I just received 65 4x5 slides of my car collection. I have a Microtek scanmaker 5 to scan in the slides. When I get the image into the computer , I want to edit, remove background,ETC. then eventualy write them to a CD-ROM. I want to use the images on my web site, (low resolution) and to print 11x17" calendars (high resolution) Can anyone give me advice on what format to use to read in the slides. whats the best software for filing the images? Thanks Glenn Patch

-- Glenn Patch (glennpatch@hotmail.com), February 17, 2000

Answers

I would use LZW compressed TIFF. LZW is a lossless compression, it will keep file size small and still retain all of the image data. If you go with JPEG file format every time you open and edit your file it throws away part of the data (this is why the compression ratio is so great). You can reduce the size and jpg the files later that you will use on your web pages.

-- Don (deldon@teleport.com), February 18, 2000.

I have read about the degradation on multiple saves of JPEG files.

My thought to avoid this would be to create a copy of the original with a slightly different name "photo 1 - B" for instance and save it as a BMP file before editing.

Any other thoughts on this subject?

Rick

-- Rick Hoge (hoge@webzone.net), February 18, 2000.

I do a lot of scanning and editing from films, prints and slides. My personal preference is to save everything as a bitmap while I am still working on images then storing them as Tiffs with the LZW compression for short term. Files are smaller with no loss in quality. I often then archive old files that I will no longer modify as Jpegs as files are then tiny in comparison.

-- Chris Cuingood (cmcuingood@cs.com), March 15, 2000.