Newbie: Negative Scanning Questions

Good questions!

1. If you’re using Photoshop, you should be able to scan in the negative directly to PS. From there you can save as a PS file, TIF, JPEG (suggest saving as a PS file)

2. You may be only able to scan the neg’s at 600 dpi max. 300 dpi should do fine. Having done the same recently (I’m using an Epson 1650 with their slide/negative adapter), the max that I could scan at is 600. Make sure that the neg’s are clean.

Best wishes

"No Where Man" wrote in message

Good questions!

1. If you’re using Photoshop, you should be able to scan in the negative directly to PS. From there you can save as a PS file, TIF, JPEG (suggest saving as a PS file)

2. You may be only able to scan the neg’s at 600 dpi max. 300 dpi should do fine. Having done the same recently (I’m using an Epson 1650 with

their

slide/negative adapter), the max that I could scan at is 600. Make sure that the neg’s are clean.

300 DPI should be fine for scanning a negative? Maybe if the final result is to be used to produce a postage stamp (assuming the negative is 35mm). If you’re going to scan a negative at 300 or 600, you may as well scan the print at 400, since you’ll get much better results. The 1650 can scan at 1600 and I’ve scanned negatives and slides at that resolution (you can go to interpolated 3200, but the optical resolution is 1600). You’re not going to beat a film scanned for quality of output, but it does a reasonable job.

Zyg

In article <B9srb.189656$>,
"Zyg" wrote:

300 DPI should be fine for scanning a negative? Maybe if the final result is to be used to produce a postage stamp (assuming the negative is 35mm). If you’re going to scan a negative at 300 or 600, you may as well scan the print at 400, since you’ll get much better results.

Wait! What are you talking about? The poor poster is certainly confused by now.

Let’s make this simple. The poster wants a rule of thumb. And let’s talk about pixels per inch, and for the sake of simplicity use "dpi" as meaning pixels-per-inch. (Now don’t you prepress people jump all over me! We are making something for the amateur home scanner who justs wants to make a print!)

Short answer to the poster: for your 35mm film, use 2000dpi for 8×10, 1400dpi for 5×7. That’s _without using the scaling_ option of your scanning software.

(Note that it is highly unlikely that your flatbed scanner really does 2000dpi, but for the sake of simplicity – just go for it.)

Here’s why. First, you want reasonable border on your prints; 35mm film does not scale into 8×10 and 5×7 evenly so your prints must ‘float’ and therefore will be smaller (typically 6"x9" for 8×10 and 4.5"x6.8" for 5×7).

For each final print size (6"x9" for example) you want 300dpi _at that print size_. So you scan your original negative (2.4cm x 3.6cm) as high as neccessary to achieve 300dpi at the final print size.

(And someday, just friggin SOMEDAY we will stop using the term "dpi" for scanning and will use SPI and also convert this whole print PPI and "DPI" to some rational scheme. But that’s entering into confusion again.)

In article ,
says…

2) My second question involves the resolution setting of the scanner. Keeping in mind that I will be doing 4×6, 5×7, and 8×10 and given that the maximum resolution of the printer is 4800 x 1200dpi, should I scan the 35mm negatives at the full 2400 or is that going too far? The size of the file isn’t really a concern if I can get higher quality prints using the high scanner resolution. But, if it the resulting print at 8×10 will look exactly the same with a smaller scanner resolution, then I’d prefer to use the

smaller

2400 dpi is NOT going too far to print 8×10 inches from 35 mm film. It is the requirement in your case.

There are three rules of thumb to keep in mind.

1. On ink jet printers, you want to print in the 240 to 300 dpi range. The 4800×1200 dpi rating of the printer is about ink dots, and is like a quality factor – it is NOT about images. Ink dots are NOT pixels, very different concepts. You would select one of the printers better quality modes for photo quality, but this is not about the image itself.

The image itself should be scaled to print in the range of 240 to 300 dpi, which refers to image pixels.

2. if you will print 8×10 inches at say 300 dpi, then this requires an image size of:
(8 inches x 300 dpi) x (10 inches x 300 dpi) = 2400×3000 pixels.

You can plug any desired numbers into this formula, but you can see that if you have less than 2400×3000 pixels, then you have too few to space them over 8×10 inches at 300 dpi. But you dont necessarily need 300 dpi, 240 dpi will be nice too.

3. As an aid to determine scanning requirements quickly, the ratio of (scanning resolution / printing resolution) is the enlargement factor.

We always want to print in the 240 to 300 dpi range, so the meaning is (for example) that if we want to print a 4x enlargment at 300 dpi, then we should scan at 300 x 4 = 1200 dpi. Plug in any numbers.

But if you are scanning 35 mm film (24×36 mm size, or roughly 0.9 x 1.4 inches), then this is very small, and it needs much enlargement to print 8×10 inches. 8×12 inches is about 9x enlargement of full frame 35 mm film (film size to print size). If for example, you scan at 2700 dpi, and print at 300 dpi, then this gives 2700 / 300 = 9x enlargment, and it prints 8×12 inches.

If you have a 2400 dpi scanner, then 2400 dpi cannot enlarge enough to print 8×10 at 300 dpi (from 35 mm film), but you can print the same 9x size at 2400/9x = 267 dpi which should be satisfactory (see 1. above).

—
Wayne
http://www.scantips.com "A few scanning tips"

On 09 Nov 2003 08:40:31 GMT, (Xtx99) wrote:

I was interested in making digital prints from some of my old 35mm negatives and am seeking some scanning advice. My experience with digital photography so far has only been with making low resolution scans of negatives for webpages. My equipment is Adobe Photoshop, a HP ScanJet 4570c with negative adapter (yes I realize it’s not a true negative scanner like the better Nikon’s and Minolta’s) and a Cannon i470D bubblejet printer. I simply want to make the best occasional family prints I can with this hardware & software in printing 4×6, 5×7, and 8×10 photos.
The scanner is capable of 2400 dpi and the resolution of the printer is 600×600 in black and 4800×1200 in color.

1) My first question involves the scanning format…should I save the scan as a TIF, compressed TIF, JPEG or GIF? Perhaps I should save it (archive it) as a TIF and do the editing of it and saving it as a JPEG to print? (print the edited JPEG)

If you archive in TIF, why should you convert to JPG for printing?

2) My second question involves the resolution setting of the scanner. Keeping in mind that I will be doing 4×6, 5×7, and 8×10 and given that the maximum resolution of the printer is 4800 x 1200dpi, should I scan the 35mm negatives at the full 2400 or is that going too far? The size of the file isn’t really a concern if I can get higher quality prints using the high scanner resolution. But, if it the resulting print at 8×10 will look exactly the same with a smaller scanner resolution, then I’d prefer to use the smaller setting to reduce computer processing time and space.

Don’t confuse your printers positioning capability for single color ink drops – the DPI values given – with the actual PPI (full color pixel per inch) it can achieve. This value is almost never given by printer manufacturers because even the best inkjet printers are in the 300 to 450ppi range on the most expensive paper they use.

For a perfect photo you need about 300ppi – on 8×10 this would mean 2400×3000 pixels.

If you scan negatives with a flatbed scanner you will find that scanning at the specification limits gives a clear image of marketing vs. technical department of your scanner manufacturer.

But as we have seen before 2400ppi scanning is the minimum for the 8×10 print.

For more details take a visit to Wayne’s website…

Michael

Any thoughts to the above questions are appreciated. Thanks.