Re: Scanning in family records?


A good rule of thumb is to scan the documents in two formats to
"ensure" they'll be readable at some indeterminate time in the
future. I use PDF and JPG for my documents. PDF is easily portable
and navigable, and JPG is a basic graphics format that will probably
be readable by software in use 30-50 years from now. That's really
a tough prediction to make, since we all know that those floppy
disks we all used 10 years ago are pretty hard to use these days,
since most computers now don't even have floppy drives. The same
could happen to CDs and thumb drives, but if you use a "standard"
format like JPG (or PNG), if you can find a device for your storage
media in 20 years, you'll be able to open the files.

Michael Reich <mareich49@xxxxxxxxx>

Using JPGs for this purpose is probably less than ideal. Yes, the
format may be still around for many years, but it is not the best
format to use as it is "lossy." That is to say, each time you edit
and resave the image, you lose some data. Repeat this process
enough times and all you get is fuzz. On the other hand, PDFs are
universal --- cross platform, and all that. But also consider that
Photoshop (PSD) format is used by newspapers and other media outlets
world wide. It is very unlikely that such a widely used format will
disappear from common usage anytime in the future.

AEP


Saving a paper copy is always good. I've got those dating back 150,
200 years. Platform still good.

But anyway, a fuzzy copy is better than no copy and if you set your
parameters correctly, you can save jpegs for quality not size which
reduces the loss to acceptable levels. Refraining from re-saving it
just because you tweaked it to read this part of that reduces the
loss as well.

As for image format longevity -- I've got some .pxl files around
somewhere ... they quit being usable maybe 10 years ago, and AFAIK
no conversion software EVER handled those.

Cheryl

singhals <singhals@xxxxxxxxx>
.

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