Day 2 birthday slideshow: scanner settings

[robfilms]

Okay folks, the music has been chosen by the boss (not springsteen silly, my boss, my ever-loving better half) with the winner being either: john lennon's "stand by me" or her suggested "the circle game".

thanks to the 20 folks who yesterday offered wonderful suggestions to get my thinking moving.

today's query for the day is about the 75 4x6" prints that i have to scan. many of the images of my 13yr old daughter are digital. i got my 1st digital camera about 6 years ago so we have many digital pix to choose from. but the critical birth/baby/growing moments are on prints.

my scanner is a low-end canon usb n1220u. i am importing the images using the home g5/17"/imac 2.0. this will also be the display mechanism. the present resolution is set at 1440 x 900.

i have used this scanner for a gig 2-3 years ago with a pismo powerbook and the result was fine. only problem was that it was 2-3 years ago and i have totally forgot how i achieved the desired results. bottomline: what should be my scan settings? now i'm scanning for the purpose of this slide show which would suggest a need to fill the image on the 17"imac screen. then again these are the prime birth/baby/growing up images for my younger daughter and would hope to archive these memories.

can any of u expereinced scanning folks offer a quick do this-do that for me to get my desired result. i need to start scanning the 75 images by noon so i can assemble the slideshow by 3pm. it is now 6:52am. i gotta get going on the work train.

as always, any and all thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

be well

rob

[Markintosh]

For my slide shows, I scan at the highest possible resolution/quality, import to iPhoto and let iPhoto scale to fit for the slideshow.

If you don't do that the scans look really craptacular compared to digitals and it really shows in a slide show. Since I'm using my laptop to run the show, size of files is not an issue. It might be an issue if you were trying to burn the show to disc.

[DRR]

Without knowing your scanner, I'd say you'd be safe with,

RGB
Reflective
You can scan at 100% scaling (6x4) but use at least 240ppi. Or scan at 72ppi with your scaling set to 400%.

I'd use automatic color correction also if you have a bunch to do and a time limit. Hope that helps.

P.S. If you have an application which lets you crop (Photoshop perhaps?) you can scan 3 at a time and then separate the scans. that'll save you some time too.

[johnc]

For archiving, scan at 300dpi. Most slideshow apps should have a "fit to screen" capability, regardless of image format (horizontal or vertical).

In order to fill the screen with an image, your minimum scanning resolution (for displaying at 100%) varies (according to image format). These numbers assume a "live" scanning area of 4x6 (or 6x4).

For vertical images, minimum resolution is 150ppi:



Horizontal images will require a slightly higher resolution of 225ppi:

[jimbrady]

Assuming iMovie (that's where you're headed with these?) is like FCP, and allows any resolution of original files, I tend to scan at 288dpi which is 4X the final output res of 72dpi (this would have the same effect as DRR's 72dpi at 400%). With that setting, you can do a push in iMovie into a small detail (25%) of the image without sharpness deteriorating.

Scan at higher res only if you want to include very small details in your zooms. Scanning at "highest possible" resolution is unnecessary and would take forever at USB1 speeds.

[robfilms]

jimbrady-

thanks for the tip. that was my thinking. that my final output rate should be a multiple of 72dpi. 288dpi seems like a reasonable thought.

by the way, last week's imovie6 gig was screened for the clients on monday afternoon and all went very well. the integration between imovie6 and idvd6 was lovely. final product on dvd was just where it should be. i'm not duping the final version just yet. i still want to get under the hood and tweak some of the audio levels. that said, client was thrilled.

now, if i can only get the canon n1220u scanner to work under osx then i could get to work. i seem to be having driver issues and not sure how to get the boat back into the water. always something.

be well

rob