V500 resolution vs. target size?

[Andy Griffith]

Hello, new guy here with a couple questions if you don't mind.

I have a good number of negatives, slides, prints from my father and
grandfathers collection that I want to convert to digital format. I
have investigated the scanning services and will likely send a good
many of them out to be done. I have also purchased an epson v500 to do
some of them at home. In addition to the standard 35mm negatives (many
of them kodachrome) and slides there are some b&w negatives, medium
formats, and odd ball sized prints that I need to scan as well. I
included a picture of some of the formats. I am a novice at this and
could use some direction on an issue that I'm facing while trying to
get started with the V500. I apologize for the length of the post but
wanted to include as much background as possible. Thanks for your
patience in helping out with this issue.

I do have the electronic users manual and have read it several times
but I'm still confused on the issue of resolution vs. "target size".
Currently I've been trying to scan slides.

My desires for the finished scan file is as follows:

- Display on computer monitors via online storage sites, pictures
included with emails etc. I use smugmug and I believe it has a max
size of 12mb, though I won’t be putting all of the scans on smugmug,
just and occasional few here and there. And for that purpose I’m
assuming I could take the original file and bump it down in photoshop
elements if desired.

- Display on digital photo frames in the future. The one I'm looking
at online is a 22" wide screen and says it displays 1680 x 1050
resolution.

- Occasional 8x10 print and 4x6 prints. As in very occasional, maybe
never, but only want to do the scanning thing once.

- Ability to retouch pictures to improve them with photo editing
software post scanning. As in I’m not a photography guy and don’t
anticipate retouching them all until they are perfect but rather
working over some of my favorites to improve them and as above I’d
only like to do the scanning thing once if possible.

These pictures will be stored on external hard drives.

The photo editing software I have is photoshop elements version 6.


I'm hoping that some folks can provide some guidance with a couple of
questions about this process.

1. Which compression level should I use for .jpg?


2. What resolution setting should I use? It has the following options:
4800
3200
2400
1600
1200
on down to 50

The instructions say,
quote:

"Before you select the scan resolution, you should consider whether
you will enlarge your images before or after you scan them. Follow
these guidelines.

1. You will not be enlarging the images.
If you will scan the images at 100% size or smaller and will not
enlarge them later, you can accept the Resolution setting selected by
Epson Scan based on your Destination setting (Home Mode only).

2. You will enlarge the images as you scan them (increase the Target
Size setting).
If you will enlarge the images in Epson Scan so you can use them at a
larger size, you can accept the Resolution setting selected by Epson
Scan based on your Destination setting (Home Mode only).

3. You will scan the images at their original size, but then enlarge
them later in an image-editing program. If you plan to enlarge your
images later in an image-editing program, you need to increase the
Resolution setting to retain a high image quality after enlargement.
Increase the resolution by the same amount you will increase the image
size. For example, if the resolution is 300 dpi (dots per inch), but
you will increase the image size to 200% in an image-editing program,
change the Resolution setting to 600 dpi in Epson Scan.

Given my requirements, I want to do either number 1 or number 2. Is it
better to do the enlargement during the scan process, or after the
scan process with photoshop?

If the photo frame displays at 1680 X 1050, does that mean I need to
scan at 2400 to get coverage? Will 2400 support 8x10 prints?


3. Target size? The scanner requires me to first select the
resolution. Then hit the preview which generates a preview of the
pictures.

Then, just before hitting the scan button it asks for "Target Size".
It defaults to 4x6 but has options that range from:

Original
Screen resolutions up to (768x1024)
4x6
Letter
Legal
8x10
and some more

I don't understand if selecting target size is important if I've
already selected a resolution. I thought selecting a higher resolution
would allow for enlargement in the future if desired?

There is no option under target size for the photo frame resolution of
1680 x 1050. When I select an 8 x 10 target size with a resolution of
2400 it gives me the error message, "The target size will be set to
"original" because the scale value is out of range." It will only
allow me a 1200 resolution setting if I select 8x10 as the target
size.

