Help Needed Saving and Uploading Scanned Photos

MCTuomey

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Greyscale me dumb and dumber, but I'll paypal a quick $10 to RFF if any member could provide some guidance here. I've got my used Nikon LS-2000 scanner installed and working. Now, how best to save my scans for uploading to RFF? What's a good approach on resolution, size, file type, etc. to begin to post to my member gallery?

Thanks in advance ...
 
Hi Mike! Make 'em jpeg format, very compact and universally readable. I make a copy of the original scan and work on that... straighten any tilted horizons, fix color balance & saturation, tweak the histogram in Levels to achieve full black and white at the extremes, scale to final dimensions at 72 dpi resolution, apply some edge sharpening or unsharp mask if necessary, put on a 2 pixel black border, and Save as jpeg "for the web"... in that order.

Those final dimensions... You want it big enough to see clearly and show off the quality, but not too big for folks with modest-size monitors to see the whole thing. I'd think about the smallest size to consider is 511 pixels on the long side. Over on Photo.net, for pics to appear in the forum discussions, the pic has to be less than 512 pixels wide AND under 100k in filesize. RFF doesn't have that limit, but a lot of my pics are saved that way for compatibility. I think about 800 or 900 pixels on the long side would be a good maximum dimension. Keeping the filesize down helps make a forum with pics open faster.

Have fun! :)
 
Hey Doug, thanks for replying. I'll use the specs you've provided and try to get there via my Nikon Scan stand-alone software. My problem is I don't yet understand how to produce such a file using Nikon Scan. So far, my saved file sizes are 'way bigger than acceptable (and the quality's not so good at least on my monitor, but that's another matter). I'm at the bottom of the learning curve ...

I did make the donation to JT's business account, btw.
 
Mike I'm sorry I can't help more, being unfamiliar with Nikon Scan software. I edit the scans with a Mac-only shareware program called GraphicConverter, sort of a junior-grade Photoshop!

And I just discovered it can skew the image, so used that feature to straighten the converging verticals in this shot...
 
It's okay, Doug. I'm going to play with the Nikon Scan software until I get it fairly right or rush out and get something more friendly. I appreciate you taking the time to offer some suggestions. Sooner or later, I'll have an RF gallery contribution, yep.
 
Doug, I played around and got a few scans that are passable - uploaded them this evening. If you get a chance, I'd appreciate you taking a quick view and assessing them from a scanning POV. My prints, esp from the CV 35/1.7, are very sharp altho the scans don't show it very well. This is starting to feel just a bit more fun ...
 
Hi -- Scans look pretty good to me, Mike! I made comments on a couple of the pics.
 
Thanks so much, Doug. It's great to be able to post photos after doing all the gallery-lurking for so long. This really is great fun.
 
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