On 2007-05-17, Yeoman <sleepingrass@gmail.com> wrote: > Can anyone suggest an appropriate resolution for scanning old > documents? They are from around the 1850s and are written in slightly- > faded quill pen. I want to preserve as much of the detail as possible > without the scans taking up a huge amount of space. Is there a happy > medium between quality and size? I'd tend to err on the "huge amount of space" side. Why? Storage space has been falling dramatically in price, and there's every reason to expect it to continue to fall. I remember not so many years ago when my (single) drive was 10 MB, and any file over a 100 KB seemed like a space hog. These days my desktop has a terabyte of space in a RAID-5, and 2+ GB files don't really seem very large. (And my current machine cost less than that original PC!) While disk capacities are skyrocketing, a man-hour is still precisely the same size. Once you've digitized the documents, that's the quality for all time. We don't get better copies unless the originals survive and somebody does all your work over again. So ... Do the very best quality that you can store today. Storing it tomorrow will be easier, and you'll be glad you did the better job in the first place. BTW, be sure to archive the originals, rather than "image- enhanced" versions. Many "enhancements" are irreversible, and it's better to have the raw data and then be able to enhance it as desired in the future. Cheers, B. -- Dr. Brian Leverich Co-moderator, soc.genealogy.methods/GENMTD-L Angeles Chapter LTC Admin Chair http://angeles.sierraclub.org/ltc/ P.O. Box 6831, Frazier Park, CA 93222-6831 leverich@mtpinos.com

On May 16, 11:04 pm, "Dr. Brian Leverich" <lever...@linkpendium.com> wrote: > On 2007-05-17, Yeoman <sleepingr...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > Can anyone suggest an appropriate resolution for scanning old > > documents? They are from around the 1850s and are written in slightly- > > faded quill pen. I want to preserve as much of the detail as possible > > without the scans taking up a huge amount of space. Is there a happy > > medium between quality and size? > > I'd tend to err on the "huge amount of space" side. > > Why? > > Storage space has been falling dramatically in price, and there's > every reason to expect it to continue to fall. I remember not so > many years ago when my (single) drive was 10 MB, and any file over > a 100 KB seemed like a space hog. > > These days my desktop has a terabyte of space in a RAID-5, and > 2+ GB files don't really seem very large. (And my current machine > cost less than that original PC!) > > While disk capacities are skyrocketing, a man-hour is still > precisely the same size. > > Once you've digitized the documents, that's the quality for all > time. We don't get better copies unless the originals survive and > somebody does all your work over again. > > So ... > > Do the very best quality that you can store today. Storing it > tomorrow will be easier, and you'll be glad you did the better > job in the first place. > > BTW, be sure to archive the originals, rather than "image- > enhanced" versions. Many "enhancements" are irreversible, and > it's better to have the raw data and then be able to enhance it > as desired in the future. > > Cheers, B. > > -- > Dr. Brian Leverich Co-moderator, soc.genealogy.methods/GENMTD-L > Angeles Chapter LTC Admin Chair http://angeles.sierraclub.org/ltc/ > P.O. Box 6831, Frazier Park, CA 93222-6831 lever...@mtpinos.com Thanks for your help.