In short, I'm not clear on how "target size" relates to the resolution
setting and I'm unsure what I should set for the target size?

Thanks for any light you can shed on this subject.

 

[Charlie Hoffpauir]

Hello, new guy here with a couple questions if you don't mind.

I have a good number of negatives, slides, prints from my father and
grandfathers collection that I want to convert to digital format. I
have investigated the scanning services and will likely send a good
many of them out to be done. I have also purchased an epson v500 to do
some of them at home. In addition to the standard 35mm negatives (many
of them kodachrome) and slides there are some b&w negatives, medium
formats, and odd ball sized prints that I need to scan as well. I
included a picture of some of the formats. I am a novice at this and
could use some direction on an issue that I'm facing while trying to
get started with the V500. I apologize for the length of the post but
wanted to include as much background as possible. Thanks for your
patience in helping out with this issue.

I do have the electronic users manual and have read it several times
but I'm still confused on the issue of resolution vs. "target size".
Currently I've been trying to scan slides.

My desires for the finished scan file is as follows:

- Display on computer monitors via online storage sites, pictures
included with emails etc. I use smugmug and I believe it has a max
size of 12mb, though I won’t be putting all of the scans on smugmug,
just and occasional few here and there. And for that purpose I’m
assuming I could take the original file and bump it down in photoshop
elements if desired.

- Display on digital photo frames in the future. The one I'm looking
at online is a 22" wide screen and says it displays 1680 x 1050
resolution.

- Occasional 8x10 print and 4x6 prints. As in very occasional, maybe
never, but only want to do the scanning thing once.

- Ability to retouch pictures to improve them with photo editing
software post scanning. As in I’m not a photography guy and don’t
anticipate retouching them all until they are perfect but rather
working over some of my favorites to improve them and as above I’d
only like to do the scanning thing once if possible.

These pictures will be stored on external hard drives.

The photo editing software I have is photoshop elements version 6.


I'm hoping that some folks can provide some guidance with a couple of
questions about this process.

1. Which compression level should I use for .jpg?


2. What resolution setting should I use? It has the following options:
4800
3200
2400
1600
1200
on down to 50

The instructions say,
quote:

"Before you select the scan resolution, you should consider whether
you will enlarge your images before or after you scan them. Follow
these guidelines.

1. You will not be enlarging the images.
If you will scan the images at 100% size or smaller and will not
enlarge them later, you can accept the Resolution setting selected by
Epson Scan based on your Destination setting (Home Mode only).

2. You will enlarge the images as you scan them (increase the Target
Size setting).
If you will enlarge the images in Epson Scan so you can use them at a
larger size, you can accept the Resolution setting selected by Epson
Scan based on your Destination setting (Home Mode only).

3. You will scan the images at their original size, but then enlarge
them later in an image-editing program. If you plan to enlarge your
images later in an image-editing program, you need to increase the
Resolution setting to retain a high image quality after enlargement.
Increase the resolution by the same amount you will increase the image
size. For example, if the resolution is 300 dpi (dots per inch), but
you will increase the image size to 200% in an image-editing program,
change the Resolution setting to 600 dpi in Epson Scan.

Given my requirements, I want to do either number 1 or number 2. Is it
better to do the enlargement during the scan process, or after the
scan process with photoshop?

If the photo frame displays at 1680 X 1050, does that mean I need to
scan at 2400 to get coverage? Will 2400 support 8x10 prints?


3. Target size? The scanner requires me to first select the
resolution. Then hit the preview which generates a preview of the
pictures.

Then, just before hitting the scan button it asks for "Target Size".
It defaults to 4x6 but has options that range from:

Original
Screen resolutions up to (768x1024)
4x6
Letter
Legal
8x10
and some more

I don't understand if selecting target size is important if I've
already selected a resolution. I thought selecting a higher resolution
would allow for enlargement in the future if desired?

