My old faithful scanner, an Epson 3490 just died a few days back and I've bought a new Epson V350 for a few books I plan to scan. But before that, I put it to the test and see what is better from the old respecful one I had. All I can say is WHOOA, what a year in technical innovation can do.

I put my Lmited Edition of Hansel and Gretel, illustrated by my favorite illustrator Kay Nielsen on the scan bed again. My old scanner has a bit of problem scanning one of the illustrations and I just want to see what is improved. To my surprise, the new scanner can produce a much more vibrant colors, with lots more details and the result is just close to perfect.

So in the testing process, I've scanned 10 others B/W illustrations from the same book that I did not scanned previously for your perrusals, these are new.

Now to the good thing and bad thing. The good thing is the quality of the scanned images are almost perfect as they can be, without having to spend thousands of dollars for the latest & greatest. However, you won't see a big difference in term of quality in the reduced image. The bad thing is, when looking back at my one year of work on this site. I'm not entirely pleased with the quality of the old prints and I want to put all the books back to the scanner again in addition to the new books that I've just acquired.

So I'll be doing both for awhile for the next year. Updating some of my old favorite ones and adding new books as they come. Enjoy.

-Minh Lai

Other Nielsen's works in our gallery: