I finally broke down and purchased an HP photosmart scanner. I
have a few hundred slides, that I would like to archive onto CD's.
The photosmart came with software that allows saving the files in
various formats, including tif, gif, bmp, pcx, png, fpx, jpg, and tga.
Obviously, the size of file varies. The Tiff files are about 17 MB with
the maximum resolution, for example. Since I don't want to "mess"
with each and every one of these slides now - but simply archive
them -can anyone recommend a good format that would both be
good for future digital darkroom work, as well as for archival
purposes? Is photoshop essential for the initial archiving (I only have
a very very old verson)? Also, any general advice on how best to go
about this process would be appreciated.
Thanks, Benson
Tiff files are considered to be a lossless format and should be
around for a while. If your software can save them that way and you
do not want to manipulate them you do not need Photoshop.
Some things to consider:
Unless your scanner has a hardware resolution of 4000 dpi you are
probably not going to get all the information in the slide. You may
not be getting all even with 4000. You are not going to get all the
information in a contrasty slide except with one of those $40,000
drum scanners. If you are determined to do this with contrasty
slides do two scans: one exposure for the highlights and one for the
shadows. Someday you can put them together in Photoshop v.49.0 and
get closer to the original slide.
You might also consider how technology changes. Tiff images could be
superceded next year by a better image format and maybe software
would then deal with old Tiff images for maybe another 6 or 8 years.
CD Rom could be replaced by the next new thing, probably some sort of
organic memory. Certainly a new denser, incompatible format on the
disk is not inconceivable. Nothing disappears faster than old drive
technology. Aren't you glad you don't have images archived on reel to
reel tape or 5 inch floppies even if you can read Tiff? Do you plan
to stay technologically up to date and rewrite your archived images
in the latest format on the latest medium for the next 30 years?
Current Nikon scanner software can do a great job restoring a faded
slide. That ability will probably get better. You can leave your
slides alone now and extract more, accurate information from them 20
years from now before they have changed very much.
--
Winsor Crosby
Long Beach, California
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