There is no option under target size for the photo frame resolution of
1680 x 1050. When I select an 8 x 10 target size with a resolution of
2400 it gives me the error message, "The target size will be set to
"original" because the scale value is out of range." It will only
allow me a 1200 resolution setting if I select 8x10 as the target
size.

In short, I'm not clear on how "target size" relates to the resolution
setting and I'm unsure what I should set for the target size?

Thanks for any light you can shed on this subject.

You really need to read up on scanning at www.scantips.com

However, some simple "rules" that have worked well for me.

If I intend to make a print, allow enough pixels in the image to print
at 300 ppi. So for 8 x 10 print, I'd need 3000 pixels in the 10 inch
side, and 2400 in the 8 inch side. Normally this means I'd have to
severly crop a 35 mm negative (since it's ratio is more than the 10 to
8 ratio) So allowing for some cropping, I'd scan at least 2400 ppi (if
my scanner's optical resolution went that high). Of course, lacking
that many pixels, you could certainly get a decent print by printing
at fewer than 300 ppi.

for other than prints, just figure out how many pixels you want in
each direction, and scan accordingly.

Target size simply means how large do you want the final image to be.
To me, it's much easier to simply work in pixels. For example, if you
want an image 1680 pixels on the long side, scan a 35 mm slide at at
least 1680 ppi. The slide is a bit over 1" on the long side, so this
would give you some room for cropping. However, if you wnat to do post
scanning editing, it's usually easier to work with more pixels, so you
could easily double the resolution, and downsize later.

compression and JPEG images: JPEG images are "lossy", ie some of the
content is thrown away to make the file size smaller. Never save as
JPEG if you intend to edit later, save as a lossless type like PNG or
TIFF. After all editing is done, and you've decided to archive the
image and NEVER change it again, then save as JPEG to save file space
(If space is important to you)

 

[tinnews]

For your scanning, I would do what I would call an "archival scan",
whose purpose is to capture all the detail that exists, and worry about
your various other applications later (e.g. crop and resize later,
possibly to several different sizes for different applications). Given
your options, scan at 3,200 dpi with no resizing, or 1,600 dpi with 200%
resizing or 800 dpi with 400% resizing (all of which are really the same
thing). Scan the entire image area of the image ... you can crop later
if necessary or desired. This resolution is going to give you about a
15 megapixel image, which in fact is probably more than the amount of
detail actually present in the images, but the next option down is 2,400
dpi, and that might be a bit low although not too bad (that's probably
about 8 megapixels). If you are saving in JPEG, set the compression to
yield about a 3 to 6 megapixel file size and you probably won't lose
anything visible to JPEG compression.

This is pretty close to what I'm doing for archiving my slide
collection. (I.e. I agree!)

I'm using an Epson V700, I scan at 3200dpi and 24-bit colour. I
experimented a bit when I started and I can't see any difference at
all when I go to higher resolution or more colour depth, it just takes
longer. I save to JPEG with quality set to what Epson call '10' which
is towards the high quality end. This produces pictures in the 1Mb to
2Mb size range and, again, comparing with non-lossy formats I can see
no visible difference. Just remember if/when you edit them afterwards
*don't* save over the original, keep the JPEG original as a 'master'
file and edit copies of it.

 

[Andy Griffith]

Thanks very much for the replies, I really do appreciate the guidance.
I realize this is a matter of me having the tools but not the skill to
truly leverage them, but I'm learning. I will say that for the most
part the few that I've scanned so far have come out quite well, much
better than I thought possible. Unfortunately, my father and I were
not that close, so I am left to piece together his history via all the
pictures he took and the letters that he and my mom wrote at various
times. I'm finding all kinds of interesting things in these slides/
negatives.

I'm finding some problems with corners of the scan being blown out,
and I'm assuming that is because some of the slides are a bit warped
and not sitting flat on the glass. I have a feeling I'm going to be
facing the same issue with the rolls of b&W negatives when I go to
scan them. I have one roll hanging with weight on it now to try and
straiten out the roll, but I suspect that this will do little or
nothing to flatten the "cupping" they have along the horizontal axis.
This will mean that these negatives will not sit flat on the glass.

