Our fellow Gearhead Dev11 has a problem and he contacted me , i have some answers but i belive this is a problem that a lot of us have and so in the better interests of everyone .. here we go , I start with the problem statement Dev11 had for me , reproduced here verbatim. Thank you @%1;for bringing this up ..
My answers"I have many photo prints at home in my possession. Many of them are black and white, some with grayish and some brownish tone. Many are coloured but some are matt-finish and some glossy. Few photos have too much red/brown tint allover, I think they are called fuji-colour or something like that, though not sure.
This is the collection maintained by my dad since his young age.
I want to make digital copies of all these, at least of the memorable ones.
I have an old regular flat-bed scanner, Astra 5800, which supports resolution upto 4800, I think.
My request is, please guide me about the techniques involved in digitizing these various kinds of photos – a) B&W, b) Fuji colour, c) Matt-finished Colour, d) Glossy, Colour. Please also note that photos are in various sizes from passport size to 10”*12”.
Q.1 – What resolution should I use to digitize a photo for a quality comparable to 8-10 megapixel camera?
Q.2 – What resolution should I use to have a digital copy with manageable file size, so that normal details shouldn’t be missed. Photo should look good when viewed on the screen, either on 21” TFT monitor or 52”/42” LED TV.
Q.3 – What resolution, Darkness/brightness/contrast/hue/saturation, etc should be set while scanning or should be processed with after scanning, for each of above types of photos, so that good colour and detail quality can be obtained."
Q1 - 600 dpi is what i have used and this is fine
Q2 - At 600 dpi the file fize will be manageable, Looks fab on a 42 inch fullHD [1920 x 1080] LED TV , i have tried this out .
Q3 - I used the default setting on my scanner , and later processed them manually to match the actual prints, Ideally , if you have the negative , i have had better experiences from scanning the negatives than the prints themselves.
For these i did not do any different setting , but did notice that the glossy pictures had a better scanned output than the MATT finish ones.a) B&W, b) Fuji colour, c) Matt-finished Colour, d) Glossy, Colour.
You cant do anything about the B&W and the Fuji colour ones you will have to scan them in as they are and then retort to digital processing, well there is but nothing that can be done in a cost effective or with minimum effort.
Well i too had about 400 pictures to scan in and this was during the days after my graduation about 10 years back so sat down and did all the work to scan them in. sometimes i used to arraange mutiple prints on the same scan and then cut out and save individually
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