I've been using a film scanner called Canoscan 2710fs. Its a 36 bit color scanner, scans up to 2720 dpi with a dmax of 3.2. I've read that a 3.2 is enough to get the maximum of slides and negatives, with prints falling far below the 3.0 mark, more into the 2.5 and 2.2 mark.

My question is how come I can download and view 25 and 36k byte pictuers on the internet that are sharper, finer, and SUPERIOR to my 2 or 5 meg scans on this film scanner? What the heck is going on?

I've used photoshop and zoomed to equal sizes on both files, a 2 meg file and a 26k byte file and the 26k byte file is INCREDIBLY SHARPER, with no evident pixels until I zoom further - but the 2 meg image file doesnt zoom as well, with evident pixels falling out much sooner.

Now tell me, whats going on? And what am I doing wrong? So far I've tried to fine tune everything, and I don't get it. Is a flatbed outperforming my film scanner at half the cost at 1/20th the file size!

I've been scanning to 24 bit color. I guess 32 won't make the difference. The 26k image is from a movie or flat image, flatbed or video input. The pixels when you see them are like big squares that form lines of squares, big rectangulars. They provide a much more 'continous tone' apperaance on the monitor. Much better then my film scanned images.

Tell me, is it the file format I'm choosing? Is it the dpi? I've tried 360 dpi, 1200 dpi, etc. Its not cutting it.

Help! Help! Did I put my money in LESSER quality? The WORST quality?

-- Eric Walton (andersonphoto90@hotmail.com), January 01, 2000

Answers

Hard to tell what is wrong, however many images when first scanned are somewhat flat and need to be sharpened. Use the unsharp mask in photoshop to sharpen your image play with it a bit, eg amount between 125 and 175% radius, 1.7 and threshold 0 to 3. This will sharpen the image as well. When you scan an image, you should always scan it at your maximum resolution. You can always make it smaller. For what its worth scanning and importing images at maximum bit depth makes a great deal of difference, especially when slide scanning is involved. It will make a great deal of difference in the amount of shadow detail and noise that shows up in the final image. You need to check out some information on scanning. check out the available resources on this page for a basic primer in scanning. Sounds like you need some help in that direction. as wl

-- Jonathan Ratzlaff (jonathanr@clrtech.bc.ca), January 01, 2000.