John Maher Loc: Northern Virginia

I scan at 2400 dpi with color restoration on. Some will say 1200 is good enough, but I am basically saving the slides. The 550 will go up to 9600 dpi.

I saved in Tiff when I started, but decided .jpg was good enough even though it is lossy. The key here is that scan becomes a master. Whenever you download/edit, save as a different file as the .jpg will recompress and loss some.

I have a good article somewhere that influenced a lot of my choices and another about resolution/visual perception. Still looking for them.

I do photos at 300. Again, I tried 600 but it was not worth it. One thing I discovered was that some of those old photos had poor lenses. You cannot recover resolution that was never there.

Jomisamson

Thank you for kind response. You said: “when you download/edit save as a different file.” Do you mean like .tiff or ?

I’ve got a # of slides I would like to digitize for posterity. So I appreciate your help & I haven’t been able to figure this 550 out. Anything else you can suggest or point me to will be appreciated.

John Maher Loc: Northern Virginia

The scan becomes a "digital master copy". The scan product is my un-retouched master copy. Originally, I used .tiff which is lossless, but I now use .jpg which is lossy. The scanned .jpg is the base for any editing now or later.

If I edit a slide, the edited copy is saved in addition to the un-retouched original scan because .jpg will lose some detail every time it is re-compressed. The Epson software even tags them as copies.

I will always have that original un-edited scan to call up and work with.

When I find those two files, I will pm you.

It is important to understand that you cannot capture/scan in resolution that is not in the print nor can you print resolution that was not in the file. I scanned some really old polaroids and when I zoomed in, it became obvious that the lens resolution did not support any enlarging. But that was the 60s and what we had for a camera then.

These are all just my opinions and there are people on here that know a lot more than me and who may give you better alternative suggestions. This is just what I decided after digesting a lot of others' suggestions.

Jomisamson

Thank you for the lift and the incentive to restart this part of the journey

John Maher Loc: Northern Virginia

Here are three files that influenced my scanning. I do not keep track of where I got them so some could have been from the links here on UHH. Some I find myself, often on a tangent when discovering how or why something works.

There is a lot more info here than most people will ever need to know. For some, just an awareness of the information is enough. Others could care less. For me, it all boiled down to capturing an image that can satisfy the end use requirement. The starting point may be a DSLR or scanning an old slide or negative. But the end is the viewer's eye and distance.

A Few Scanning Tips by Wayne Fulton
https://scantips.com/

On The Limits Of Resolution And Visual Angle In Visualization
https://www.csc2.ncsu.edu/faculty/healey/download/tap.12.pdf

Visual Acuity, DPI and Resolution
jaredjared.com/2012/visual-acuity.dpi

Jomisamson

Thank you again - looks like I have some homework and a direction to go - Much more than what I had before - many thanks