Lary wrote:
>What size files did you decide upon for your family images. How many images
per CD and what file format (this'll start another discussion for sure).
Yeah--talk about opening a whole new can of worms! :-)
I had two goals: 1) to digitize *all* the family pictures of my parents'
generation and 2)to get them onto a CD medium where they'd be available to
the next generation, with as little confusion as possible. Actually, there
was a 3rd goal--to identify the subjects and where the photos were as of the
publishing date. That made for some rather long file-names, I can tell you!
:-)
Getting the file sizes down to under 100kb each involved quite a bit with
both pixel-dimensions and JPEGing. Purists will say "That's not really
archiving," and to an extent they're right--JPEG is a "lossy" compression
format. But compromises had to be made to get that many pictures onto one CD
(there were over 6,000 files--not all graphics), and more than one CD would
just add complexity to the distribution and storage.
I standardized at 3" @ 300dpi (900-pixel) maximum dimension, because this
will make a reasonably good print. For some group pictures, I upped the size
to 1200-pixels. For *very* large groups, even this is not adequate, but
neither is it very legible on a computer screen, so I largely "begged the
question" and left those for someone else to do. ;-)
Keeping the file sizes under or close to 100kb also made them transmittable
via email, which definitely came in handy for some identifications! B/W
photo-files are easy to keep that small--in fact the average was closer to
50kb, but the RGB files were of course larger. Few of those would go under
70kb without some deterioration. I did, in fact, specially buy Micrografx
PP8 just for its superior file compression abilities.
In hindsight, I can see that I could have made the files slightly larger,
but at "start time" I had no idea of how many photos there'd be--not even of
my own. Naturally, there had to be a little editing along the way--but I
dutifully and very reluctantly included that "traditional"
naked-baby-picture of me so nobody could say I wasn't being "even-handed."
;-)
Anyway, that's my story and I'm stickin' to it! :-)
Best regards--LRA
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