Hi Guys,
Well I bought an "Espon Perfection 3200 Photo" scanner the other day and I
am rather pleased with it at the moment. It's a flatbed, with the light in
the lid so you can scan slides & negs, etc as well.
But, I need a little advice from the members of the list who are infinitely
more experienced than I.
Basically, I am faced with too many choices when scanning. I need to know
what you would recommend, as far as the settings are concerned, for various
types of scan.
My intention is to scan in all, or at least all but the really dreadful
"mistakes", of my photos. My idea is to have easy access, viewing,
cataloguing, etc of the shots on the PC (stored on CD-R for the moment
anyway, until DVD-R settles a bit). Therefore, I do not need the massive
resolution of the scanner for this (I assume). When viewed at 100percent in
Photoshop Elements, the shots should each be a sensible size on the screen
(ie: not quite fill the screen !). Presumably a TIFF file would be good for
this ?
From these scans, I would then create a JPEG file of any which I wanted to
email / put on the web. I am assuming that this would be OK as generally I
would be expecting a rather lower resolution image for web publishing /
emailing than for my own viewing on the PC screen.
Now, I have heard that anything over 72dpi is wasted on a PC screen as this
is it's resolution so anything else is wasted. Say if I double it and scan
at 150dpi, is this sensible ?
Finally, of course, there will be some images that I will want to scan at
max resolution for printing / manipulating and sending to a local lab / etc.
This is where the maximum resolution of the scanner would seem to be most
useful.
So, I would appreciate any tips or help choosing from the numerous settings
available.
dpi ? (resolution)
Output File Size ? (The bigger I go with this, the lower the max resolution
seems to be ?)
no. of bits ? The scanner does 48-bit colour, but PS Elements won't open
that ! I believe I need full PS for that.
Unsharp Mask ? A little seems to be quite good, but sometimes I look at it
and it just seems unnatural - almost flat ? No sense of depth when I add
this ?
Dust Removal. Hmm, seems like a good idea, but seems to get easily confused
by small things in the image - especially out-of-focus areas (the dust
removal can REALLY screw up the lovely Zuiko Bokeh !). I should point out
that I don't believe the dust removal is ICE - ie, no Infrared channel.
Let the scanner use it's auto settings for exposure / colour correction ?
It gets this right quite a lot, but when it gets it wrong I find it almost
impossible to get it right myself. Even when I switch the correction / auto
settings off, I can't then make the image look good. I guess this just
takes practise ?
All hints and tips would be gratefully received. It is a steep learning
curve, but I do feel that I've been plugging away at it for a few days (I've
had a few days off) and have nothing to show for it. Certainly no decisions
on which settings to choose as a "standard". I don't mind spending a while
"tweaking" the special images, but the scanning of all the images is going
to take a long time, so I don't want to have to do it more than once !!
Thanks in advance for any help you can offer,
Jon
PS: OM Content - all shots to be scanned were taken on OM gear (with a few
possible exceptions, not sure yet !). I promise to add some to my site when
I get this scanning business sorted !
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