How large a digital file is reasonable to expect from a 4X5 neg scanned by a V700?

[PenGun]

Slightly OT, but it sounds like some of you guys are working with large files in PS, when you really don't need to. I learned this trick from my friend Rich back in 2000 or so...

http://www.westcoastimaging.com/wci/...guidefile.html

Tossing master files with all of your adjustment layers is unnecessary.

CH

My goal, well sorta, is to produce scans that need no manipulation. I am of course nowhere near that but I get actual printable files from some of my scans. This is just with B&W 16 bit scans.

I just need to spot and adjust some tonal stuff and I'm mostly done. I have dialed in my scan/print path and it's pretty predictable now. I don't need to take my files far and often don't even use layers as it's so simple to get where I want.

I am happy to rescan, I learn more all the time so I don't consider any particular file as "done". 325M is all I need for 16x20, which I rarely print and was pretty fast even with the old machine. The Lynfield should be quite a bit faster and I will install all my stuff real soon on the Win 7 Pro I bought.

The first time I've coughed $s since Win 3.51. Steal it here, it's gone up I paid $33:

http://shopkeys.net/index.php?main_p...products_id=17

You get a key and a download location. My Win 7 Pro has been up for 2 weeks and has validated and is just fine.

[JeffKohn]

[B]The first time I've coughed $s since Win 3.51. Steal it here, it's gone up I paid $33:

http://shopkeys.net/index.php?main_p...products_id=17

You get a key and a download location. My Win 7 Pro has been up for 2 weeks and has validated and is just fine.

They key may work for now, it may even continue to work in the future. But you haven't paid for a legitimate Windows 7 license, you've bought a Technet license they had no right to sell in the first place. It's still piracy.

[PenGun]

They key may work for now, it may even continue to work in the future. But you haven't paid for a legitimate Windows 7 license, you've bought a Technet license they had no right to sell in the first place. It's still piracy.

Lifts eye patch ... winks.

Have a look. I bought it in good faith. They sold me a supposedly good version and I will sick Visa on them if it screws up.

[JeffKohn]

Lifts eye patch ... winks.

Have a look. I bought it in good faith. They sold me a supposedly good version and I will sick Visa on them if it screws up.

My intended point was not "you're a pirate", but more "caveat emptor". The shopkeys guys are the ones guilty of piracy, and they're the ones who MS would be likely to go after. But if MS decides to turn off these technet keys, you also probably won't have any recourse except to buy a legit key. I'm just warning folks that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. You may have a point about Visa, except that I don't know if there's any "statute of limitations" on that if you were to have your key disabled a year from now, for instance.

[PenGun]

My intended point was not "you're a pirate", but more "caveat emptor". The shopkeys guys are the ones guilty of piracy, and they're the ones who MS would be likely to go after. But if MS decides to turn off these technet keys, you also probably won't have any recourse except to buy a legit key. I'm just warning folks that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. You may have a point about Visa, except that I don't know if there's any "statute of limitations" on that if you were to have your key disabled a year from now, for instance.

Seeing that has been up for so long I doubt it's anything other than perhaps selling off the student keyspace that was unused. Hard to say but they have Arizona for the domain owner and I doubt that would stand without some legality.

Still it's really cheap for the brave.

[Sean Galbraith]

Man, I wish I had that tip a long time ago. That's fantastic. Thanks!

[rguinter]

How large a file should I reasonably hope for when scanning a 4X5 neg on an Epson v700? What is the "typical" size file printed from by a digital lab? What would minimum and maximum size files be when sending to a digital lab?

Wade: I have an Epson 4990 about 2-years old. With the original software and scanning 4x5-inch film directly into Photshop elements that came with the unit, I get a 1.07 gigabyte file if I scan at 4800 dpi.

I don't always do this of course but that is the highest resolution the 4990 will do with 4x5-inch sheet film. Doing that with Digital ICE takes the better part of an hour to do a scan.

For what it's worth........... Bob G.

[dalton]

I have an Epson 4990 about 2-years old. With the original software and scanning 4x5-inch film directly into Photshop elements that came with the unit, I get a 1.07 gigabyte file if I scan at 4800 dpi.

The largest useful scan I have ever gotten from a 4990 or V700 is about half that resolution. Scanning any more than that is a waste of disk space and time because you've far exceeded the optical capabilities of the scanner.

The maximum useful resolution of the higher-end Epson scanners is around 2400ppi, or maybe a little bit less. That assumes that the film is nice and flat and you're using the software to the best of its ability. Try scanning the same file at different sizes and compare the files, you may be surprised.

[dh003i]

here is a link to some scan comparisons I did at 1200 to 9600 dpi. There is significant improvement going from 1200 to 2400 dpi, and thereafter very modest improvements (that one really strains to see) up to 6400 dpi.

(I've been told this comparison is a little flawed, as I did not do a linear scaling of the smaller images up to 9600 dpi; I used the Sinc Lanczos3 interpolation, instead of using no interpolation when scaling up. However, I think that this merely favors the smaller dpi scans slightly; if better interpolation results in not being able to tell a difference, the difference is negligible and will never be noticed).

[dh003i]

here is a link to some scan comparisons I did at 1200 to 9600 dpi. There is significant improvement going from 1200 to 2400 dpi, and thereafter very modest improvements (that one really strains to see) up to 6400 dpi.

(I've been told this comparison is a little flawed, as I did not do a linear scaling of the smaller images up to 9600 dpi; I used the Sinc Lanczos3 interpolation, instead of using no interpolation when scaling up. However, I think that this merely favors the smaller dpi scans slightly; if better interpolation results in not being able to tell a difference, the difference is negligible and will never be noticed).

Follow up: There does seem to be some very slight difference between 2400, 3200, and 6400. I just scanned a small section of a tree trunk & background sky/leaves, and the 2400 & 3200 have some differences from the 6400 when upscaled (no matter which method of upscaling I use). The overall sharpness appears to be the same. However, some edge definitions are better with 6400dpi. There is a slight color fringing seen when upscaling 2400 & 3200 to 6400, which is not visible in the image scanned at 6400 dpi directly.

This doesn't mean the scanner actually does better at 6400 than 2400. I was using GIMP to do the scaling. Maybe the internal scaling methods of Vuescan (what I now use to scan image files) are superior to GIMP, if it is doing resampling or scaling at 6400 dpi.

In any event, the final result is less color fringing if I scan at 6400 dpi, as opposed to scanning at 3200 dpi then upscaling in GIMP (no matter the interpolation method, be it none, linear, bicubic, or Sinc (lanczos 3)).