dark. Your end result should be a scan of your card that actually looks like your card when seen up close. Here is my end result:
I hope you see the differences. They're subtle, but noticeable at the same time. You'll see what I mean when you try this yourself. Save the image as a .jpg, bring the quality down to 6 when prompted (to save dial-up users from hour-long loading times) and upload it to eBay. I hope this guide helps!
*UPDATE*
Because eBay resizes your pictures, it's best to host your large, 150 dpi scan on your own hosting space and include it as an image tag in the HTML portion of your auction description. If you don't have hosting space, you will want to resize it to a smaller size so it doesn't look distorted on eBay. Before you do, though, you want to turn it into a smart object so it doesn't lose its quality. Only Adobe Photoshop CS has that ability (I believe).
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