Coytee Posted November 5, 2007 Share Posted November 5, 2007 Scenario, I've now got my hands on a Nikon Coolscan 5000. I can default to several formats. What I want to do MOST importantly, is scan my slides and negatives with the HIGHEST quality this thing can muster. I want quality first then file size as a (distant) second concern. What I didn't expect is if I do a scan in TIFF format, the single slide filesize is something like 10 megabites in size. If I scan the same thing in JPEG format, it's (maybe) 1 megabyte....point being...there is a huge difference in size, but does it equate to quality in an absolute sense? (raw TIFF on this pic is 34,817 kb's ( ?? megabytes?) and the JPEG is 224 kb's) I do NOT mind saving in a huge format as I intend to burn these to a dvd. Actually, I intend to create the most accurate pictures I can and then copy them to Jpeg format and THEN burn all of them to a dvd. So, without someone telling me to do one or the other because I'll save space, I not only know that but this isn't what it's about. It's about which file type will allow me to create the BEST in an absolute sense, scan of my slides/negatives. Anyone know which format is of the highest quality? Colter... where are ya when I need ya bro?? Ohhh... also... I'm using a 21" monitor here at home however things usually seem darker on it than my 23" at work. This is a Gateway "VX1120" and I've got the brightness cranked up. Maybe the tube is wearing out, maybe issue with my video card... maybe it's all normal (I think it's always been this way) Brings me to this... When I scan these slides, some of them..well, actually MOST of them are very very dark and I end up brightening them. In defense of most of the pictures, many were taken inside a gymnasium and it might not have been well lit. Also, many of these are from the 1950's, 60's and 70's. Perhaps age has come into play... Here's what I'm wondering... Am I better off doing a direct scan (no editing), not knowing if my monitor MIGHT be affecting what I'm seeing (maybe they'll look "normal" on another monitor) or am I better off doing my scan and then brightening them as I feel needed when using THIS monitor? If this monitor is in fact, making some things dark, will that adversely affect them as far as their data structure? I'm attaching one picture to give you an idea of what I'm copying and yes... that's me! This was taken about 1971 and I was riding what I presume to be a 10' unicycle. Could have been a smaller one but I typically rode one of the taller ones. I have left this picture untouched. On my screen although it's clearly visible it's still kind of showing a darkness about it. Thoughts? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coytee Posted November 5, 2007 Author Share Posted November 5, 2007 Thank God I wasn't the one taking these pictures... Maybe Colter can give me some suggestions on how to 'clean them up' lol (aside from burning them!!) [6] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coytee Posted November 5, 2007 Author Share Posted November 5, 2007 ok, my last shot of humility.... Yes..."guess who", riding a "Bedstead". I don't know if it was a REAL bedframe (headboard) or if they just fabricated it to look like a headboard. none the less, it was a headboard of a bed, turned into a big bicycle. One that I could NOT stop with as I was still way in the air. I rode the bedstead in the Indianapolis 500 parade (as opposed to a uni) Seems with the Indy parade, some hometown parade and all... (as per Mom) they calculated that over a weekend we had ridden our unicycles about 25 miles. Just a point of irrelevancy... you can't COAST on a unicycle, you must always pedle. Well, although you can't "coast" like you can on a bike... you CAN sort of rest and let your feet go round with the pedals... or as we sometimes did, you can ride with one foot powering and the other foot off the pedal altogether. And I don't ever want to hear anything about the WHISKERS!!! lol I had no choice in my outfit [:$] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marvel Posted November 5, 2007 Share Posted November 5, 2007 Richard, The TIFF format usually is not a compressed format. The JPG is always compressed, you can pick the amount. However, the JPG format is a a lossy format. It throws away bits. It is not bad, in a sense, as the final format, but editing and saving over and over in JPG results in some wacky artifacts. The best thing would be to save them all in TIFF and keep a copy. Edit/tweak all you want and save as a JPG to stick on DVD or other media, to hand out to friends and family. An even better format is RAW, but a lot of software can't use it. I imagine Michael uses RAW in his camera. All kinds of camera data is saved with the file. ... but that is a whole other story and a long road to go down. Bruce Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JJkizak Posted November 5, 2007 Share Posted November 5, 2007 Why TIFF when you can use PNG? JJK Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marvel Posted November 5, 2007 Share Posted November 5, 2007 Another thing you can do... if you have a pic you really want to work on a lot.. is to resample at double the size (means the file size will actually be 4 times larger). Once you are done editing, you resample back to the original size. It can help hide errors in your editing. The hard thing will be the color balance from the old film. Newer film can look pretty good under different types of light (tungsten, daylight, flourescent, incandescent), but the older films could look pretty strange. Plus you have colors that shift over time as slides or film ages. As in most things, you will have to make compromises. What you DON'T