Photo Scanning Advice

[PassnThru]

I am currently scanning a large number of photos in for archival purposes and I want to make sure I do it the right way because the majority of them will be distributed out this weekend - which will make it much harder to rescan them later. My pertinent hardware is 1)Canon FB620U scanner, capable of at least 600dpi hardware 2)Epson 740 capable of 720/1440 dpi printing. Although I am not scanning the photos to print now, I may want to print them later. Based on research from the web, I am currently doing the following:
- Scanning at 300 dpi
- Saving as *.TIF files
What's your opinion? Do I need to scan at a higher res or is it just a waste? Size doesn't matter (really - it doesn't), they will be burned to CD-R but I don't want to scan at a higher res than necessary. The translation from scanner to screen to printer dpi still gives me fits so any advice would be appreciated.

[brandon184]

I'd scan at 600dpi quality, as you'll notice a difference. Or maybe I just pay too much attention to detail. Unless you're printing these out on photopaper with a photo ink cartridge, I would assume 300dpi would be okay.

- Brandon

[PassnThru]

I have scanned at 600 previously and when I went to print them out they were much smaller than the actual size. Don't know if I had something set up wrong but 600 seems to reduce my image size when printing.
If I print ( and I have done one test print at 300) I use photo specific paper. My particular printer does not offer a 'photo' specific ink cartridge. The photo I printed actually looked very good until you got very very close to it - then you could make out very tiny dots. Methinks I expect too much from an inkjet printer - just want to make sure the scan res is not the culprit. Thanks for the reply.

[NDC]

75 DPI if you are not going to print the image. 75 DPI and 600 DPI will make no difference on the monitor.

I use 900 DPI for Photos that are going to be printed on photo paper.


Look here to learn more about DPI:

http://home.att.net/~cthames/monitor1.htm

[This message has been edited by NDC (edited 10-14-2000).]

[DrCorvette]

Web Photos= 72dpi

Color Photos contain NO more than 300 dpi of information.

Slides and Negatives=1200 dpi

I have the same Canon Scanner and I think it's fine, slow but a OK machine.

My Scanners

1. HP 5Pse SCSI (2EA)
2. HP 3300 (1)
3. HP 3200c (1)
4. Canon FB620u (2)
5. Mustek 600 EBIII (1) Junk!

One must note that a 8x10 scanned at 300 dpi= a 26mb file.
Take this into consideration especially if you're using a older machine. Or in a hurry.

Most photos viewed on a wall, look fine scanned at 200 dpi, of course this depends upon the printer quality too.

I find that my HP printers with the so-called layering technology do a great job.
When using glossy paper, I print on econofast or whatever the lowest resolution is, and the Glossy paper looks wonderful.

BUT, on Non-Glossy paper, it is MANDATORY to use the BEST setting or the print looks like ****,,,, ? Weird, Huh ?

I still use the Printers shipped over on the Mayflower, my fav is my PhotoSmart 1997 printer. You have to take out a second mortgage on the home to buy cart's for it,, but it's really a great printer,, fast too.

Hey, SOCAL, looks like I need that bib again http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

DrVette

[DrCorvette]

PassnThru

Do yourself a favor and save um as JPEG files.

more universal, more compressability, and a really COOL NAME too.

JPEG= Joint-Photographic-Experts-Group

[Fingers]

Try this link, it covers almost all aspects of scanning.
http://www.scantips.com/

[PassnThru]

Thanks for the suggestions;
Fingers - good link, have been there before and that is why I am using 300 dpi (even though that is supposedly overkill)
DrCorvette - I thought I read somewhere once that color photos contained no more than 300 dpi. The images will eventually be saved also as resized JPGs for the screen. I intend to keep the unaltered TIFFs on a CDR so I can go back and manipulate them again if needed.

[DrCorvette]

I'm constantly amazed at the COLLECTIVE knowledge here.

quote "I intend to keep the unaltered TIFFs on a CDR so I can go back and manipulate them again if needed"

Does this mean that pics saved as JPEG's CANNOT be manipulated as BITMAP's OR TIFF's can, or is there other limitations that I'm not thinking about.

NOT THINKING is a speciality of mine, it's taken years to finely hone my skill to this level of perfection. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[Fingers]

The TIF files that he is going to save are uncompressed files straight from the scanner. Each time you save a JPEG, you loose a little quality during the compression process. Keeping the original scanned .TIF file is like keeping negatives in photography.

[NDC]

Very true what Fingers has mentioned about TIF's Vs. JPG. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif If you're using Photoshop, saving the format as PSD will keep the quality of the image as TIF would and keep the file at the smallest possible size without losing any image quality. JPG formats are usually used for the finished product, meaning that later alterations will deteriorize the image quality. This is especially true when resizing. As for PSD's, you won't see much degrade in image quality unless you do extreme resizing. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[This message has been edited by NDC (edited 10-15-2000).]

[Beemers]

For your CD Archive you will want to save as .tif as this will have all the originally scanned information still intact.

For sending pictures to friends you want to scan at 200 dpi, save in the .jpg format with a compression of around 10%, and this will render a file size of around 50 to 80 Kb.

For printing such as desktop publishing you want to use .jpg as well but scanned @ 360 dpi and no compression.

My 2 cents worth...

Cheers!

[henry]

What about Kodak's proprietary PhotoCD technology?

[doggabone]

A few quick responses to stuff http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif.

PassnThru -> don't know your scanner, but ours automatically halves the image size when we double the dpi, as though intent on saving the exact same number of dots. All we have to do is set the image size again.

DrCorvette -> Glossy paper and normal paper have different surface qualities (obviously http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif ), and so light reflects off them differently. That's why low-res on glossy looks about as good as high-res on plain. The light coming off of the plain is scattered before it hits your eyes - the effect is similar to looking at something through plain glass (glossy paper) compared to frosted glass (non-glossy paper). Similarly, grades of paper between the two extremes have varying degrees of this effect, as does glass with varying intensities of "frost" (or similar deviation of surface).

henry -> The problem with proprietary formats is that they are proprietary http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif. I can't speak to the quality of the format, but I know my image editors won't save to it, and so far as I know only my image browser will open it. (Someone correct me, for henry's sake, if I'm wrong http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif ). And you can't be sure what apps they will be distributed to. Our graphics department distributes TIFFs and saves all the original work in Illustrator (AI) or Photoshop (PSD) for that reason, as well as the above mentioned criterion of maintaining the quality of the image - not to mention saving the ability to edit our work (until the last possible second.) There are even some employees in the office whose computers are unable to open JPEGs - but I won't get into the farcical nature of our administration http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif.

Cheers!

[PassnThru]

Thanx again for the responses. Looks like my original plan is valid. Yes - JPGs are editable but due to lossy compression I'm sure you would notice a difference among many edits. As for the Kodak CD suggestion, I assume you are refering to the later presentation of the photos. They'll probably end up in a simple directory structure although I may dabble with a html format for the respective parents (not extremely computer literate - make it as easy as possible). As an aside, I am editing/enhancing the scans with the new version of Paint Shop Pro - version 7. They have added a dedicated menu item to enhancing photos and it really works well for at least color balance and gamma.