Scanning litho negative film

[sgbrix]

I have a Microtek Scanmaker 9800 XL that I have done several 4 color
pictorial books from color prints with great result. I never got the
Microtek TMA 1600 Transparent Media Adapter when I bought it and now
have several project in converting litho film from old printing flats
all b&w negatives @ 8.5x11". It is nearly all-just line art text from
book printing. Since I got the negatives, we like to scan these to
tiff/pdf files instead of scanning the previously printed books.
My question is simply this; have anyone done this kind of work? Will
the TMA 1600 (3,200 x 1,600 dpi optical resolution, 48-bit color, 3.7
Dmax), do the job or is there a better solution without going to drum
scanning.
Thanks,
SG Brix

 

[Colin_D]

I have a Microtek Scanmaker 9800 XL that I have done several 4 color
pictorial books from color prints with great result. I never got the
Microtek TMA 1600 Transparent Media Adapter when I bought it and now
have several project in converting litho film from old printing flats
all b&w negatives @ 8.5x11". It is nearly all-just line art text from
book printing. Since I got the negatives, we like to scan these to
tiff/pdf files instead of scanning the previously printed books.
My question is simply this; have anyone done this kind of work? Will
the TMA 1600 (3,200 x 1,600 dpi optical resolution, 48-bit color, 3.7
Dmax), do the job or is there a better solution without going to drum
scanning.
Thanks,
SG Brix

Providing the clear lines on the lith are actually clear, i.e. not
fogged, you should be able to scan then without backlighting, if the
scanner lid is bright white, or else use a piece of bright white paper
as a backing for the film.

Dmax is not relevant, as that has to do with recovery of shadow detail
in grayscale and color images, and there is no shadow detail with a lith
image. Your output is either black or white, no intermediate tones.

If the films are Letter size, you will most probably not want to enlarge
them after scanning, so scanning at 300 dpi is good enough unless you
want super-sharp results, when 600 dpi will be all that you need.

Scanning in black/white, as opposed to grayscale, uses 1 bit per pixel,
so an image 8½ by 11 at 300 dpi will be: 8.5*11*300*300/8, = 1,051,875
pixels, or about a megabyte. The same image at 600 dpi will be about 4
megabytes. If the scanner cannot scan in black/white, or bitmap mode,
you will have to scan in grayscale, which will push the image sizes up
by a factor of 8, then you can clean up the images in Photoshop and then
convert to bitmap.

Your TMA 1600 will be more than capable, I think.

Colin D.