Scanning pictures -- standard sizes/resolutions?

[seismik]

I'm thinking about undertaking a fairly massive project, that of digitizing alot of my prints with my flatbed scanner and I thought I better ask around a little before I do all the work. Are there any formal (informal) standards about what size, quality, color depth, ect to scan pictures? What does Kodak use for PhotoCD's, and should I follow their format? I don't know what I'll use the scans for in the future, but it would be nice to have them as standardized as possible so that they can work with future technologies, whatever they might be.

 

[MacaroneePenguin]

Well everyone's needs are different, so there isn't really a standard to my knowledge. And I don't know what Kodak's standards are.
Also, is this project for yourself?

If all you're doing is scanning in your photos then I would just scan them either 800x600 or 1024x768, basically some of the standard desktop resutions.

You can always scale them down later, so I say, start big.

I personally like to work with 32bit color, but 16bit might suit your needs as well.

 

[elzmaddy]

I've also wondered about that. I'd keep it in the original size it scans in, unless it is abnormally huge. Like Macaronee said, you can always resize it later on.

 

[seismik]

Right, I'm thinking of basically setting up my scanner to capture the highest quality and color I can exactly so that I can resize them later. I'd like to be able to make prints from these later if I can too, so that enters into the equation. While I have lots of space to spare, I just didn't want to keep a bunch of 10MB images around if there was no advantage to them over a 500KB image. Printing would be the most resolution demanding application I can think of using these pics for.

Wew, I need a vacation after that long weekend.

 

[MacaroneePenguin]

Well, I can't imagine them being more then 2.5Megs at 2048x1536 which is what I have my camera set at.

Yes, the only resolution demanding application in your case would be printing. The higher the resolution the pic, the bigger you can print it without comprimising quality.

 

[elzmaddy]

Holy crap! I just did a full page test scan on three photos (on one page) saving at 600 DPI to an uncompressed TIFF image. The file is 104MB!!! The photos look really good though. I tried JPEG format at 'Excellent' quality and I got a 6MB file. However, the image is enormous (5076x6998 pixels). They were saved to disk with my scanning software -- usually I just scan into Photoshop where I crop, adjust image size, and save as JPEG specifying a quality level from 1-10. However, it gets annoying doing this for every photo.

I don't know what software you'll be using, but hopefully you'll be able to scan without converting each image manually. And hopefully your scanner's photo scanning quality is good.

 

[seismik]

Agreed, a person could make a bit of money if they came up with some sort of add-on to a scanner that would let you bulk load and scan photos. It is extremely tedious to scan each individual picture.

 

[matrixdud]

It all depeands on what you want to do with the images. I've made a couple web sites for photographers (www.abelaphotography.com www.photographsbymarylynn.com) and I scanned in raw images taken with an 80mm camera. The photos were anywhere from 8X10, 8X8,5X5 or 4X4. I would scan them in at 300dpi and they would be anywhere from 5MB to 20MB in size and were up to 3000X3000 pixels. The reason why the big size was so that I cold edit them (air brush) in finer detail, apply filters and them shink them down to an appropriate size for the web. I find you get way better picture quality that way.

You can always make an image smaller and get good results. It's when you want to make them bigger things don't go so well. Also a lrger resolution will print better on a modern color inkjet and in the future when inkjets print at even higher resolutions you'll be thankfull you have large images. My adice, scan them in at 300dpi and burn them all to CDs when you're done. They will be around 20MB and you'll be able to cram about 35 of them on a CD.

 

[matrixdud]

Oh yeah...save them as Raw TIFs not JPEGS. JPEGS use compression and will alter your images slightly because of it.

 

[Skypix7]

I've been scanning my slides for years for magazine articles. Also uprezzing digital camera shots, which over time has become quite an involved process with all the 4MP and bigger cameras out there.

My suggestion is to scan your flat images at 300 dpi at the same size they are. Most magazines will accept images at 300 dpi and that gives you lots of file size but also lots of resolution so you can retouch the inevitable dust motes, scratches etc. in Photoshop.

Also I'd suggest you learn to work with the actions palette if you don't know how. It can automate a lot of the processing tasks, such as applying auto contrast or auto color, saving at a specific Jpeg or tif setting, resizing the picture etc.

The main thing to remember is you can always scale down a print, but scaling up loses quality, sharpness, etc.

Also suggest you look into Fred Miranda's website www.fredmiranda.com he's got a ton of inexpensive, pre-made actions that really work well. You might find something there to help you speed through the processing, once you've got the images.

good luck!