want to do is make it obvious that you did something to the shot. Here's the unicyle pic after about a minute of work. Your changes could be totally differerent than what I would do. Cheers! Bruce Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coytee Posted November 5, 2007 Author Share Posted November 5, 2007 Never heard of RAW nor PNG. Aside from that, the only choices I seem to have on the scanner are TIFF, BMP, JPEG, TIFF (convert to CMYK) and NEF. I don't know why the second TIFF format has the "convert to CMYK" nor do I know what CMYK is but it's a choice I've got. I guess from what you've said that I should go ahead and do what I'm planning... copy them in TIFF then create another copy of them in JPG (so my mother won't need to try to figure out how) cool...! [] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marvel Posted November 5, 2007 Share Posted November 5, 2007 PNG isn't meant as an archival format. THe best format would be a DNG, digital negative, but not a lot of people support it yet. This is a bigger can of worms than speaker wires, capacitors, tubes....[:|] The best part is that parents are just happy to see those pics again. You can make a slide show to play back on the tv, too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coytee Posted November 5, 2007 Author Share Posted November 5, 2007 Another thing you can do... if you have a pic you really want to work on a lot.. is to resample at double the size (means the file size will actually be 4 times larger). Once you are done editing, you resample back to the original size. It can help hide errors in your editing. I'm seeing a setting under "scanner extras" called "Multi sample scanning". It's defaulted to Normal 1x but there is are several selections, one being "Super fine (16X)" Might I presume that this is what you refer to and it will be a SLOWWWWWWWWW scan but might give me the best analysis of each slide?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marvel Posted November 5, 2007 Share Posted November 5, 2007 I guess you would have to read the manual.hehehe I know photogs that are easily working with files in the 100 megabyte range. You probably don't want to do that. Bruce Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Islander Posted November 5, 2007 Share Posted November 5, 2007 What's usually best to do is to save your scan in TIFF form, in the highest res you'll need for the print size you'll be using. That's your original. Then you make a duplicate. You do your cropping, colour corrections, dust removal and spotting on this copy and save it as a TIFF. Then you duplicate the copy and resize it (in Image Size) to 800 pixels or so in its long dimension (width for a horizontal, height for a vertical, obviously). Resizing shrinks the file size quite a lot, to 1 to 1.5Meg. Save that version as a JPEG and it will be about 80-180kb, a good size for emailing and onscreen viewing. 800 pixels across (or tall) means it will fit on a screen without having to scroll to see it all. When scanning 35mm negs or prints, 30Meg or so is plenty, but you can go to 80Meg if you want. This makes the pixels bigger onscreen, so it's easier to do fine retouching. Many printers can't use more than 30Meg of data, so that's usually a big enough file size to save for printing. Now you'll have three versions of every image, the original TIFF, the corrected TIFF, and the corrected JPEG. If you mess up the corrected TIFF, you still have the original and can make another duplicate from it. The JPEG is copied from the corrected TIFF, because the small file size and small pixels of the JPEG mean it's harder to do fine retouching on it. With old faded negs and prints, it's surprising how much AutoColor can do to freshen up the look. However, indoor shots with ambient light will never look great, whatever vintage they are. Hope this is helpful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Islander Posted November 5, 2007 Share Posted November 5, 2007 Never heard of RAW nor PNG. Aside from that, the only choices I seem to have on the scanner are TIFF, BMP, JPEG, TIFF (convert to CMYK) and NEF. I don't know why the second TIFF format has the "convert to CMYK" nor do I know what CMYK is but it's a choice I've got. [] Computers work in 3-colour RGB (Red-Green-Blue), but commercial print shops work in 4-colour CMYK (Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-blacK), so it gives you the option in case you have work with those guys. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Islander Posted November 5, 2007 Share Posted November 5, 2007 Another thing you can do... if you have a pic you really want to work on a lot.. is to resample at double the size (means the file size will actually be 4 times larger). Once you are done editing, you resample back to the original size. It can help hide errors in your editing. I'm seeing a setting under "scanner extras" called "Multi sample scanning". It's defaulted to Normal 1x but there is are several selections, one being "Super fine (16X)" Might I presume that this is what you refer to and it will be a SLOWWWWWWWWW scan but might give me the best analysis of each slide?? Multi-sample scanning will scan the image several times and average out the results, for a probably better image. It may have less visible dust. If you have the time, give it a try and see if it looks better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest srobak Posted November 6, 2007 Share Posted November 6, 2007 Color printers also run in CMYK - so for the most accurate image printing, you want your image to be in cmyk. Almost no one in the printing and publishing industry uses DNG - in fact - in those circles it is often referred to as DuNG - so I would avoid that at all costs TIFF files scanned at high resolution resulting in images 150+ megabytes are the norm in printing and publishing - and retain the absolute highest quality through image manipulation. So if you are thinking presentation/brochure/pro portrait grade - then that's what you want. However - if you are printing out "snapshot" style photos for your album or community/club newsletter - then tiffs are major overkill, and high quality jpg is more than sufficient. I used to make 24x36 in playbill posters for recitals and performances (think movie posters @ that quality) and print them out at 300dpi - usually the files would come out at 350MB or so - TIFF files. