Scanning Workflow Tips: please share

[Noah A]

In Photoshop CS3 under the File menu go to Automate and then choose "contact sheet II".

You can choose your print size, resolution, number of rows/columns, etc. I always choose the 'rotate for best fit' option so all of my images are the same size (but verticals will be printed sideways).

I'm sure similar options exist in newer versions of PS.

The best thing is that you can choose a folder of images and then let PS do all the work, including opening and resizing the files (which can take a long time since my scans are 1.6GB and my mac is not really up to date). It will automatically make multiple contact sheet pages until it runs out of pictures.

I think you can also choose individual files, but I normally just do the whole folder.

If you choose, you can leave the layers in place and that will let you tweak the individual images (rotate them, levels, etc.) if you choose.

I print 6-up on 16x20 which gives me prints that are around 6x8ish.

[Bruce Pollock]

Excellent - thanks.

[Bob Kerner]

Scanning at low resolution - and only 8-bit depth - is faster too.

Why clutter your hard drive(s) with huge files ? Small ones are faster to catalog, faster to generate thumbnails, faster to load, view, etc. etc.

Having made a few scans this afternoon, I'm inclined to agree with you now. Scanning at 2400 creates a gi-normous file, which Aperture seems aggravated by. It either slows the application to a halt or generates an error message that it can't handle to file type (tif); it takes some images, not others based on file size.

Doing a 300dpi scan as an index, or saving as lower res jpeg seems not to bother Aperture

[engl]

I have a V700 (same as you I believe), I do preview scans at 600DPI, and sometimes I add a small crop at 3200DPI to check sharpness.

For printing, I scan at 3200 or 4800DPI, and then downsize. I have noticed that this does give more detail with very sharp negatives, compared to scanning at 2400DPI.

Sometimes I edit the file in Photoshop, but recently I've been using Lightroom more. I'll do a very neutral scan of the image, then import it into the library. The original TIF is never again written to. I do all adjustments within Lightroom, and it is easy to create several edits of the same scan without ever needing more than one file on disk. It is *way* quicker than dealing with several big files for the same purpose.

Both Photoshop and Lightroom are well written pieces of software and have not given me trouble editing files at 500-2000 megabytes. Especially Lightroom seems to do a lot of smart caching that speeds up work with big files. Adjusting levels, contrast, exposure etc. is all instant and interactive. Sometimes it is limiting and I'll switch to Photoshop, but as I said, that is happening less frequently now.

[paulr]

Yeah, I can't fathom making high res scans of everything.
I don't have the best workflow for scanned negs, but it's along the lines of what people are describing here ... low res for proofing, then hi res for ones that i'll print.

It's not just disk space but time. Each full resolution scan takes me over a half hour, including wet mounting, fighting with dust, and letting the scanner do it's slow thing.