You may remember my animated gif tutorial on getting your high end cards to sparkle: https://tanmanbaseballfan.com/2017/03/making-high-end-cards-sparkle-online-animated-gif-tutorial.html

That may be a lot of work for some folks, so here is what I consider the next best thing.  Want to get beautiful scans of your card each and every time?

Consider not scanning.

Let’s take a look at a few examples:  2017 Donruss Signature Series Autograph Blue #/99.  Beautiful card, right?  (As an aside, EVERY ’17 Sig Series Canseco card I’ve seen looks like someone sneezed on the printing plates – what gives?!)

Gorgeous card!  It doesn’t look like a uniform scan.  Okay, no problem.  So you slide this puppy into your scanned, and voila!

Wait … where is the freaking rainbow?!?!?!

Now listen, I know a bunch of you fancy pants people have sweet scanners that do the job JUST fine.  But there are MANY folks out there that don’t have this.  My solution?  A free app called Cam Scanner.  I have used this for years to scan and make pdf files instead of actually scanning and saving to my computer.  I recently realized you can use it to “scan” cards as well.  Simply position your card in the perfect light setting, and snap a pic in the app.  Anchors are set automatically around your card, at which point you can easily drag them to the appropriate spots!

The app then does the rest of the work for you.  Now you have the best of both worlds.

They look great when lined up all together!

Here is another gorgeous refractory/rainbowy run that would look crazy dull w/out doing this:

If you are like me, you spend more time looking at pictures of cards online than actually in hand.  I hope this little tip helps you personally get more enjoyment out of collecting!