For submitting a photo, what is your recommendation for scanner settings (dpi, %size, etc.) to achieve max resolution but still keep photo to the 50K limit. My work turns "soft" when I scan it. Thanks. tom keller

-- Tom Keller (tkeller@midwest.net), March 28, 1999

Answers

Tom, I'm not an expert at this yet, so take this with a grain of salt. I use Photoshop. I usually scan at full resolution for printing and then resize down to 72DPI for display on the monitor. Also, I find that using 'Unsharp Mask' or some similar sharpening seems to add back some of the crispness lost in scanning.

I'd love to hear the techniques of others. I'm using a PowerMac G3 with an Olympus ES-10 scanner.

-- Mike Johnston (michael.johnston@acm.org), March 29, 1999.

I found the web site to be very helpful in giving a basic understanding of the medium and how to improve your scans.

-- Larry Korhnak (lvk@gnv.ifas.ufl.edu), March 30, 1999.

First, forget about "72 DPI".

When viewing on a monitor, "DPI" (or more correctly, PPI -pixels per inch) is a meaningless and confusing term. Rather, think in terms of total pixels.

For example, most people probably use an 800x600 screen. Therefore, in the "image...resixe" dialog box in Photoshop, enter in the value the the final image will be, ignoring the "DPI" setting. Leave DPI alone, don't touch it. So in this case, entering say 500x300 pixels will yield a decent sized image.

Make sure your scan is razor sharp before you resize it. Note that all CCD scans are soft and require sharpening to sme degree. It's simply the nature of the beast. The "Real World Photoshop 5" book has the best explanation of the unsharp mask filter I've ever read. After you resize your image try an unsharp mask filter with a setting of "200 (amount), 0.5 (radius), 2 (threshold)".

Finally, try a JPEG optimizing filter like the one from Pegasus to get the file size down without introducing too many artifacts. It's free if you agree to the terms on their website (place their logo and a link on your site somewhere, and it actually works pretty well.

Hope it helps,

Keith

http://www.clarkphoto.com/

-- Keith Clark (keith@clarkphoto.com), March 30, 1999.

I realized after posting that maybe first sentence of that last message might have sounded a little harsh. It wasn't intended that way...honest. :>

BTW, I scan with a Nikon LS2000 and a pee-cee (Win98, Celeron 300A running @ 450 MHZ, and 384 MB RAM, and last but not least, a screaming fast UW-SCSI hard drive (11MB/sec in sequential mode)).

I'm discovering fast that a 17" monitor is simply too small for using Photoshop and Dreamweaver comfortably. Anyone have feelings about the best 21" monitor (will be using two grahics cards, and both monitors)? How's the pro series 21" Viewsonic?

Keith

-- Keith Clark (keith@clarkphoto.com), March 30, 1999.

For some reason I see that the URL of "the web site" didn't come through. It's http://www.scantips.com. Good discussion of some points that Keith made.

-- Larry Korhnak (lvk@gnv.ifas.ufl.edu), March 31, 1999.