Railfan Technology > Q's on Scanned Slides

I am fortunate in that I have a freind who has scanned my entire slide collection. They were scanned as TIFF files and at 4,000 dpi. For those of you who have scanned slide collections, what size you convert them to in order to use them on a regular basis, in regards to dpi and image size in inches? I am planning on converting many of tehm to jpeg format. I will be keeping all o fthe original scans as TIFF files in their original scanned format.

Regards,
Russ Goodwin
Buford, GA
 

1. Keep the original scans as is. As you gain more experience you will get better at processing the images. Then you can go back to that original scan and improve it even more.
2. Make color corrections, remove dust, sharpen etc and then save as a tiff. Size them at 12x8 inches at whatever dpi preserves all the pixels in original scan. Think about file names that will help you locate images later. How did you label your slides? I use a system that mirrors what I did in my slide days e.g. 2001-05-10 1452 ATSF 3852 on train 187 Belen, NM as an example. Date, time, RR, engine #, train #, and location.
3.Then you can use software to re-size the images. Photoshop Elements will allow you to do that in "batch processing". Don't downsize all at once. Reduce the image by no more than 50% in each step. Save those downsized images as .jpegs. 1000-1200 pixels wide seems to be the norm for internet use.

When you are done you will have three versions of each image. Back each of them up in at least two additional locations, Preferably one of them will be off-site.

Good luck,

Jim

Jim's comments are spot on.  I hope the scans your friend did are top quality.  Jim is right, you will get much better with practiced so never touch the original scan.  Just copy from it.  I have gone back to some of my original scans and am able to produce much better .jpgs than I could 5 years ago.

I'm beginning to reduce my scans to 2000 pixels wide .jpgs.  Flickr and Facebook take that size and they look wonderful on big new screens.  Try a 2000 pixel slide on Flickr.  Enlarge it all the way up.  It's spectacular, bigger than the screen so you can actually walk around in it. If you are going to post to a forum like Train Orders, which requires a smaller, reduce it to 1000 pixels or whatever.  I usually don't keep the smaller versions after I post them.

Marty Bernard



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/25/15 19:53 by MartyBernard.

All;

Thanks for the great advice across the board. As with my digital image collection, I will be keeping the original scans as they are, and making a copy and cleaning and downsizing from there.

I am working through a few images right now that I will be posting soon. With 3.7 TB of scans, I am still trying to view tham all in preview.

Again, thanks for the insight,
Russ