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

[Wade Guisbert]

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?

[rdenney]

Expect about 8600x10800 pixels. You can scan at higher pixel-counts, but you won't get any more image information.

The last photo I had published in a magazine was required to be 300 pixels/inch. But I think most folks would like to print on Epson printers at 360, though I can't tell that much difference for any prints over about 240. The V700 will easily support 20x24 prints of very good quality. The biggest I can print at home is 16x20, and my prints from 4x5 are critically sharp even with a magnifying glass.

I have a print from another photographer that was made from a 6x12 negative scanned on a 4990 and printed to 20x40 inches, which is about a 9x enlargement ratio. There is certainly nothing wrong with the sharpness of that print. At that ratio, a print from a 4x5 would be 36x45 inches. I'd say that's at the extreme of what will deliver reasonably good results, and many wouldn't go that far.

Rick "who can't predict other photographers' standards" Denney

[Matus Kalisky]

To get the size in B (bytes):

1) Scan resolution (in spi) is R
2) Area of the film is X * Y (in inches)

For 24 bit (3 byt) scans (8 bit per color means 1 byt per color and that is 3 byt altogether) you get:
Size = 3 x R * R * X * Y

if you add X = 4, Y = 5, R = 2400 spi you get about 345 MB. It will be less as the film area is a bit less than 4 x 5 inch.

The size will double for 48 bit scans.

Exactly the same, but a different memo technique - compute first how much data (pixels) you get form one inch square and then multiply with the film area.

The above stated size of files is valid for non compressed TIF files - but that is usually what you re after.

How much resolution you need depends on how large you want to print and how large files can your computer crunch.

If you send your files for printing - the JPEG saved at quality (in Photoshop) of 11 or 10 (or even 9 - especially for larger prints) is fine - you do not need to send TIF files for printing.

Example 1: Printing a file at 30 x 40 cm (@360 dpi) the file size is in my case about 10 MB.

Example 2: I was sending a file with resolution of 360 dpi for printing. The file size was approx. 7100 x 9900 pixels. The size was 21 MB in JPEG. I think the compression in PS was 9, just because the online webpage of the printing company accepts files up to 25MB and I did not want to bother with putting the file somewhere on a server.

[Frank Petronio]

8600x10800 RGB 16-bit equals 531.5mb.

For more pedestrian hacks like me, I'll scan half that size and still have a nice file that my computer can handle without slowing down too much. Any larger file is going to slow you down, it's a matter of your patience and horsepower.

Some of the people here will get gigabyte-plus files from drum scanners, for making giant prints (or direct to film output) or for "just having the best". But note that they really need a serious, loaded Mac Pro tower, the sort of thing w 16gb of RAM, a giant printer, giant monitors, giant hard drives... so their investment in this stuff increases logarithmically.

More power to them, but it's OK to keep things in perspective and create a workflow to match the scale of your resources. And as you know, the size of the print or file has little bearing in the quality of the work.

Check the http://www.gigapxl.org/gallery.htm where the pictures, um, suck.

I remember being able to watch a 30-minute tv show back in 1994 when my loaded, hot-rodded Mac IIci had to do moves and filters on a 75mb image. That was 30 minutes per, one thing!

[sanking]

Many people have a work flow where they "scan to archive". That is, the scan is made at the highest practical resolution and the raw scan is then processed and archived. Later if you want to print from the file at a given size you load it and adjust the size to whatever resolution you like. I generally like to print with the file at 480 dpi at the printing size, but 360 dpi is probably enough for most images.

The largest practical size may be determined by the capabilities of your hardware, or by the potential of your negative and/or scanner. Most people would agree that scanning at 2000-2400 ppi with a drum scanner or high end flatbed is more than adequate for 95% or more of all LF negatives. That gives a file size of 152mb - 220mb (90mp -115mp) when scanning grayscale a 4X5" B&W negative at 16 bits. MB size is 3X this for color.

Sandy King

[Steve Gledhill]

Many people have a work flow where they "scan to archive" ...
Sandy King

Exactly what I do - so just supporting your point fully. Why go to the effort of working on a small file only to find that you need it at a larger size some time later?

I keep file copies of both my original unadjusted scan (except for its spotting) as well as a final fully worked up flattened 16 bit tiff file. So, if the original negative dies a death for some reason (of course it shouldn't, but ...) - I could rework the file into a new rendition at a later date. I don't keep a file version with all of the layers - that would turn one of my 180MB 16 bit greyscale files into a multi-GB file.

[Nana Sousa Dias]

I made a 30x40" photo from a 4x5 negative, with very good quality.

[PenGun]

325 M ... ;)

Well that's what I find just perfect. Big enough but not too big to deal with.

Achieving that is left as an exercise for the user. (shades of *nix past)

[Carlos R Herrera]

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/page/info/photoshoptip/podcast_guidefile.html

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

CH

[Chris Strobel]

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/page/info/photoshoptip/podcast_guidefile.html

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

CH

Very interesting.I'm gonna try this out.Thanks for the link!

[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/page/info/photoshoptip/podcast_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_page=product_info&cPath=6_8&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 (http://www.tabblo.com/studio/stories/shared/34667/q23oxv8uhgcmdbk). 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 (http://www.tabblo.com/studio/stories/shared/34667/q23oxv8uhgcmdbk). 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)).

[rguinter]

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.

Yes I've done that. As I said, it's the largest size the scanner will function without crashing and giving me an error message that I've set the resolution too high. And the file size for 4x5-inch film is in the 1.07 - 1.10 gigabyte range.

Not that I do this routinely. As you point out, 4800 dpi is probably way beyond the scanner's true resolution, and nothing more than "empty magnification" as we call it in microscopy.

Bob G.

[Ben Syverson]

I scan at 2400 on the 4990... Scanning at 4800 and then resizing to 2400 looks better in terms of lower scanner noise, but I don't have the patience for the very marginal improvement. There is zero difference in image information or detail -- only scanner noise.