Don't buy for what you need today, buy for what you may need two or three years from now.

Very very nice, Dixigirl!

Sorry, I don't agree with this. The screen should be calibrated under the same lighting conditions that will be present when you are viewing/editing photographs, and/or soft-proofing for a calibrated printer.

jw

You need something like a Color Munki from X-Rite. It's pretty straightforward. First you calibrate your monitor - the device hangs in front of your monitor while it's software produces a series of color swatches that it measures. This generates a color profile for your monitor.

Then with the monitor profile in place you calibrate your printer: It prints a series of color swatches on an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper. Then you scan those in by running the device over the swatches. It then prints another sheet to refine the profile. You have to do this for each different paper you are going to use.

Combine this with soft proofing in your post processing software for the color profile for that printer/paper combination and you can get really excellent results without a huge number of test prints.

Very nice. It's fun mining old photos.

I have an Epson P800. One afternoon I turned it on and it said I had roll paper loaded that I needed to remove. I don't even have the roll paper adapter for this printer. Turn it off and on. Now it says I have a paper jam - remove the jammed paper. No, there's no paper anywhere near the printer. Hmmm. I was getting ready to call Epson but decided to troll Google. Turns out lots of people - at least several - had reported this problem with no success from Epson. After a half hour of pounding on Google I got the answer - It turns out that if your printer is sitting in bright sunlight, the sunlight can mess with the paper sensors. My printer sits under a west facing window. Most of the time I print either in the morning or evening, but I usually have a shade drawn in the afternoon to keep the sun off of me. That day the shade was up a few inches and it played havoc with the sensors. Lowered the shade and the problems went away. So if you have an Epson printer near a sunny window ...

I like the 13x19 format. I was putzing around one day trying to find an efficient way to print tests without wasting a lot of paper. Well, it turns out that if cut a sheet of 8.5x11 paper exactly in half - ie. 5.5x8.5 - you get a format that is almost the same as 13x19. The ratio for 13x19 is .6842.... The ratio for 5.5x8.5 is .6072.... It works really well for me - very little crop adjustment required.

Also - I had some two sided Premium Presentation Matt paper - I accidentally left off the Ultra when I ordered it. That meant I could get 4 test prints out of one sheet of paper:-)

If you can keep your printer set up, print something once or twice a week - I just do a nozzle check on my epson P400.

For post processing I highly recommend Blake Rudis and his f64 site. For more general information Scott Kelby and Linda.com are excellent.

I'm on a Windows platform. My system is 4 years old, with a 500 gig SSD. I have lots of applications installed, and after 4 years it is less than half full (218 G). Nothing wrong with a 1T SSD, and it probably costs less than what I paid.

As far as eating up your storage capacity on your PC - you can get a 4 Terrabyte external USB drive for a hundred bucks.

I don't much trust these cloud sites. A local photographer lost her main storage hard drive and tried to restore from her cloud service. Turns out the cloud service's last 8 months of her storage was whacked. All by backups are local - USB drives.

Dropbox should work fine for sharing your scans.

It depends on what you want from the scans. If you just want people to be able to view them on a screen, that's one thing. If you want to leave open the possibility for people to do sophisticated edits and print to larger sizes, that's quit another. If you scan a lot of photos at relatively low resolution, you may find yourself redoing the work when you're asked (or decide) to make a 16x20 print. Go ahead. Ask me how I know:-)

Epson scanners have had the reputation of being able to get the best colors out of scans. I now have a V600 flatbed and am happy with it. I can position several "snapshot" prints on the bed at one time, then crop them individually for scanning. I use it with Vuescan from Hamrick Software.

I'm not familiar with the stack fed scanner mentioned above. For me the most important thing is to be able to get a good high resolution scan.

Yes! You can install PS and LR on multiple computers. The idea is that you use one at a time - the typical situation is one installation on your desktop at home and one on a laptop for travel.

If the haloing is a result of over sharpening or increases in contrast, clarity etc. then reduce the amount of sharpening etc. until the haloing goes away. This is the basic test for over sharpening - sharpen until you see halos then back off until they go away.

Big Sky country!