Before you begin your scanning you really should decide what possible use you might find for these images in the future. Will these images be placed on CD solely for the purpose of viewing on a computer monitor or TV screen? Or might you find there are some you later want to print?
When I started the process of scanning my 2,000 some slides, I decided I wanted the scans to be the best possible quality and highest resolution. It’s much, much easier to take a group of images, duplicate them, and do a Batch resizing downwards to make a slide show than it is to rescan a whole slew of them if you later decide you want to make prints. Most people who scan to "archive" scan at the highest possible resolution and save one set of originals. If they later decide to do a slide show they downsize appropriately.
As far as fitting on screen, that’s not too descriptive. Most operating systems have a feature that will automatically resize any image for monitor viewing. If you want to create a slideshow that can be seen on a TV (although viewing images saved on CD on a television screen is very poor quality) you need to massage them differently.
Personally, I think you should scan your slides at the highest quality, because you’re going to find it’s a tedious task and one you won’t want to have to repeat! Once you’re done, there are a variety of options, and your scans will be adequate for any or all of them.
Invest some time to understand all this.
scantips.com a great place to learn.
To echo Beth make sure you are getting the resolution you need for any future usage (from original pixels).
My advice: don’t mess with JPEG period.
Mac
Thanks to both of you for investing the time to answer me. I plan to scan and save on CD’s for my 2 children & us & toss the basement full of slides…Beth, what format did you save your slides in? & did you settle on a certain size to save them?
Again thanks.
p.s.: What scan "at the highest possible resolution" did you use?
Again, I want to scan, improve the slide quality, & save on CD to give to children.
Thanks, again.
Jim, I can’t remember right now what the highest OPTICAL resolution you have on your scanner, but it should be easy for you to figure that out. That’s what I would recommend, because slides are so small. If you ever choose to print a picture from one you’re going to want to make sure you have too many pixels instead of not enough.
I save mine in TIFF format at the size at which they come from the scanner. 1,500 files saved at a high res will take up a lot of CDs, but if you plan to throw away the slides themselves (I save everything so would never do that, but I also understand I’m kind of compulsive!), you shouldn’t scrimp when it gets down to details. CDs are cheap. And remember that if you really think your children want all of these old pictures taken throughout their lives, give them the best job you can! Many of these probably represent important times in their lives, too.
Oh, oh, I just looked at the clock and have got to go now. Someone else will weigh in with another opinion soon I’m sure!
Not Beth here :), but if it helps, I scan at the highest my scanner will do, which is 2700ppi at actual slide size (Nikon 2000 film scanner). This gives about a 28MB TIFF file.
This allows a 12×8" print at slightly over 300ppi, or 14" at a still very acceptable 273ppi. Or of course any smaller image, and allows for significant cropping and still get nice 5×7 to 8×10.
If I had 4000ppi scanner, I would do that, about 60MB TIFF which of course would allow even larger output at high ppi, or allow for more significant cropping and still maintain 250-300ppi at 8×10 siz or so.
If screen rez is all you want for posterity, files can be quite small, 1024 pixels long side probably largest necessary.
And I just wouldn’t compromise quality by messing with JPEG at all, even with the slight loss of low compression JPEG settings.
We don’t even know what scanner you have, so you might mention that.
Again, if any of this sounds like Greek (or is that Geek?), scantips.com highly recommended.
Mac
Addendum: Sorry, I see you mention Epson 3170.
That’s 3200ppi optical.
While flatbed resolution generally equates to something like about 65% of actual resolving resolution (as far as line pair distinction) for comparative ppi of a film scanner, I’d still do them at actual size at 3200, to get everything I could off them.
Mac
I’m back. Mac did a nice job, and I can’t think of anything to add. 🙂
Thanks to both for your help….no doubt I’ll be back some time in future, but this will get me on the way!
Personally I’d never throw away the original slides – in the last twenty years computer storage media have changed several times. Who knows how easy your great grandchildren will find it to decode information burnt onto CDs? It’s fine if there is a family member committed to transferring the data as formats change but otherwise… (not to mention the issue of long term stability of CDs). That’ s not to say this isn’t a worthwhile project – ihave twenty years worth of kodachrome and ektachrome to digitise, that never gets looked at while if it was digitised I would be able to much more easily.
I would also say that while you may well get reasonable scans from a good flatbed like the one you are using, it’s not really archival quality – and five or ten years down the track it’s quite likely that the arrival of better and cheaper scanning technology would give rise to all sorts of regrets if the originals have been dumped.
As I switch more and more to digital media this is an issue which exercies my mind frequently. I still take film (or more usually subcontract my husband to use film!) of the really important occasions as I want to have back up hard copies of the memories!
I’d say one would be NUTS to throw away orig. photo images. Prints/negs/slides, whatever.
Mac
