Random Geek Guys

I've read over several pages and forums on the internet that exchange tips and troubles with scanning LP album art. Some suggest purchasing an A3 scanner, which can be costly. Many attempt doing this with an A4 scanner but don't succeed. Here's my way of successfully scanning album art and joining halves together with photo editing software, all for free, successfully. Many people encounter problems doing this, in particular the process of joining two or more halves together. So here's my way...

I use an Epson CX 5500 printer with an A4 scanner. As you can see, LP album covers are much bigger than the scanner itself.
I scan each side of the cover in 4 halves - 4 individual images, and make sure that each time, the cover is aligned straight, which allows the joining process much easier (remember to take the actual record out of the cover).
Very important: I most often hold the scanner's top... door(?) down when I'm scanning these images, to prevent light from affecting the colour of the images. This also makes the process of joining the 4 halves together much easier.
With a scanner such as this one, not pressing down the top of the scanner means that the scans will turn out with different brightness levels and colours, meaning that you'll get very noticeable traces of the edges of the images when joining them all together. All I do is hold down the middle of the scanner's top with one hand, pressing it down whilst scanning.

The process is lengthy however, if you want to scan all 4 halves of both sides.
To join the corners together, I use Paint.net, free photo editing software. For one side of the album cover, I have 4 separate images which I've rotated properly.
In Paint.net, I open the first image I scanned, which happens to be the top right. I don't select all of it which will be part of the final, but select half to 70% of it:

I then start a new image within Paint.net, with width and height of 4000 pixels (which won't be the final result, but allows all images to fit within the canvas).
I copy the selection from the first image to the new large image, and then do the same for the remaining 3 images/corners).
As you join all images together, you may have to zoom in and out numerous times to make sure everything is aligned perfectly.

The final result is this:

You may have to use some blur tools for some annoying visible traces of the differences of light or whatever in some corners. I've read that some people use Photoshop, but Paint.net really does do exactly what I want it to in this case.
The second way is to correctly take a photo with a digital camera of an album cover, with the right settings etc. I have not been able to master this, and have no idea what to do in regards of taking the photos, but I have repaired someone else's images before with Photoshop, with the Lens Correction tool, which proves quite handy:


Other links on album cover restoration:
http://www.bjbear71.com/Restorations/before-and-after-1.html
http://www.bjbear71.com/Restorations/before-and-after.htm
http://www.discomusic.com/forums/vinyl-record-care-audio-restoration-mp3/13518-how-do-i-scan-album-cover.html