Newbie: Negative Scanning Questions

External Since: Sep 25, 2004 Posts: 9

I was interested in making digital prints from some of my old 35mm
negatives and am seeking some scanning advice. My experience with digital
photography so far has only been with making low resolution scans of negatives
for webpages. My equipment is Adobe Photoshop, a HP ScanJet 4570c with
negative adapter (yes I realize it's not a true negative scanner like the
better Nikon's and Minolta's) and a Cannon i470D bubblejet printer. I simply
want to make the best occasional family prints I can with this hardware &
software in printing 4x6, 5x7, and 8x10 photos.
The scanner is capable of 2400 dpi and the resolution of the printer is 600x600
in black and 4800x1200 in color.
1) My first question involves the scanning format...should I save the
scan as a TIF, compressed TIF, JPEG or GIF? Perhaps I should save it (archive
it) as a TIF and do the editing of it and saving it as a JPEG to print? (print
the edited JPEG)
2) My second question involves the resolution setting of the scanner.
Keeping in mind that I will be doing 4x6, 5x7, and 8x10 and given that the
maximum resolution of the printer is 4800 x 1200dpi, should I scan the 35mm
negatives at the full 2400 or is that going too far? The size of the file
isn't really a concern if I can get higher quality prints using the high
scanner resolution. But, if it the resulting print at 8x10 will look exactly
the same with a smaller scanner resolution, then I'd prefer to use the smaller
setting to reduce computer processing time and space.
Any thoughts to the above questions are appreciated. Thanks.

External Since: Mar 06, 2004 Posts: 81

On 9-Nov-2003, xtx99.RemoveThis@aol.com (Xtx99) wrote:

> I was interested in making digital prints from some of my old 35mm
> negatives and am seeking some scanning advice. My experience with digital
> photography so far has only been with making low resolution scans of
> negatives
> for webpages. My equipment is Adobe Photoshop, a HP ScanJet 4570c with
> negative adapter (yes I realize it's not a true negative scanner like the
> better Nikon's and Minolta's) and a Cannon i470D bubblejet printer. I
> simply
> want to make the best occasional family prints I can with this hardware &
> software in printing 4x6, 5x7, and 8x10 photos.
> The scanner is capable of 2400 dpi and the resolution of the printer is
> 600x600
> in black and 4800x1200 in color.
> 1) My first question involves the scanning format...should I save
> the
> scan as a TIF, compressed TIF, JPEG or GIF? Perhaps I should save it
> (archive
> it) as a TIF and do the editing of it and saving it as a JPEG to print?
> (print
> the edited JPEG)
> 2) My second question involves the resolution setting of the
> scanner.
> Keeping in mind that I will be doing 4x6, 5x7, and 8x10 and given that the
> maximum resolution of the printer is 4800 x 1200dpi, should I scan the
> 35mm
> negatives at the full 2400 or is that going too far? The size of the file
> isn't really a concern if I can get higher quality prints using the high
> scanner resolution. But, if it the resulting print at 8x10 will look
> exactly
> the same with a smaller scanner resolution, then I'd prefer to use the
> smaller
> setting to reduce computer processing time and space.
> Any thoughts to the above questions are appreciated. Thanks.

1) Save your files as tif or compressed tif. You could use high quality
jpegs and probably wouldn't notice the difference but unless you have a disk
space problem there's no need.
2) The dpi numbers for your printer are have no relationship to the dpi of
your scanner or your images. Ignore them.
3) 300ppi is about the highest pixel density you need for most printers. An
8x10 at 300 ppi is 2400x3000 pixels. Scanning a 35mm negative at 2400 dpi
will get you an image that's 3402x2268 pixels which works out to about
288ppi when printed as an 8x12 (or cropped to 8x10). So, scan at 2400dpi.

--
Tom Thackrey
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.creative-light.com" target="_blank">www.creative-light.com</a>
tom (at) creative (dash) light (dot) com
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