The Croppening

crop3.JPG
Over the past several weeks I’ve scanned a bunch of field notes. When I make a scan, it usually looks something like this:

crop1.JPG
(Apologies for the poor image quality)

Note the negative space around the item.The reason for this is a) the book scanner’s framing tool is somewhat clumsy (you can’t move individual lines of the frame box) and b) jagged white lines sometimes appear along the edges of the frame.

crop4.JPG
crop5.JPGKinda hard to see, but it’s there.

Anyway, if I box the frame scan too close to the object during the image capture, those white lines are then too close for me to safely crop out later without eating into the item (you want a little negative space in the finished scan, so the reader can see the whole of the item). Hence, lots of negative space.

And so I’ve been in the process of revisiting the field notes, one page at a time, and cropping them to an aesthetically pleasing item-to-negative space ratio. So this…

crop8.JPGNow looks like this:

crop9.JPG
(Again, ugh, that image quality. I promise I’ll learn about screen capturing one of these days)

One down, I’m-afraid-to-even-count more to go!