Scanning quality and compression rate

[bobtrips]

I'm seeing more and more pros post that they're using one of the discount store printing services. Since they edit their images before sending/taking them for printing they don't need the services of a professional working on their shots prior to printing.

To a large extent the discount places are using the same machines as the professional labs. Fuji Frontiers seem to be preferred to Noritsus. I haven't seen much about the Agfa machines.

The prints you get from any of these are 'real' prints.

I've seen one post from a pro who said that the higher priced custom lab used heavier stock paper. He felt that it was worth paying more so that he could hand the customer a print that felt more substantial. Of course, once mounted there should be no real difference.

BTW, film and digital prints go through the exact same machine. These days your film is scanned into a digital form and fed to the printer as a digital input.

[qleap]

My opinion on this is to use the professional/discount print services instead of printing at home. By the time you get done paying for the printer, ink, paper and your time it is hard to imagine it is more economical to print at home. I have printed 12 x 18 prints at Costco from a 3 megapixel image (2160 x 1440) and they look fine. If in doubt at what resolution to scan, try two different PPI's and print them out in 8 x 12. I think scanning resolution also depends on the quality of the camera. I scan at 1410 PPI and feel that is adequate, although I don't print those images.

With disk space so cheap, I don't know why people save their images to DVD / CD, unless it is to back up your disk drive. DVDs get scratched/lost etc. and I like the instant access of a hard drive and all my computers have a second hard drive for backups. The important thing is always have a backup, regardless of storage media.

And, not to sound like a broken record, but store in TIFF format. Enhance and save in JPeg format. I keep the file names the same and append an "-R" when reducing them for displaying on the web.

[akcm]

A newbie question here. I have a total 1000 slide (positive) to be scanned using the Epson 4870. I have scanned most of them with 2400 dpi, making the file size to be around 30 Meg. However, I have not set the output size to 8 x 10 or what so ever. So the original size is just of the size of a slide !

I once wanted to use the TIF file for printing but the print house told me that I should scan the slide with 300 dpi rather.

I am considering to do the scanning again using Silverscan with the proper setting of 300 dpi and that the output size at 8 x 10. Initial result is that the file is again with a size of 20+ Meg.


Appreciate if I can have some advice from this forum.

Alan