"Tomasz Zakrzewski" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> asked: "Could you give me hints as to recommended settings on VueScan and the work flow in general?
"I know I should work with 16bit color in Photoshop but I'm not sure how to switch it on. "My plan is to record to CDs the uncorrected originals "as they are" and the corrected ones alongside. All in tiff format, not jpeg. "How to disable tiff compression in VueScan? If I use the compression, do I risk future incompatibility? Are uncompressed tiffs a "safer" option as compatibility and future use go? "And the last question: my Photoshop 6 doesn't show thumbnails of files created with VueScan. What can I do to make them show up? Tomasz, I think what you plan to do with these images influences the answers to your questions. 1. Are your images of high monetary value or only sentimental value? 2. How many are there? 3. What do you plan to do with digital files: use primarily to make prints, or use for screen display as computer slide shows, or something else? If you have high-value images that are worth $50+ or more (Is that 200 zlotychs?) each, these suggestions may not apply. I've been scanning my family pictures over the past 6 months and have learned several things. I began scanning and saving uncompressed TIF files from my scanner and also saving the color-corrected and retouched images from Photoshop. I was scanning 35mm slides and negatives at 1470 ppi, yielding files of 6-8Mb. I started correcting in Photoshop "the right way', using adjustment layers, etc, and saving the layered PSD files. I remember these files being up to 20Mb or more, depending on the amount of retouching the image required. When finished, I also saved a copy of each image as a 1024x768 JPG file for screen display and computer slide-show use. It took me a while to realize that this collection of several thousand images was getting out of hand. By saving 15-30Mb of files for each image, the collection of 150 photos from that memorable trip to Paris in 1992 took 6 CD's to store. The idea of 120 CD's of images wasn't appealing. I decided to forego the TIF files, and now I scan everything to high-quality JPG files. At first, I changed my scan resolution to 2800ppi for these "archive scans", but I got tired of the extra minute or two scan time for each image over the 1470ppi scans, so I've gone back to the 2100x1400 pixel images for 35mm images. I believe the issue of image quality "loss" in jpeg compression is greatly over-rated. If I were dealing with those $50/200zt images, I might be less sure, but for family pictures, having files 1/20th of the tiff image size is a tremendous benefit. Now I only have to deal with 10 or so CD's. I save all files as jpeg images at level 6 in Photoshop. I scan everything in 24-bit mode. There has been a long discussion in the Color Theory discussion group as to whether there are *any* scanned images that benefit from high-bit data. I'll leave that question to others. I decided that for my purposes, I'd rather save the 50% file size on every image. I have a significant concern about what I'm going to do with all these CD's in the future. Will the whiz-bang recording device that comes on that new computer I get in 2006 even be able to read these CD's? The problems of dealing with my father's Kodachrome slides form the '30's and '40's pale when compared to the challenges facing people in 50 years trying to deal with my digital images. I have started saving a VueScan index file for each roll of film I scan. This provides a very easy proof-sheet for each scanned roll. Good luck in your scanning. I've spent many wonderful hours reliving the good times represented in my photos as I've been scanning them. Photography, like firewood, warms you several times. Preston Earle [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body