Archiving Old Photos - A Newbie Question

Archiving Old Photos - A Newbie Question

Hi,

I have decided to scan my 35-mm printed photos to my computer, and then
get rid of the printed ones. For that sake, I have bought a new Canon
4200F scanner. In the bundled software, I can scan up to 3200 DPI
(optical). I have several questions:

1. In order to get the best quality; is it better to use the negatives
instead of the printed pictures? It takes much longer.
2. What is the preferred scanning resolution? (Keeping in mind that
some time ahead I would be willing to print these images)
3. In what file format (e.g. JPG) is it preferable to store the images?

3. Would you consider Canon 4200F sufficient for archival proposes, or
should I spend more money on a more professional one?
4. The scanner is bundled with Arcview Photostudio 5.5. I feel this
software is rather cumbersome to use and am ready to spend on a
professional and convenient software package. My budget is around $500,
can you recommend any?

Thanks a lot in advance!
A.

wrote:
Archiving Old Photos - A Newbie Question

Hi,

I have decided to scan my 35-mm printed photos to my computer, and
then get rid of the printed ones. For that sake, I have bought a new
Canon 4200F scanner. In the bundled software, I can scan up to 3200
DPI (optical). I have several questions:

1. In order to get the best quality; is it better to use the negatives
instead of the printed pictures? It takes much longer.

Try it with your equipment and materials and see what works best.

2. What is the preferred scanning resolution? (Keeping in mind that
some time ahead I would be willing to print these images)

Try it with your equipment and materials and see what works best.

3. In what file format (e.g. JPG) is it preferable to store the
images?

Likely TIFF, as it will not loose data, although files will be larger.
Life if full of trade offs. If you end up doing post scan editing of the
photos a no-loss format becomes more important as looses are cumulative.


3. Would you consider Canon 4200F sufficient for archival proposes, or
should I spend more money on a more professional one?

Try it with your equipment and materials and see how it works for you.
Really what I or someone else may find acceptable may not be acceptable to
you. Only you can say what is good enough.

4. The scanner is bundled with Arcview Photostudio 5.5. I feel this
software is rather cumbersome to use and am ready to spend on a
professional and convenient software package. My budget is around
$500, can you recommend any?

Most people chose Adobe Photoshop as the top choice. I use it's little
brother Elements. Learning curves tend to be steep so be ready to spend
some time with any product before making a final judgment. There are also
some very good free or inexpensive choice. It really depends on your
personal needs. Using Photoshop would be a real pain for most people who
would do better with a far more basic, easy to use faster software.


Thanks a lot in advance!
A.

--
Joseph Meehan

Dia duit

wrote:
Archiving Old Photos - A Newbie Question

Hi,

I have decided to scan my 35-mm printed photos to my computer, and
then get rid of the printed ones. For that sake, I have bought a new
Canon 4200F scanner. In the bundled software, I can scan up to 3200
DPI (optical). I have several questions:

1. In order to get the best quality; is it better to use the negatives
instead of the printed pictures? It takes much longer.
2. What is the preferred scanning resolution? (Keeping in mind that
some time ahead I would be willing to print these images)
3. In what file format (e.g. JPG) is it preferable to store the
images?

3. Would you consider Canon 4200F sufficient for archival proposes, or
should I spend more money on a more professional one?
4. The scanner is bundled with Arcview Photostudio 5.5. I feel this
software is rather cumbersome to use and am ready to spend on a
professional and convenient software package. My budget is around
$500, can you recommend any?

Thanks a lot in advance!
A.

It is much better to use a slide/negative scanner as the pictures will be of
far superior quality if scanned direct form the negatives. Nikon and Minolta
are the favoured types, and Digital ICE seems to be an essential dust
remover.

wrote:
Archiving Old Photos - A Newbie Question

Hi,

I have decided to scan my 35-mm printed photos to my computer, and then
get rid of the printed ones. For that sake, I have bought a new Canon
4200F scanner. In the bundled software, I can scan up to 3200 DPI
(optical). I have several questions:

1. In order to get the best quality; is it better to use the negatives
instead of the printed pictures? It takes much longer.
2. What is the preferred scanning resolution? (Keeping in mind that
some time ahead I would be willing to print these images)
3. In what file format (e.g. JPG) is it preferable to store the images?