I believe that the specs for the V500 say it is not supposed to scan
"Kodachrome" slides, yet it seems to scan them on the ones I've tried
so far, but maybe I just don't know when I'm looking at a quality scan
or not. Is there something about the Kodachrome slides that makes them
difficult to scan?

Finally, I'm finding a large variation in the finished file size. I
use home mode and leave the resolution and all settings the same yet I
find variation in finished file sizes from 2mb up to 13mb.

 

[Silicon Sam]

Thanks very much for the replies, I really do appreciate the guidance.
I realize this is a matter of me having the tools but not the skill to
truly leverage them, but I'm learning. I will say that for the most
part the few that I've scanned so far have come out quite well, much
better than I thought possible. Unfortunately, my father and I were
not that close, so I am left to piece together his history via all the
pictures he took and the letters that he and my mom wrote at various
times. I'm finding all kinds of interesting things in these slides/
negatives.

I'm finding some problems with corners of the scan being blown out,
and I'm assuming that is because some of the slides are a bit warped
and not sitting flat on the glass. I have a feeling I'm going to be
facing the same issue with the rolls of b&W negatives when I go to
scan them. I have one roll hanging with weight on it now to try and
straiten out the roll, but I suspect that this will do little or
nothing to flatten the "cupping" they have along the horizontal axis.
This will mean that these negatives will not sit flat on the glass.

I believe that the specs for the V500 say it is not supposed to scan
"Kodachrome" slides, yet it seems to scan them on the ones I've tried
so far, but maybe I just don't know when I'm looking at a quality scan
or not. Is there something about the Kodachrome slides that makes them
difficult to scan?

Finally, I'm finding a large variation in the finished file size. I
use home mode and leave the resolution and all settings the same yet I
find variation in finished file sizes from 2mb up to 13mb.

I don't think they mean they are difficult to scan, just that the
Digital Ice doesn't work as well. Or at all.

I just got a used V500 for paper scanning, but I scan all my slides
in my Coolscan V ED.

 

[Guest]

Thanks very much for the replies, I really do appreciate the guidance.
I realize this is a matter of me having the tools but not the skill to
truly leverage them, but I'm learning. I will say that for the most
part the few that I've scanned so far have come out quite well, much
better than I thought possible. Unfortunately, my father and I were
not that close, so I am left to piece together his history via all the
pictures he took and the letters that he and my mom wrote at various
times. I'm finding all kinds of interesting things in these slides/
negatives.

I'm finding some problems with corners of the scan being blown out,
and I'm assuming that is because some of the slides are a bit warped
and not sitting flat on the glass. I have a feeling I'm going to be
facing the same issue with the rolls of b&W negatives when I go to
scan them. I have one roll hanging with weight on it now to try and
straiten out the roll, but I suspect that this will do little or
nothing to flatten the "cupping" they have along the horizontal axis.
This will mean that these negatives will not sit flat on the glass.

I believe that the specs for the V500 say it is not supposed to scan
"Kodachrome" slides, yet it seems to scan them on the ones I've tried
so far, but maybe I just don't know when I'm looking at a quality scan
or not. Is there something about the Kodachrome slides that makes them
difficult to scan?

Finally, I'm finding a large variation in the finished file size. I
use home mode and leave the resolution and all settings the same yet I
find variation in finished file sizes from 2mb up to 13mb.

I normally scan slides to a 1200 or 2400 dpi bitmap or TIFF file. I also use
the same size selection area for each slide. I traced my fathers ancestry
via making phone calls to his siblings, cousins etc.

Bob

 

[Phil Ardussi]

Andy, you're getting a lot of good advice here. I use the V500 and have a
large amount of respect for the job it does. I also have the Nikon Coolscan
V mentioned in one of the replies so I have a little perspective on the
possibilities of scanning negatives using both devices, although I'm not an
expert like most of the folks here.

