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Although I did make two mystery posts using the new scanner, now I just did a couple image uploads to the site in the db section. I can certainly tell a difference in the quality between the two scanners. One is home and one is work, where the work one is not as good. I want to know whether or not the quality difference on the work scanner is bad enough for me not to use here? Let me know your opinions.

Home scanner example (or any of my additions from 2022)

https://www.tcdb.com/ViewCard.cfm/sid/52610/cid/1785778/

Work scanner example

https://www.tcdb.com/ViewCard.cfm/sid/334447/cid/19857716/

To clarify, it seems the work scanner is fine at first glance, it is just the zoom that reveals the inferiority of it.

The scan from your work scanner is 50% higher resolution so any scanner artifacts are more likely to show up.  There is lots of post processing you can enable when scanning as well that will change the outcome (making sure to use a "photo mode" or similar helps).  If you shrink the work image to the same as the home image you are not going to be able to tell the difference.

Either way both look absolutely fine to me.

Would help to scan two cards from the same set for comparison.  I don't see an issue with either card's images.

The home scanner has actual scanner software, for the work one I am using whatever built-in TWAIN software in conjunction with Irfanview. I have not used Irfanview for many years, I would prefer Fireworks but FW kept showing a scanner busy message when trying to use that. So as an example, using Irfanview I cannot set the DPI. When I was testing with MSPaint, it did have a DPI option that was defaulting to 200, and I had changed it to 300 but I can't know what DPI it is actually using.

Both are perfectly acceptable for TCDB.

All this time I constantly think that the current scanner I am using (deemed acceptable above) is either too bright or washed out but the end result seemed OK. Well today I had to reject my own scan because it finally has revealed to me what is lacking.

Here is a comparison of the back of 2002-03 Be a Player Signature Series, scan from COMC (obv)
https://i.imgur.com/XrfGbIa.jpg

Here is my personal scan:
https://i.imgur.com/utHFTnS.jpg

The COMC picture matches the actual card. My scanner is not picking up all of the colors.

Now I want to know how I can adjust the settings for the scanner to attempt to make up for this issue. There is no scanner software for my model (or maybe for my OS, I forget) so I am using Irfanview's TWAIN function. Changes I've made in the scanner settings in Control Panel don't seem to do anything and there is nothing in Irfanview I can change. If anyone has any ideas, let me know.

EDIT: I found the brightness/contrast settings and can get the background pattern to appear if I set brightness to -300
https://i.imgur.com/6d7FaOb.jpg

-300 and -500 appear to be the same so there is some sort of diminishing return.

DPI setting?

I changed it to 300 from 200. Contrast doesn't appear to change anything. There was no difference between 0 and -300 for example. I changed brightness back to -300.

Using these settings, I made new scans for this one
https://www.tcdb.com/ViewCard.cfm/sid/10435/cid/1537628/

Compared to another person's scan which is significantly brighter:
https://www.tcdb.com/ViewCard.cfm/sid/10435/cid/1537693/

However comparing the card in hand, now my color matches up and that other scan from 2014 is brighter than the actual card is.

300 DPI makes the text on back crisp vs 200 which is kinda jagged. Only issue left can be seen on the back of that OPC card where you can see a slight rainbow effect on the text area which is not actually present on the card. I don't think that is something I can change with settings. If it is a problem to submit a scan with that rainbow-like artifact, we can tag that back image for replacement and I can see about finding another scanner.

I scan at 600 and then resize if too big for TCDb. Try a higher dpi.