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Choosing a Computer System for Digital Imaging
fine art prints? Any desktop film scanner will do a decent enough job for making
small prints from an inkjet printer. Only a drum scanner will capture enough
information for 30x40 fine art prints. There is a middle ground of course, but you
should carefully consider your needs, your standards, and the limitations of
affordable scanners before deciding to purchase one.
Scanner manufacturers throw around DPI and Dmax ratings to impress consumers.
DPI improves with each generation, and advertised Dmax ratings of home scanners
inch closer to those of drum scanners with each new introduction. Be very skeptical
of these claims, especially when it comes to Dmax. There is no industry standard
for measuring Dmax, so marketing departments are pretty much free to claim
whatever figures they think will drive sales.
Even worse, no manufacturer publishes signal-to-noise ratios. S/N is the biggest
drawback to home desktop scanners. You can find several models with similar DPI
and Dmax ratings, but when you use them you'll see noticeable differences in
noise. Compare those scanners with a drum scan, and you'll clearly see the
difference. Where drum scanners capture clean details, home scanners exhibit
muddiness. This is not an issue for 90 percent of the people using home scanners.
As mentioned, they're good enough for printing to inkjet printers.
Don't let this dissuade you from buying a desktop film scanner. They're certainly
good enough for most peoples needs. Newspapers around th world use desktop
scanners and get results far better than in the old days of shooting halftones and
color separations. Desktop scanners serve well to get your work in your computer,
where you can publish it on the Internet or write it to CD to send to prospective
clients. And inkjet prints, when done properly, are indistinguishable from lab
prints. But if you're after that last 10 percent of quality, nothing you can afford to
buy will do the job.
This is where service bureaus come in. They can afford the best equipment because
they can spread the cost out over hundreds of customers. Beware, though, that not
all service bureaus are created equal. The majority of them specialize in prepress
scanning, and their standards are simply not high enough for the fine art market.
Look for a service bureau that employs fine art photographers and specializes in
working with the fine art market. The photo.net archives contain many
recommendations for good service bureaus.
Software Choices
There are many choices, but only one standard. PhotoShop is the standard. Every
service bureau has PhotoShop installed on its computers. If you're going to work
with a service bureau, PhotoShop is your only choice. The publishing industry
http://www.photo.net/photo/computers (6 of 33)7/3/2005 2:19:07 AM