Couple of things related to the V500:
1. Use the scanner software in the professional mode. Even though it seems
strange to you at first, get to know and use it because it gives you maximum
control over your scans once you become familiar with its settings.
2. You mentioned something about slides laying flat on the glass and
corners blowing out. I hope you are using the plastic frame that comes with
the V500. It is intended to provide a standard setup for scanning filmstrips
as well as 35mm slides.
3. I use Digital ICE on both the V500 and the Coolscan. Frankly, and I
could be wrong here, I notice no effect of ICE in the V500 but it works on
the Coolscan so you might want to do a little testing with and without ICE
on the V500 to see if there is any difference.

The V500 is a great tool for scanning. I teach seniors how to process their
digital photos and in the class we talk about the 300dpi standard for
finished photos regardless of the size of the finished product. You need
300dpi to avoid pixelization so that means if you want an 8x10 inch print,
you need at least 2400x3000 pixels in the scanned image. To achieve this, I
recommend that they set their cameras for maximum resolution because memory
cards are cheap and can hold huge numbers of pictures. This translates into
scanning 35mm slides/negatives at 2400 dpi so that you can enlarge safely.

And my seniors seem to love Picasa because if you make editing changes, your
originals are saved "as is" in another folder off to the side and it's not
too "feature rich" for their needs.

Good luck on your history project. Your scans could be imported into a DVD
for the family with period music and/or voice over commentary.

 

[Steve Chesney]

Very good thread and lots of great advice.

We all seem to have converged on similar work patterns. Mine is similar:

* Scan slides and 35mm negatives at 2400
* Scan to TIFF format
* Use the Epson scanner software in "Professional" mode
* Use Digital ICE (seems to at least "do no harm" to the Kodachrome I have)
* Use "scantips.com" as reference and tutorial
* Use Photoshop Elements (my version is 5)

I would add the following:
* Back up that external drive now and then.
* Learn to use the Histogram on the scanner software. With practice you can
tweak highlights, mid-tone contrast and shadows in seconds on each picture
and save tons of time in Photoshop Elements

I also use a legacy "staticmaster" dust brush with its "Polonium"
radioactive strip on each slide or neg. Maybe I'm just reveling in
nostalgia -- but it does seem to work.

 

[Andy Griffith]

Thanks for the replies, here is where I'm at so far.

Figured out the multiple size scan issue. I was not checking the ALL
box in the preview pane to assign the parameters to all four of the
slides.

I'm scanning slides at 2400 with color correction and digital ice on,
and sometimes backlight on as well. Finished scans are all around 4117
x 2719 and vary in size between 1.73 and 2.26mb. Hopefully this will
allow for display on the photo frame at 1680 x 1050, 8x10 prints if
desired, and post image processing if desired.

I've experimented with digital ice on the kodachrome slides and have
found that it really cleans up the dust/scratches on some of the more
abused slides.

I am using the frame for holding the slides/negatives but all it does
is hold them in place on the glass, it does nothing for a slide or
negative that has some slight warp to it thus not laying flat on the
glass.

The negatives I hung up have straightened up some from their rolled
shape but it has done nothing for the cupping along the horizontal
pane of the negative. Thus these do no sit flat on the glass or flat
in the holder.

Andy

 

[Steve Chesney]

Sounds like you are approaching this with your eyes wide open and doing
things in a productive way.

My experience with both negatives and slides is that the cupping or corner
distortion with the standard holders is either not noticeable or gets
cropped out of post-processing (since the formats for printing or
web/digital frame viewing force some deliberate or accidental cropping. But
then, My stuff was wasn't rolled up.

You might want to look at post-processing to correct the corner distortion
(if it doesn't crop out when you go to the 4:4 aspect ratio for digital
frame/DVD slide show and web viewing). Photoshop Elements has filters to
correct barrel and pincushion lens distortions -- maybe they will be useful.
There is also a low priced third party filter called PTLens which you can
try for free.