These are settings tuned by @prochaos that many people swear by.
I’ve had to link to it many times so I think a designated thread makes it easier. Feel free to post your settings below if they differ.
Thank you Scott and Elliot for this.
I’m just wondering is there a reason that you use the first version of the Epson Scan application instead of the newer Epson Scan 2 released in June 2023? Or have you since made the change to that?
Thanks
Probably because the guide is from 2020 lol
fwiw scan 2 works sufficiently well for scanning my raw cards in great quality with the settings from this thread (well with as many of the settings as scan 2 supports lol)
Epson Scan 2 Settings
Here are the same settings as above but for Epson Scan 2. Before editing your settings, you have to put a card in the scanner and click “Preview”. If you don’t do this, the color options will be disabled.
Any settings not shown are unchanged from the defaults.
The default page:
Click the “Advanced Settings” tab
Click the “Detailed Adjustments"…” button
Click the “Histogram Adjustment” tab
Click “Scan Settings” then select “Save current settings…” and name it whatever you want, such as “20 20 10”.
Click “Scan” and make sure everything works!
Oh wow! Thank you so much - does this happen to include any “prizm or refractor” type sports cards? Or do you do strictly TCG with these settings? I really appreciate you.
I’ve never tried it with those types of cards so I can’t say for certain, but everything that I’ve scanned has looked incredible. I would be surprised if it didn’t work on prizm or refractor types 
I haven’t tried with these types, but it works well for different holo types like the Carddass.
I’ve done everything and found everything as you suggested, except for the last step. Where is “Scan Settings”???
Amazing!
Scratch that! Found scanner settings.
Question: my background has a reddish tint; when I close the lid to scan, the results are great, however it’s a white background.
How do I get clean scans with a black background?
For those of you who swear by these settings:
A. Do you leave the flap up or down when scanning?
B. Do you have a reddish/brown background to your scans?
Idk about these settings, but what kind of lighting do you have near the scanner? Do you get the same effect if you turn the lights off?
Great question! And do you recommend leaving scanning top open or closed? (Another app I’m using gets best results with top left open)
I always scan with it closed, I didn’t even know you could scan with it open. If you want a black background you can remove the document mat (the white insert at the top) and either put some black cardboard-esque piece in its place or tape something black to it. I don’t mind the white background so I don’t have any recommendations for that.
I scan open so the background is black. I make sure to align exactly the same way, you can also buy scanner bed frames so you can align more easily. Then I use a simple script with ImageMagick to crop all the images in bulk and save them.
Got you! So you use ImageMagick in conjunction with the Epson 2 Scanner App?
Lid open in a dark room will give you that black/empty background effect
If you do a bulk scan session, and if they are all aligned, you can write a bit of code to automatically cut and crop the images and output everything. It saves quite a bit of time and makes the output consistent.
