[scribus] Scanning photos for a book project

[Rolf-Werner Eilert]

I am about to make a family chronicle with a lot of old photos. The 
older ones are of course baryte paper prints which have a nice rough 
surface.

Scanning the first photos, I find that there is too much light on the 
shadows, and the surface structure results in tiny white stripes and 
spots, reflections which show the paper structure but may be disturbing 
when the photos are viewed in the book.

With the Gimp I can easily compress the shadows a bit so that black 
becomes black, but the tiny spots remain.

The scanning tablet from the TWAIN interface for this scanner (an office 
Brother 3-in-1) only allows for tweaking brightness and contrast. I 
didn't find any other option to scan, and I don't know if it's usual to 
set up brightness and contrast accordingly, and how. (And I don't know 
whether you would scan in 24bit colours or in grayshades for 
black-and-white photos...)

So there are actually 2 problems: There is no automatic for finding the 
right black value point, and there is the problem that the lamp lights 
the paper structure too much. I tried to turn the photos by 90°, but to 
no avail.

What would you guys do here? I don't want to scan 100+ photos only to 
see that it was a fail, so I ask before I actually start working :)

Is there a chance to install another, more intelligent scan tablet or 
TWAIN interface? And would you accept the lights on the paper structure 
as given, maybe "nice to look at"?

Thanks for your opinions!

Rolf