Maris wrote (in answer to Tomasz' question):
>| Do I need the same for b&w prints?
>
>I would suggest scanning and saving them in color, especially since you
>mention below that the old paper is not showing a color cast. You may well
>find that one or more of the channels have better detail, contrast,
>luminosity etc. than others.
That's an interesting thought, Maris, and one I hadn't considered a lot
until you mentioned it. One would *hope* that a BW scan would incorporate
*all* the values of an old print, but that might not actually be the case,
in old sepia prints. I've frequently scanned soft or thin BW negs as color
(with Acer's many film-type choices, you can pick them for contrast) and
then discarded the color information. It works well, especially for the way
I used to shoot Tri-X.
I do, however, think that BWs should be stored as BW files. You can always
add a tone of your choice later, if you want to, and the contrast is better
in straight BW. But that may just be a vestige of my Commercial Art
"upbringing," and I could be soaking wet, here! ;-)
Best regards--LRA
>From: "Maris V. Lidaka, Sr." <mlidaka@ameritech.net>
>Reply-To: filmscanners@halftone.co.uk
>To: <filmscanners@halftone.co.uk>
>Subject: Re: filmscanners: Archiving Photos (a little off-topic)
>Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:03:27 -0500
>
>Some answers inserted below:
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Tomasz Zakrzewski" <tomzakrz@ka.onet.pl>
>To: <filmscanners@halftone.co.uk>
>Sent: Monday, July 23, 2001 7:02 PM
>Subject: Re: filmscanners: Archiving Photos (a little off-topic)
>
>
>| Lynn Allen wrote:
>| > but I had 5000 pictures to do in 10 month's time
>|
>| That's exactly my task at the moment.
>| I've just bought a rather good flatbed (Agfa Arcus 1200, 14bit color) to
>| scan my whole archive of family pictures from the last 100 years.
>| Since this is a very time consuming project I must do everything right
>the
>| first time. And since I'm not that skilled yet I wonder what the most
>proper
>| routine for scanning archival prints is. I'm planning to save all the
>| pictures as tiffs at resolutions from 300dpi (5x7prints) up to 1200dpi
>(very
>| small prints) and make additional jpegs for quick reference.
>| Should I scan and save files with 16bit color?
>
>If you have the storage space on CD or otherwise, yes. If not, it is not
>necessary - scan in 16 bit, do perhaps basic corrections, convert to 8-bit
>and save. I would save them at 1200dpi if possible, though.
>
>| Do I need the same for b&w prints?
>
>I would suggest scanning and saving them in color, especially since you
>mention below that the old paper is not showing a color cast. You may well
>find that one or more of the channels have better detail, contrast,
>luminosity etc. than others. See Chapter 13 of Dan Margulis's Professional
>Photoshop 5 or 6. See
><
>ion=Display&ARTICLE_ID=70917&KEYWORD=dan%20margulis>
>
>| What about color prints that need strong color correction? In Poland
>during
>| the 70's and 80's only East German photographic paper was available.
>Those
>| prints have a very strong reddish color cast now. Auto Adjust helps a lot
>| but then some additional manual corrections are necessary. Should I
>stretch
>| the histogram values from 0 to 255 or leave the ends somewhat closer
>| together?
>
>Stretch them from 0 to 255 for purposes of saving to disk.
>
>
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