Scanning problem (white space surrounding photos/documents)

[Connor_SRY]

When I scan a photo or document on my Officejet 4500 Wireless (used with Windows 7) the resulting image is surrounded by white space (see attached image ) whether I scan it as a jpeg or pdf. I thus have to crop everything I scan (which is only really a problem since I'm an amateur animator and often scan a huge number of images at a time).

I've tried placing the photo in different parts of the scanning surface and even outlining images in black to help distinguish them from the white background of the scanner lid.

The only reasons left  I can think of are 1) the glass or background surface is dirty (though I tried wiping them down and saw no result) or 2) the background surface doesn't cover the whole scanning surface (notice the black line on left side of image).

Any ideas/comments/suggestions how I could overcome this would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!!

[AlwaysNeon]

Well, just to let you know that the printer you are working with does not determine the portion of the scanned area that you are going to use. So your best option will be to use the cropping feature or locate a third party scanner software that can detect that area. The problem with that kind of software is in determining the areas which are "good" and "bad" so you could end up with a scanned image with large portions of white which could be lost.

I will look around for a software which can meet your needs, but there are some technical issues with that software and the level of hardware that is in that low-end printer. 

 

[Connor_SRY]

Hi, sorry for the late reply!

I would appreciate so much if you could find a software. I did kind of a half-assed search recently, but honestly I'm not exactly sure what to look for or where to look for it.
Like I said, I have just been cropping them manually, it's just a pain when I'm often scanning dozens of images at a time.

Thank you in advance!

[AlwaysNeon]

I have looked at a few options, and I have not been able to find any software which does what you are looking for. The problem in the programming is as I described, there is no way for a computer to differentiate between "good" whites and "bad" whites to crop by. That is the reoccurring theme that I see in the version histories of various programs where it was removed. 

I am sorry for the inconvenience, but It does appear that you will have to manually crop the pictures yourself. 

I hope this information is useful!