Posting to Forums - Sizing

[Peter Lewin]

Cross-post from the "Feedback" forum, since there were no replies (not sure if I chose the wrong forum for the earlier posting, or maybe this is a more difficult question than I realize?):
Apologies in advance for a very beginner's question: can you suggest scanner settings (or "save as" procedures) for scanning a 4x5 B&W negative in order to post the resulting image to the LF forums? I'm using an Epson 4990, Epson's scan software opened in Photoshop Elements 4.0 for Mac. As a brand-new user of scanners & digital software, I'm slowly learning how to make some minor fixes (burning & dodging), but can only meet the LF Forum size requirements with a lot of trial & error with the bpi settings. If I limit the question to just B&W scans of 4x5 negs, are there obvious settings which will meet the Forum requirements?

[John Hannon]

If you use Photoshop's "Save for Web", you can set the image size in pixels for whatever the forum's max limit is.

If it is 400 pixels for example, you can set the largest dimension (Horiz or Vert) to 400 and check off the "constrain proportions" check box. It will resize and keep the correct Horizontal and vertical proportions. You can also tweak the image quality and get the file size down too.

I don't know if this is the same for Photoshop elements, I use Photoshop 7. I don't know if there is a size restriction for posting images here. The procedure can get your photo to a size where you can view it on one page without scrolling.

[Sheldon N]

Scan at a reasonable dpi, since you may want to use the image somewhere besides just this forum. 1200dpi is a good normal scan, I'd use 2400 dpi if you wanted to make an "archival" scan with the Epson 4990. Going to a higher DPI scanning resolution doesn't really get you much.

To post something to the forum, use the image size option in Photoshop to downsize the image to 650x650 pixels (or 650 at the longest dimension). Ignore the dpi settings, they mean nothing for the web. Save the image as a .jpg, use the "Save As" feature so as not to destroy your original scan. Use the quality slider (scale of 1-12) and set the quality as high as you can without the image getting larger than 175k (image size will show in the bottom corner when you're saving).

The 175k size limit and 650x650 pixel limit are forum constraints. Once you have an image file that meets those constraints, it can be uploaded to the forum in the posting dialogue box.

Hope this helps!