Re: Scanning B&W photonegatives ?

Lynn Lickteig (mailto:vrc@SPOT.COLORADO.EDU)
Thu, 8 Jun 1995 11:59:43 -0600

Message-Id: <mailto:199506081800.LAA10441@listserv.ccit.arizona.edu>
Date:         Thu, 8 Jun 1995 11:59:43 -0600
From: Lynn Lickteig <mailto:vrc@SPOT.COLORADO.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Scanning B&W photonegatives ?
To: Multiple recipients of list IMAGELIB

>
>An acceptable viewing resolution is achieved by
>scanning at
This is in response to the request for clarification of information by Peter J. Roberts: The answer is that it depends, like everything else, exactly what you wish to do with the scanned image (I'm not talking about printing versus viewing but rather how much detail you want to have in the image). Since most monitors only have a display resolution of 72 dpi, it would be a waste of disk space to scan at 150 dpi if you only wanted to final image to be 4x5. If you were to scan the image at 150 dpi, you would effectively (in the realm of your monitor) have enough information to create an image that was 8.332x10.415 (2.083 x 4 and 5). However, if the image on the 4x5 negative is very detailed, you may want to a larger image in order toview that detail. An easy way to determine this on an ad hoc basis would be to determine a ceiling for your viewable dpi level, and as each image is scanned determine at which resolution to save at. If you are scanning using a plug-in attached to Photoshop this becomes very simple. When you initially scan the image, Photoshop displays it in it's 'real' size (that is if you said to scan it at a size of 4x5, it would be 4x5 on the screen). This is achieved by shrinking the pixel size (4 and 5 x the scanning resolution divided by 72 - the screens resolution) of the image, and photoshop will display that ratio in the image title bar. Now all you have to do is use the magnifying tool to determine what amount of detail the image needs, and change the size using the 'Image Size' command. You will then have an scan that has enough detail to display the amount of detail it contains, while at the same time not going beyond a certain standard file size. I hope this has helped and let me know if you want to know anything else. Aaron Howell Visual Resource Center College of Architecture and Planning University of Colorado mailto:vrc@spot.colorado.edu