Scanning Times
 

I have a MF 6x6 transparency I need to generate a rather
large 40x40 foot scan at 72 dpi around 2.5 gb from. I am curious if
anyone has attempted and successfully made a scan that large with the
2450 scanner or other. I started out doing it last night and after an
hour of what appeared to be little or no progress I hung it up.

Also I am curious what factors like only having 512mb ram will affect the
duration (I have enough scratch disk space).

--
LF Website @ http://members.verizon.net/~gregoryblank

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President,
or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong,
is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable
to the American public."--Theodore Roosevelt, May 7, 1918

Scanning Times
 

"Gregory Blank" wrote in message
...
I have a MF 6x6 transparency I need to generate a rather
large 40x40 foot scan at 72 dpi around 2.5 gb from. I am curious if
anyone has attempted and successfully made a scan that large with the
2450 scanner or other. I started out doing it last night and after an
hour of what appeared to be little or no progress I hung it up.

I've made such large images (bitwise) using the Epson 3200 and a laptop G4
and laptop Windoze under XP, each with 1GB of RAM. I think the time was
about 40 minutes. Given that RAM is so cheap, bump it up and see if it
helps. Done a defrag lately? (Under WindoZe, use the command line version of
degrag - it is faster - syntax is "defrag device" (where device is C,D,
whatever).) Use "defrag device: -a" to analyze quickly without defraging
if you only want to look.

Scanning Times
 

"Gregory Blank" wrote in message
...
I have a MF 6x6 transparency I need to generate a rather
large 40x40 foot scan at 72 dpi around 2.5 gb from. I am curious if
anyone has attempted and successfully made a scan that large with the
2450 scanner or other. I started out doing it last night and after an
hour of what appeared to be little or no progress I hung it up.

I've made such large images (bitwise) using the Epson 3200 and a laptop G4
and laptop Windoze under XP, each with 1GB of RAM. I think the time was
about 40 minutes. Given that RAM is so cheap, bump it up and see if it
helps. Done a defrag lately? (Under WindoZe, use the command line version of
degrag - it is faster - syntax is "defrag device" (where device is C,D,
whatever).) Use "defrag device: -a" to analyze quickly without defraging
if you only want to look.

Scanning Times
 

What image editor are you using? If you aren't using CS, you may run into
problem even IF you can get the scanner software to actually output a file
that large. Doesn't any version of Photoshop other than CS limit you to
less than 30,000 pixels in any one direction?

Doug
--
Doug's "MF Film Holder" for batch scanning "strips" of 120/220 medium format
film:
http://home.earthlink.net/~dougfishe...mainintro.html

Scanning Times
 

What image editor are you using? If you aren't using CS, you may run into
problem even IF you can get the scanner software to actually output a file
that large. Doesn't any version of Photoshop other than CS limit you to
less than 30,000 pixels in any one direction?

Doug
--
Doug's "MF Film Holder" for batch scanning "strips" of 120/220 medium format
film:
http://home.earthlink.net/~dougfishe...mainintro.html

Scanning Times
 

"Gregory Blank" wrote

I have a MF 6x6 transparency I need to generate a rather
large 40x40 foot scan at 72 dpi around 2.5 gb from.

This figures out to 34,560 x 34,560 pixels! I think that's closer to 3.5 GB
for 8 bits/channel if I did the math right.

I am curious if anyone has attempted and successfully made
a scan that large with the 2450 scanner or other.

This would mean a scan rez of 15,709 dpi, assuming 2.2 inches for the film!
Most experts agree that scanning at 5,000 dpi with a drum scanner gets pretty
much all the info available from fine grained films like Velvia, with very
small additional improvements with higher scan rez.

I think the best drum scanners like a Tango go maybe 10,000 - 12,000 dpi and
the 2450 is more like a 2,400 dpi scanner at best. This means the scanner
software is interpolating (upsampling) for you, which you usually don't want
because you can do a better job of it with a good imaging editor like
Photoshop.

I started out doing it last night and after an
hour of what appeared to be little or no progress I hung it up.

What I would do is scan at the highest native rez of my scanner, whatever that
may be (2,400 dpi or 3,200 if you have a better Epson flatbed or 4,000 dpi if
you have access to a Nikon 8000 or similar, or maybe 5,000 dpi from a scan shop
with a drum). Then I would interpolate this upward myself, probably in steps
like the Stair Interpolation algorithm. Easy to do with an action in
Photoshop. I'm not sure if Genuine Fractals lets you make files this large,
but that's an option too. If you can store it as a .stn and have the people at
the other end open up the GF file at the desired larger size it would make for
easier file transfers.

