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jirwin
06-11-2008, 3:21 AM
Hi;

I'm looking for any information on scanning old photos. Any information (or good web sites) on file types and best practices would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Jeff

Hugh Thompson
06-11-2008, 6:27 AM
Hi Jeff, ,I always scan old black and whites at 1200 DPI as a TIF image in Grayscale, it gives me much more information to work with when I run them through PhotoShop, when I've restored them I re-colourize them slightly to keep that old world look and I then convert them back to Jpeg images as the file size is only a fraction of the scanned image size and is not needed for the finished photo,also a jpeg file is much smaller and if you want to Email them it doesn't take all day to send.
I also save a copy in the original Tif format for my records on DVD just in case.
Regards Hugh.:)

Peter Goodey
06-11-2008, 9:44 AM
This is a reasonable overview although it's an old article. Domestic scanners are much better these days. Ignore the section on colourising which ought to be a punishable offence.


http://www.smartcomputing.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles/archive/L0808/33L08/33L08.asp

arthurk
06-11-2008, 7:56 PM
Peter - I couldn't get to see much of the article without registering.

Jeff - as Hugh implies, scan at a high resolution so as to copy as much detail as possible. You can reduce the resolution later - 300 dpi is OK for printing, but if it's only for viewing on a computer, 72 or 96 dpi is generally OK.

Unless you have no choice, don't save the image from the scanner as a JPEG (.jpg) file - and if you do have to do this, the first thing you should do afterwards is save it as a TIFF (.tif), and use that for editing. Afterwards you can save it as a .jpg if you need to. The reason for this is that .jpg files lose a bit of quality every time they are saved (the usual term for this is that they are "lossy"), and since editing often involves multiple Saves, the potential for quality loss is quite significant. It's therefore always better to work with .tif files. There are other non-lossy formats as well, such as .png, and your photo editing program may have its own proprietory format too. However, if you're sharing the images with anyone else, it will be safest to use the non-proprietory ones (.tif, .jpg and .png). If you're putting them on a website, .jpg is your best option for the final Save.

Arthur

aland
06-11-2008, 7:56 PM
Have a look around here,

http://www.tasi.ac.uk/advice/creating/scanners.html

Try the search too,

Aland