Is this possible even ?
I put 4 pictures on the flatbed scanner, scan them as a group (with white background from the scanner <-- heavy contrast with the scanned pictures). Now, I'm interested - is there some program which could determine the (little it may be) the rotation of those pictures, their boundaries and cut them up from the "big image" so that I get 4 picture images ?
I've no idea if this makes any sense ... if it doesn't ask away and I'll do my best to confuse you even further.
7 Answers
Photoshop Elements can automatically divide a scanned picture into subpictures.
Too bad your scanner didn't come with the software, but I've seen scanners come with software to divide pictures and even do corrections like if there were wrinkles in the pictures.
There is a new ImageMagick Script that does exactly what you are asking here:
4A similar was question asked in the ImageMagick forum, from what i gather, they only came up with a solution for single images, worth reading anyway:
auto-crop multiple old photographs from scanned image?
1I recommend AutoSplitter for that task. Detected subimages will be clipped and derotated automatically. You can also adjust all the clipping/rotating parameters manually to correct everything that is not accurate or missing.
I found an open-source alternative to AutoSplitter called Scanned Image Extractor. It's a desktop (GUI) application for Windows and Linux that can extract photos from a scanned image (both using automatic detection and manually).
For Mac users, two apps that do this: SnipTag (Has two tools: "Snip" for automatically cropping multiple scans, each containing multiple photos) and "Tag" for editing image metadata) and Snip - Batch Crop Scans (If you only need the auto-cropping function). Formats supported are JPG, TIFF, PNG and BMP. The cropped photos maintain resolution and format.
I scanned a boxful of photos with iPad Air and am thrilled with the outcome. After experimenting with a few iOS apps, I finally settled for Pic Scanner.* You can group scan four photos and it cuts them up into four separate images. This method is particularly practical if your photos are in albums and you don't want to removing and replace them as you have to for flatbed or feeder scanners.
If you are an Android user, you could use Heirloom. This app is similar to Pic Scanner. There is no group scan mode but it has automatic cropping.
- Update: This app now also has a pro version named Pic Scanner Gold, with more features.
