[filmscanners] Re: Advice on scanner settings

["Peter Marquis-Kyle" <filmscanners@marquis-kyle.com.au>]

Good to see some discussion on this list again!


Preston Earle wrote:
> I think the scan resolution should be determined by how you plan to use the
> final images. A 4000ppi scan will give a file capable of being printed to up
> to 17" x 25". If all you want to do with most files is display them on a
> screen or make 4x6 prints, 4000ppi is overkill, and you will spend a lot of
> time cleaning up raw scans and a lot of effort resizing large files for
> their intended purpose.

There are two basic approaches to this, and I take the other one from
Preston. I think Carlisle is on the right track. I say scan once, at the
highest resolution the scanner can do (in this case 4000 spi), and
create the best archive image for whatever use happens later. I would
also consider using the greater bit depth Carlisle's Nikon scanner can
capture, even though this will double the storage space needed for each
file.

You don't have to spend time 'cleaning up' the scans until you need to
use them. And resizing doesn't take a lot of effort when it needs to be
done -- I use a Photoshop plugin (Fred Miranda's Web Presenter Pro) to
do such downsizing, and find it fast with excellent results.

> As to file format, I'd use jpeg. A 4000ppi 35mm scan will be about 20 megs
> in size. A good quality JPEG will be 2-2.5 megs and a 2700ppi JPEG will be
> about 1 meg. With 2700ppi JPEGS, I can keep my 12,500 image archive in 10
> Gigs of hard disk. If they were 4000ppi tiffs it would be 250 Gigs, and I
> don't believe the files would be any more useful.

As storage becomes cheaper these arguments become less convincing.
Again, I think Carlisle is on the right track. I would not use JPG for
this purpose.

> If you haven't downloaded the Polaroid Dust and Scratches filter from
> http://www.polaroid.com/service/software/poladsr/poladsr.html you should try
> it. It isn't intuitive and takes some experimentation, but it is pretty good
> at cleaning up minor imperfections in scans.

I agree with Preston here. The Polaroid filter is useful for Kodachrome
slides, for which the Vuescan infra-red cleaning (or Nikon ICE) won't
work. But I would save the 'uncleaned' files in the archive collection,
and apply the cleaning filter only at the stage of processing an image
for a particular use.


Peter Marquis-Kyle

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