3. Would you consider Canon 4200F sufficient for archival proposes, or
should I spend more money on a more professional one?
4. The scanner is bundled with Arcview Photostudio 5.5. I feel this
software is rather cumbersome to use and am ready to spend on a
professional and convenient software package. My budget is around $500,
can you recommend any?

Thanks a lot in advance!
A.

You might want to think twice about dumping the printed photos. Who
knows if
JPEG or whatever medium you use will be around in 20 years?

On 10 Jun 2006 02:54:35 -0700, wrote:

Archiving Old Photos - A Newbie Question

Hi,


First, let me point your he
http://www.rogerhalstead.com/scanning.htm

I have decided to scan my 35-mm printed photos to my computer, and then
get rid of the printed ones.

Getting rid of the prints might not be a good idea although if you
still have the negatives...

For that sake, I have bought a new Canon
4200F scanner. In the bundled software, I can scan up to 3200 DPI
(optical). I have several questions:

Here I need to back up a bit. You say you want to archive the images.
What quality do you want. Are these family photos that some one, some
day may actually have some interest in going through them and seeing
fine detail?

I'd suggest reading the above link to help decide what you wish to do.
There are a lot of tradeoffs and expenses. Then it depends on how
many images you have to scan and how much time you are willing to
devote to the project. If you have more than a few hundred images it
can and most likely will turn into a major project with file naming
conventions and cataloging problems.

1. In order to get the best quality; is it better to use the negatives
instead of the printed pictures? It takes much longer.

This is an unqualified yes it is better to scan the negatives as they
contain far more information than the prints. OTOH, do you need that
kind of resolution and color range? If so a flat bed is not the best
way to go even if it does have an adapter. Although they continue to
get better the flat beds are still lacking when compared to a
dedicated film scanner. OTOH they are a lot less expensive.

2. What is the preferred scanning resolution? (Keeping in mind that
some time ahead I would be willing to print these images)

Roughly 300 dpi for scanning prints, More than that is a waste of
time, memory, and disk space. 300 dpi will extract about all the
information in a print that is there.

For negatives you *probably* want the highest resolution available.
However you may find that the scanner is incapable of resolving
sharply to the level of resolution claimed. Most flat beds are this
way.

3. In what file format (e.g. JPG) is it preferable to store the images?

TIFF. Of course it also uses the most disk space.
JPGs are compressed. If you have to save them as JPGs at least make
the images read only so the original does not get over written.

3. Would you consider Canon 4200F sufficient for archival proposes, or
should I spend more money on a more professional one?

My personal opinion is No. If you are truely going for archival
quality (IF you both want and need it) then a dedicated film and slide
scanner would be the way to go.

4. The scanner is bundled with Arcview Photostudio 5.5. I feel this
software is rather cumbersome to use and am ready to spend on a
professional and convenient software package. My budget is around $500,
can you recommend any?

Your budget for the software is around $500 or for the whole project?

Unless you are going to be doing some serious photo editing I would
suggest either Corel Paint Shop Pro (was Jasic), or Photoshop Elements
These are *relatively* inexpensive, but work quite well.

If you are talking about scanning software there are a number of
packages that work well. Some have much steeper learning curves than
others. With the Nikon LS5000 ED I use both Nikon Scan and VueScan
and am happy with both. Both have some limitations and both have some
strong points. There is also Silver Scan and a number of others with
which I am not familiar.

Good dedicated film scanners are going to be at least $500 USD or
more. I use the Nikon LS5000 ED for negative and slide scanning. It
scans to 4000 dpi and has the resolution to show the grain in all but
the finest grain films. Canon has one that goes to 5000 dpi (I
believe) The LS5000 ED is one of the fastest scanners out there with
the ability to scan a slide or negative in about 15 to 20 seconds at
full resolution. HOWEVER adding digital ICE scratch and dirt removal
will come close to doubling that time. Adding other processing during
the scanning can take it up to several minutes per image although
that is something I've rarely found necessary.

I've now gone through scanning over 30,000 slides and negatives with
the LS5000 ED and I'm happy with its performance. I still seem to
learn something new about it just about every time I use it.

Good Luck,

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com


Thanks a lot in advance!
A.