Used to be a 30,000 pixel limit in Photoshop, not sure if CS changed that. I
think there are also file size memory limits in Photoshop (maybe 4 GB?) so you
might have to halve or quarter the file at some point and reassemble the parts
later in the flow.

Good luck!

Bill

Scanning Times
 

"Gregory Blank" wrote

I have a MF 6x6 transparency I need to generate a rather
large 40x40 foot scan at 72 dpi around 2.5 gb from.

This figures out to 34,560 x 34,560 pixels! I think that's closer to 3.5 GB
for 8 bits/channel if I did the math right.

I am curious if anyone has attempted and successfully made
a scan that large with the 2450 scanner or other.

This would mean a scan rez of 15,709 dpi, assuming 2.2 inches for the film!
Most experts agree that scanning at 5,000 dpi with a drum scanner gets pretty
much all the info available from fine grained films like Velvia, with very
small additional improvements with higher scan rez.

I think the best drum scanners like a Tango go maybe 10,000 - 12,000 dpi and
the 2450 is more like a 2,400 dpi scanner at best. This means the scanner
software is interpolating (upsampling) for you, which you usually don't want
because you can do a better job of it with a good imaging editor like
Photoshop.

I started out doing it last night and after an
hour of what appeared to be little or no progress I hung it up.

What I would do is scan at the highest native rez of my scanner, whatever that
may be (2,400 dpi or 3,200 if you have a better Epson flatbed or 4,000 dpi if
you have access to a Nikon 8000 or similar, or maybe 5,000 dpi from a scan shop
with a drum). Then I would interpolate this upward myself, probably in steps
like the Stair Interpolation algorithm. Easy to do with an action in
Photoshop. I'm not sure if Genuine Fractals lets you make files this large,
but that's an option too. If you can store it as a .stn and have the people at
the other end open up the GF file at the desired larger size it would make for
easier file transfers.

Used to be a 30,000 pixel limit in Photoshop, not sure if CS changed that. I
think there are also file size memory limits in Photoshop (maybe 4 GB?) so you
might have to halve or quarter the file at some point and reassemble the parts
later in the flow.

Good luck!

Bill

Scanning Times
 

"Bill Hilton" wrote:
"Gregory Blank" wrote

I have a MF 6x6 transparency I need to generate a rather
large 40x40 foot scan at 72 dpi around 2.5 gb from.

This figures out to 34,560 x 34,560 pixels! I think that's closer to 3.5
GB
for 8 bits/channel if I did the math right.

You did. Usually when you find yourself doing something a bit unreasonable,
it's a good idea to sit back and think about what you are doing.

The nominal native resolution of the 2450 is 2400 dpi. That's 5280 x 5280
pixels, or 11 ppi.

If you count those native pixels, creating a 72 dpi file for that large a
print from a 2.2 x 2.2 inch frame is upsampling by a factor of 6.6 from the
already painfully soft Epson scan.

So what's the output device: undergraduate art majors with paintbrushes
painting a football field from computer printed paint-by-numbers charts?

Seriously, there's got to be a more sensible thing to do than create a 3.5
GB file with barely 7 MP (since the Epson really is barely a 1200 dpi
scanner) oe 21 MB of real information. That file is 167 times larger than it
needs to be.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

"Bill Hilton" wrote:
"Gregory Blank" wrote

I have a MF 6x6 transparency I need to generate a rather
large 40x40 foot scan at 72 dpi around 2.5 gb from.

This figures out to 34,560 x 34,560 pixels! I think that's closer to 3.5
GB
for 8 bits/channel if I did the math right.

You did. Usually when you find yourself doing something a bit unreasonable,
it's a good idea to sit back and think about what you are doing.

The nominal native resolution of the 2450 is 2400 dpi. That's 5280 x 5280
pixels, or 11 ppi.

If you count those native pixels, creating a 72 dpi file for that large a
print from a 2.2 x 2.2 inch frame is upsampling by a factor of 6.6 from the
already painfully soft Epson scan.

So what's the output device: undergraduate art majors with paintbrushes
painting a football field from computer printed paint-by-numbers charts?

Seriously, there's got to be a more sensible thing to do than create a 3.5
GB file with barely 7 MP (since the Epson really is barely a 1200 dpi
scanner) oe 21 MB of real information. That file is 167 times larger than it
needs to be.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

Scanning Times
 

" -" wrote in message
link.net...
What image editor are you using? If you aren't using CS, you may run into
problem even IF you can get the scanner software to actually output a file
that large. Doesn't any version of Photoshop other than CS limit you to
less than 30,000 pixels in any one direction?

Unfortunately, his software might be failing at the aquisition stage, which
isn't done with Photoshop (cs) per se, but the called module (TWAIN thang!)