There's a very specific sound that I can still hear in my head, the hum and grind of a flatbed scanner slowly dragging its light across a page.

Back in design school, that sound basically meant exploring, production and awesome surprises at the same time. I spent a lot of time and money, feeding cash onto my school card just so I could keep using the copier and scanner in the print room.

Most of my school projects ran through that machine at some point. And if the school was closed, I went to this one Kinko's in Sydney that was open 24/7. Fun times :)

Thinking of it, the printer and scanner weren't just tools, they were part of the process, glitches, beautiful mistakes and all that.

There's a texture to scanned imagery, the drift, the banding, and it's something you don't get anymore, everything is so clean.

I have started the search for an old scanner for sale, but in the meantime I wanted to see if I could get that feeling digitally.

I built a new small tool, a simple scanner simulator. You can set the scanning direction and speed, drag an image across the scanner window to simulate movement, zoom in and out and dial in some noise to make it feel a little more live and real.

Tools like this might already exist, and maybe better ones too. But at the point where tech is right now, it's easy enough to just make your own version. Something you fully understand, can tweak endlessly, and shape exactly the way you want it.

This is a tiny project, nothing groundbreaking. But it's a nice reminder that even with all the AI tools and automation flying around, there's still real satisfaction in sitting down and building something small and personal yourself, and ending up with a result that feels like yours.

Yuhuuu, I had to scan Morten

Give it a try drag the image around, crank the noise up, see what breaks in a good way. And let me know if it makes you a little nostalgic. I would love to see some awesome results.

--> https://yuhu.no/experiments/yuhu-classic-scanner.html