OK, here's my digital archiving process: Every time I shoot a roll of film the resulting slides get put up on the ol' slide sorter where the wheat is promptly separated from the chaff. The chaff hits the circular file. The wheat goes through my Minolta Scan Multi (its slide holder accepts 4 at a time) and gets scanned at 1410dpi for the sake of speed. The scans are saved either as TIFFs or Photoshop PSD format (usually the latter). The resulting 5-6 megabyte files are big enough to be used for critical evaluation of the overall image quality and can be printed up to about 5 x 7 size as proofs. Then I use the Photoshop automatic web page generator to creat an HTML directory that is easily browsable and can be viewed on almost any computer. Then I have enough rolls of film done this way to fill a CD-ROM, it all gets burned onto CD.
Images that I'm going to *print* (the really good shots - and I try to keep my standards high about this) get re-scanned. I first remove the film from the slide mount and put it in a modified slide mount that shows virtually the entire frame. Then I scan it on my Kodak RFS3600 at 3600dpi. After spotting and any other correction that needs to be done, I save the scan in a directory on my hard drive that I have devoted to high-res printable files. I have two subdirectories, "portfolio" (my own best stuff) and "sales" (stuff which I'm printing mainly because someone wants to buy it, rather than because I think it's good). These directories also get regularly archived onto CD when they get large enough. Mark >I'm in the process of shifting over to digital for freelance submissions. >I >plan to send good quality proof prints (probably a couple 4x6 per page) >instead of slides. I don't have a burning desire to digitize my life's work, >but I would like to save on the uncertainty of mailing originals. > >I've bought a Minolta Scan Dual II and have PaintShop Pro v. 7. I'll >probably pick up a CD-R drive soon. > >So here's my basic idea: > >1. Scan slides once at highest useful resolution (more on this below) and >save in a non-lossy format like TIFF. (Make an index image of each slide, >also.) Massage each image slightly -- sharpen once, for example, and do >basic brightness/contrast correction, dust removal, etc. > >2. Save these to hard drive with my current slide serial number as the file >name. > >3. As I reach the capacity of a CD, burn one and delete the images from my >hard drive. Enter CD volume number in slide index. (Possibly burn a backup >copy as well here.) Make an index print for each CD. > >4. As files are needed (for website, printing, etc) use PaintShop to reduce >to appropriate size. > >OK, my questions: > >1. Does this make overall good sense? Am I missing something? > >2. Should I go for highest possible resolution in scanning or the somewhat >lower resolution that is adequate for 4x6 inkjet prints? > >3. Can I use the PaintShop proprietary format for storage instead of TIFF? >(Advantage is, that's the default format and saves a step.) > >Thanks for any help. This is a giant step for me and I'd like to save myself >starting off wrong and having to redo. -- Mark Roberts www.robertstech.com - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
