Whats best, place them on a scanner or take a picture with a nice digital camera. Any tricks of the trade?

i personally use a scanner. i find you get a lot more details and clarity, especially when it comes to holograms and such. i scan all of my images at 300 dpi, then reduce them into more manageable sizes for further tweaking/sharpening.

the only downside is that newer scanners/software come with anti-forgery technology that won't allow them to work with images of banknotes. some of them check for certain shade combinations (not too hard with u.s. currency), and others for hidden circle patterns (the musical notes on uk pounds, some of the yellow 0's on the back of the 2004 $20's, etc).

if you have an older scanner and older software that works, you'll find plenty of advantages with it over using a digi-cam.

http://public.fotki.com/sanmiguel/world_banknotes

you can almost feel the texture:

I like my $100 scanner compared to my dad's $900 digital camera. I seem to get more detail and true colors using the scanner than the camera. *shrugs* Personal opinion.

I use a camera, but if we had a decent scanner I would use that. SM98's scans are some of the best I have ever seen.

-Ben

Scanners are great for banknotes, but the pits for coins. But it is all that I have, so I use it for both.

I forgot to ask this in my first post but what kind of scanner do you have San_Miquel.

i use a canon n670u. it was canon's cheap model four years ago, but it gets the job done pretty well.

Do you just use MS Paint or the program that came with the scanner to edit the pictures?

I may buy a scanner likes your for my apartment. Kind of hard to scan coins and notes from 130 miles away

i use an old version of paintshop pro to resize the humongo scan, to combine the front/back into one image, and to sharpen all the details (resizing like to blur things up).

I scan paper money, photograph coins. Photos with a digital camera are far superior for coins and have a lot better depth than scans.