I want to scan old family pictures for archival. Does anybody have any suggestions or tips? I am especially wondering about: 1) What would be a good scanner to buy to do this with? 2) What resolution should I use? 3) What file format (etc. jpeg, png, tiff) should I use? 4) What is some good and affordable software to use after scanning?

bobnotbob@byu.edu (Bob Roberts) wrote in news:c4e6b17d.0204102009.53a985e3@posting.google.com: > I want to scan old family pictures for archival. Does anybody have > any suggestions or tips? I am especially wondering about: > 1) What would be a good scanner to buy to do this with? > 2) What resolution should I use? > 3) What file format (etc. jpeg, png, tiff) should I use? > 4) What is some good and affordable software to use after scanning? > Check out http://www.scantips.com for some fantastic information about scanning! Sherry

"Bob Roberts" <bobnotbob@byu.edu> wrote in message news:c4e6b17d.0204102009.53a985e3@posting.google.com... > I want to scan old family pictures for archival. Does anybody have > any suggestions or tips? I am especially wondering about: > 1) What would be a good scanner to buy to do this with? Depends where you are (they have different models in different places, amazingly) and how much you plan to do. I bought HP because we have them at work and they're solid enough to survive students... > 2) What resolution should I use? Again, depends what you want to do with them and the quality of your printer. For photo-quality copying I use 300 dpi or more, but this can give huge files. For web use, lower resolution is good enough. > 3) What file format (etc. jpeg, png, tiff) should I use? jpeg gives smaller files. > 4) What is some good and affordable software to use after scanning? I use PhotoShop, but wait and see what software is delivered with your scanner. One extra note, when you print them, it's amazing how much difference the paper quality makes. For special stuff, it's well worth getting the photo-quality glossy stuff. Lesley Robertson

Lesley Robertson wrote: > > "Bob Roberts" <bobnotbob@byu.edu> wrote in message > news:c4e6b17d.0204102009.53a985e3@posting.google.com... > > I want to scan old family pictures for archival. Does anybody have > > any suggestions or tips? I am especially wondering about: > > 1) What would be a good scanner to buy to do this with? > > Depends where you are (they have different models in different places, > amazingly) and how much you plan to do. I bought HP because we have them at > work and they're solid enough to survive students... > > > 2) What resolution should I use? > > Again, depends what you want to do with them and the quality of your > printer. For photo-quality copying I use 300 dpi or more, but this can give > huge files. For web use, lower resolution is good enough. > > > 3) What file format (etc. jpeg, png, tiff) should I use? > > jpeg gives smaller files. > > > 4) What is some good and affordable software to use after scanning? > > I use PhotoShop, but wait and see what software is delivered with your > scanner. > > One extra note, when you print them, it's amazing how much difference the > paper quality makes. For special stuff, it's well worth getting the > photo-quality glossy stuff. > Lesley Robertson I agree with Leslie, mostle. I use HP because I've been using them for some 50 years now, starting with their industrial instrumentation equipment and then into computers. More solid than a Chevy and their manuals are written for humans to understand from the ground up. You'll hear that JPG is lossey, well by scientific standards it is, especially if you are constantly opening, changing, saving. But I don't know many people that do that. It is a compressed format that's some 10 times smaller than the "non lossey" formats. As for editor, I use Paint Shop Pro. For $100 you can do 99% of what Adobe Photoshop's $650 editor will do unless you are an expert(*). http://www.jasc.com . There's an excellent (friendly) News Group and tutorals to be had for free, comp.graphics.apps.paint-shop-pro (*)See comparison: http://cws.internet.com/image.html Don

bobnotbob@byu.edu (Bob Roberts) wrote in <c4e6b17d.0204102009.53a985e3@posting.google.com>: >I want to scan old family pictures for archival. Does anybody have >any suggestions or tips? I am especially wondering about: > 1) What would be a good scanner to buy to do this with? > 2) What resolution should I use? > 3) What file format (etc. jpeg, png, tiff) should I use? > 4) What is some good and affordable software to use after scanning? Suggestions given by others here already are good. I bought the cheapest scanner I could find ($39) which still gave much higher resolution than I needed. I've scanned hundreds of photos with it without problem, except that it is SLOW, especially when scanning at higher resolutions. Perhaps a pricier model would have been faster?? I find that 150 dpi gives satisfactory results on black & white photos. YMMM. JPEG is by far the most common format. However, with JPEG each time you do a "Save" there is a small amount of data loss. If you want to do any touching up of scanned photos, save the original and your working copy as bitmaps (.BMP) This is an uncompressed form, which will allow you to save over and over and over again with neglible loss. Once you've finished editing the picture, then save the final version as a .JPG (a.k.a. JPEG) Your graphics editing program should allow you to select the amount of JPEG compression (and thereby control the amount of "loss" each time you save.) I run with 33% compression, which still gives much smaller files, yet the data loss is not significant and you can still "Save" the JPEG itself a few times if you need to without noticing any picture degradation. Finally, make TWO (yes 2, not 1) backup copies of your original .BMP scans, and archive them, preferrably on separate media and certainly off of your hard drive. I keep one set of backups on a R/W-CD, the other set on on Superdisks (125Meg/disc.) Someday you will appreciate this small bit of paranoia indulgence!! HTH! Cap'n John PS: "Zipping" JPGs is an exercise in futility- the files are already compressed. Zipping .bmps will compresss them down to .jpg size, but again there may be data losss with compression.