Scanning old manuals

From: Mike Ford <mikeford_at_netwiz.net>
Date: Thu Mar 11 02:28:18 1999

>>I am especially puzzled by dpi. Seems everybody in the world is scanning
>>at 600 or over. I am contemplating using a Hewlett Packard at 300 and
>>from some test scans, including pictures, I am hard pressed to tell the
>>difference between 2 and 3 hundred. Extremely high numbers coupled with
>>millions of colors (where applicable) seem to me to be just a waste of
>>storage space.
>
> I scanned a bunch of articles recently and found that the appearance
>didn't degrade until I went below ~125 DPI. I scanned and posted
>everything at 150 DPI, then used PhotoShop to save the images at a fixed
>600 to 800 pixel width (keeping the height/width ratio). Scannning at 150
>DPI saved a bunch of disk space and time. FWIW I was scanning black text

If a person is going to use a scanner very much its worth while to find a
decent article or book explaining dpi and various techniques for different
applications. It only seems intuitive in hindsight. Generally scanning at
or a small multiple of your target (how the image is displayed) dpi is
recommended.
Received on Thu Mar 11 1999 - 02:28:18 GMT