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coytee Posted November 6, 2007 Author Share Posted November 6, 2007 Thanks guys..!! I hadn't thought of having a raw TIFF and then a doctored TIFF... I was simply going to create my file, probably a TIFF and then simply copy it to JPEG and keep both burnt to a DVD. I'm usually one for overkill so this is par for me. A side note... the first photo on top... one of my big concerns is how bright/dark they (it) appears on my screen at home. Now that I'm at work I think I'll maybe keep them near their native brightness as the one above is easily seen on this screen and already seems brighter than the version I see at home (even if viewed in this thread). I'd surmise that for me to have the brightness I am NOW seeing here while posting from work, showing at HOME... I'd have to hit edit and crank the brightness ALL the way up. Very interesting. I have a TV tuner card in my home PC that I plumb my DTV into. When ever I have the "tv" on my pc working, it's image is always a bit darkened also. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marvel Posted November 6, 2007 Share Posted November 6, 2007 I'm not going to get into an argument over differerent formats. Richard - I think the NEF output type of the Nikon is their version of RAW. That format has all the data from the CCD imaging device and other scanner data (if it was a camera, it would have the focal length of the lens, f-stop, shutter speed, iso value, etc.) If you have the space, overkill isn't a bad thing. At any point in time, you want to have the highest quality tht you can afford/handle. In two years that may be a higher resolution, but that is then and not now. Just like everything else, it is about tradeoffs. TIFFs will be the easiest to get/edit and store for excellent quality and the JPGs fine for the final file. Like I said, mom will be happy just to see them again. Bruce Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coytee Posted November 6, 2007 Author Share Posted November 6, 2007 Like I said, mom will be happy just to see them again Indeed!!! (we all will be) She held one/two of these to light to see what was on them and evidently, she saw the one of me with the whiskers. Aside from that, I'd surmise that no one has actually looked at any of these since 6 months after they were intially taken and viewed. Other than being a bit dark, they look like they were processed yesterday. I've only seen one with a scratch on it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marvel Posted November 6, 2007 Share Posted November 6, 2007 A lot of times, slides stay in incredibly good shape. They get veiwed once or twice and then stored away somewhere. All I can say it, you can stay busy for a looooong time scanning and archiving them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coytee Posted November 6, 2007 Author Share Posted November 6, 2007 Yep...and because of that I've also bought the automatic slide feeder. Load up to 50 slides, make your settings and hit "GO". I suppose that process would take at least an hour. I also have some strips of film (negatives) that were uncut. They're like two feet long, or what ever length 36 shots is. Feed into auto feeder, hit batch processing and the entire strip is fed, read and scanned. Then there is the other attachment that will automatically feed/scan the cut strips of negatives although this one only does six (I think) at a whack. Those will be the most time consuming as I'll have to be there & manipulate things instead of lock & loading I'll tell you one thing that is going to KILL me... I've got maybe a dozen...uh...what to call them... cartridges?? These are for maybe 25 slides at a time, metal casings that fed into a projector. Instead of being a round type like I know we had later on, these are rectangular. Well... the part that REALLY sucks about these cartridges is EACH freaking slide is imbedded inside it's own metal sleeve. I've tried to just "pop" one out and they do NOT come out easily so I had to get some tweezers and extricate one. I think that pulling out and putting back process is going to be a real hiney biter! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Islander Posted November 6, 2007 Share Posted November 6, 2007 You're referring to slide trays. The round ones are called carousel type, after the Kodak Carousel projectors and the other ones are just straight slide trays. Slide trays are usually made of plastic. Sounds almost like you have some kind of industrial stuff there. Metal slide holders? That's different. Are you removing the actual piece of film from its holder? Most types of slide holder, well, the cardboard or plastic ones I'm familiar with, will fit into the scanner as is, with no need to take them apart. A 36-shot roll of film is around 5 feet long. You might want to grab a pair of white cotton gloves to avoid thumbprints when handling filmstrips. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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