Tips for a young buc..scanning

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systimax

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Hello, I just received my Epson 4490 and I am getting ready to scan thousands of black and whites as well as color.

Anyone have a site that goes into tips for scanning?

All im trying to do is to scan the color for archiving and work on the BW for edits.

After quickly playing with it I am surprised at the file size im getting.

for the color I have choose print/jpg with the best compression. For color I am looking for no better quality then a 4mp dig cam pic.

However when I scan I get somewhat acceptable results but the file sizes are 300-412k

Am I not in the ballpark for future printing to 4/6 5/7 with these file sizes?

Thanks allot..and thanks for the informative forum
 
I use a Nikon 5000D scanner and scan into uncompressed RAW (NEF) files. Usually 8-bit depth - sometimes 16 bit.

These result in file sizes of around 65mb. Yes, that large!

I can then save about 50 or so images on a DVD burn.

I consider these to be archival files. I can then bring them into Photoshop and "boil them down" to a smaller size and save as JPEGs (finest compression) for posting here etc.

If you archive into JPEG - you have already "compressed" your image into something less than its original quality.
 
First, I wouldn't save the files as JPG but as TIFF. At least that will give you a file you can work on without degradation of quality. Save the results of your PS work as JPG if you want but not the originals.

Secondly, scan at the highest resolution you can. This gives you more data to work with in PS.

Once you start scanning (negatives or prints) you better be prepared for extra storage space and some backup mechanism. IMO the best and cheapest way would be to buy 2 300GB hard disks. Use one for storage and the other for backup. DON'T forget to save your files to both disks! To be on the safe side you might want to burn your files also to DVD (in addition to saving to disk and backup disk). Keep those DVDs elsewhere and not in your house. In case of mishap (fire, burglary, whathaveyou) you'll always have a backup set.

Mind you, this _sounds_ like overkill but it's not. After you've scanned a couple of 100 prints and worked on them in PS you DON'T want to do it again! I know; it happened to me. :)
 
I get my new scanner today, it's coming from Germany and I bought it a week ago.

I'm hoping for 50MB or so TIFF's which I'll save to CD-R or DVD, and backup to mac.com every night. Or maybe mail myself the images to my Gmail account and let Google handle the storage.
 
Yes with the B/W I will be scanning as tiffs and at full quality. 50mb+

However with the colors all im trying to do is get them into Iphoto for the wife and kids.

Is theer a jpg setting or a tiff setting that will output to around the 2-5mb file size. Im willing to sacrifice some quality for file size.

When I seem to scan to jpg even with the best compression im getting less then a half meg.

So should I scan as tiff then resize to jpeg? Will that get me to around the 2-5 meg file size?

Whats the best way to get these in Iphoto around that size?

thanks again
 
systimax said:
Hello, I just received my Epson 4490 and I am getting ready to scan thousands of black and whites as well as color.

Anyone have a site that goes into tips for scanning?


There has been a thread about the 4490 recently here (darkroom forum ?), some members own that scanner and have reported what their experiences are, how they use it and they have shown their results.
Best you do a search with "Epson 4490", should be more than one thread where it was mentioned.

Peppo
Click to expand...
 
systimax said:
thank you all, so helpfull. I have a great amount of reading now.

However.. the thing that still sticks is the file size

On the http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/interactive/Epson 4990/Page 1.htm

site on page 2 it says

A autoscan of a 4x6 gave him a 5MB file. On my auto scans of the same size I am 356k to less then 1mb

What could i be doing so wrong in auto mode?
Click to expand...

Since I scan into RAW (or TIFF sometimes) I flying "blind" on this - but are you sure you are scanning at the highest quality (i.e. least compression) level of JPEG.

If I convert a RAW/TIFF via PS into a JPEG at the best level (i.e. "10") w/o "downsizing" the "canvas" I get a file size of around 5 or 6 MEGABYTES (btw: what the hell is a "megabit", anyway?).

I believe that either you are trimming down the image size or not saving at the highest quality JPEG if you are getting such small files on an initial scan.

Check you scanner settings.

And remember, you can always scan into RAW or TIFF and then convert via PS to JPEG before saving. That will get you to around 5 to 6 MB.
 
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