Re: Archival Scanning

On Aug 19, 10:15 am, "Phil Ardussi" <nospample...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
OK, here goes:

I do scanning of photos and color negatives for our local historical
society. They have a good deal of material that needs to be scanned into
digital format for preservation purposes.

My scanner is an Epson V500 and gives me lots of options. I consider the
most important settings to be the file format (.jpg, tif, etc.), dpi, and
final size of image. I have heard that 300 dpi is the desired output but the
varying sizes mean that for negatives, the setting should be 2400 dpi, for
4x6's it should be 600 dpi, and 8x10's it should be 300 dpi.

Looking at that, am I on the right track in my thinking? What is the
suggested file format for archiving? What should be the image size/dpi
setting?

Thanks.

You have very good scanning advise here, now about storage and
archiving. Just getting the images on a hard disk is just the first
step. Next is cataloging the images, Picassa to iPhoto to
PhotoMechanic all are good programs. Jpeg or TIFF are as close to
universal formats as you can have, I prefer TIFF because it is
lossless but a low commpression jpeg has a lot going for it.
Then backing up and long term storage. A good solution is to backup to
an external hard drive, then also make DVD backups and store off site.
The harddrive and DVDs won't last forever both have to be replaced
periodically. On my archive at work I keep DVDs and earlier CDs in a
fireproof, dropproof file cabinet, this is in a climate controlled
building. CDs have been lasting 10 years, we have used DVDs for six
and check them periodically. Now to reality, your negatives and prints
are probably your most stable archive, if they are yellowing then by
all means digitize them, but if the images are clean they will last a
long time. You have to remember to keep up with your digital storage
options, you can't just scan then leave the the images.
Just some things to think about
.

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