Photograph · Scan

TCcert

How to scan or take a picture

The crop and the grade both need a flat, well-lit card that fills the frame. A white-border card on pale wood, or a phone shot from the side, leaves desk in the picture and the report is only a hint.

Phone

  1. Lay the card flat on a contrasting table — dark desk for a white-border card, light desk for a dark back.
  2. Hold the phone directly above, not at an angle. The card should fill most of the frame, with a little table around it.
  3. Use even light. Turn away from a window or lamp that throws glare on the surface.
  4. Shoot front and back if you can. Use Turn 90° on the grader until the card stands the right way up.

Any scanner

  1. Scan at 300 dpi, colour, JPEG or PNG. Higher than 600 dpi only makes the file heavier.
  2. Duplex: two files per card, in the order the scanner writes them. We pair them and put the front on the left.
  3. Turn blank-page skip off. A dark card back is not a blank page.
  4. Unsleeve, flatten, and feed 10–20 cards at a time. Warped or sleeved cards jam.
  5. Wipe the glass. Dust reads as surface marks.
  6. Drop the folder on Scan a stack. We pair IMG_001 with IMG_002, or Scan.jpeg with Scan 2.jpeg. Unnamed cards stay on the stack — use Name there so the list does not disappear.

Mac · Ricoh fi-8170

  1. Install Ricoh’s Image Scanner Driver for macOS (ICA). PaperStream IP is Windows-only. USB only — do not put the fi-8170 on the network.
  2. Open Image Capture. Select the fi-8170. Colour, 300 dpi, JPEG.
  3. Turn duplex on. Save to one folder, for example a Scans/tccert folder in your home directory.
  4. Leave Image Capture’s names alone — Scan.jpeg, then Scan 1.jpeg or Scan 2.jpeg. The fi-8170 writes the back first; the stack desk moves it to the right. Swap a card if a back is still on the left.
  5. Press Scan. When the hopper is empty, drop that folder on the stack desk.

Windows · PaperStream

  1. Use PaperStream ClickScan or PaperStream Capture with the fi-8170 TWAIN driver.
  2. Profile: colour, 300 dpi, duplex JPEG. Blank-page skip off.
  3. Sequential names (IMG_001, IMG_002) or the same stem with front/back.
  4. Scan into one folder, then drop that folder on the stack desk.

If the photograph is too soft, too glare-lit, or we cannot lift the card off the table, the report says so and the grade stays conservative. A flat ADF scan grades as a scan (S), not a table photo (P).

Grade a card·Scan a stack·Signed-in TCSell desk