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Choosing a Computer System for Digital Imaging
6 colors (mine is 4) printing with 'longlife' inks (definitely not mine). But while this
printer is a 'family' printer with school reports being run through it, I'll forego the
better image quality for cost savings.
The way I look at this is that I'm still in a learning curve manipulating images in
my spare time (I have another real day job to pay for my hobby) and until I get
more comfortable with all the aspects of digital manipulations...I'll make do
(realizing my limitations).
After all, I may dream of a Porsche but I won't buy one to learn to drive with.
-- Richard H. Weiner, January 17, 2002
Doug, establising a color management workflow is a whole 'nother article. I've got
mine down pat, but I'm not sure I have the experience to write an article outside the
scope of what I'm doing. Any volunteers?
-- Darron Spohn, January 18, 2002
My 2 cents:
Backup and Storage.
A mere 2400 dpi, 16 bit/channel TIFF scan from a 35mm slide frame is about 50
megs. This is almost 10% of a CD! And, if you are serious about preprocessing,
you want to save a separate copy of the same image on different stages of
preprocessing so you can easily revert to any later on. Think about it if you do tons
of scans and want to use CD as your storage.
Scanning.
Selecting your desktop scanner be very careful not to go with total amateur
solution. While result of one frame scans from many scanners may be very similar,
it is your time that counts here. Make sure that your selection equipment:
- can be properly calibrated,
- has auto-focus capability,
- can batch process bulk loads of frames slides,
- can batch process strips of 35 mm film,
- can batch process entire rolls of 35 mm film,
- works with Silver Fast (or something alike),
- automatically removes impressions of dust/scratches (read about digital ICE),
- supports some fast connection to the computer (SCSI or, I guess, USB 2.0).
These requirements will make sure that your will not spend most of your time
scanning you photos.
I would also slightly disagree with Darron as far as drum vs desktop scanners
quality comparison. Some relatively cheap scanners can give you the same quality
as many drum ones. It is the processing time and high specialization (features like
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