Scanning, digitizing, printing, etc

I've been lurking for the past few weeks, and now that the topic of photography and 
digital images has come up, I would like to add my experience/experimentation to the 
discussion.

We do not have a digital camera, except that every now and then we use Snappy to get 
some still life photos into the computer.

I have found out that I need at least 2 kinds of digital images with different levels of 
quality for different purposes. Regular photographs (of excellent quality, usually 4x6) 
are scanned on a high resolution scanner (I forget the name because it is in the 
office), and it produces a .BMP file that I can look at in the computer. We have been 
experimenting with scanning at 150 pixels/inch and 75 pixels/inch, and also with picture 
size. Of course the issue is the size of the files. With an image about 600x700 the BMP 
file is about 1.2MB, while with an image size of about 300x400 the BMP file is about 
350KB. I store the BMP files in ZIP discs.

For the Web I use Photoshop to convert the image to JPEG format and to reduce its size. 
Thus, I get a picture about 170x240 pixels, saved in JPEG format with a "low quality" 
that compresses to about 10KB (reasonable for downloading in are producing larger 
images, about 300x400 pixels, also saved in JPEG format but with a better level of 
quality (not the best but it seems good to us and we cannot tell the difference!!), and 
those files are about 35KB (for people that have patience downloading the images or a 
fast T1 line).

Printing (i.e. for my catalog) is quite another story. There I keep the BMP files, as 
good as I can get them, though the printer documentation says not to bother above 
75pixels/inch. Size is not an issue. The images require a lot of manipulation and 
experimentation with Photoshop (less saturation, more yellow, etc.) and different papers 
to find out what prints best (and is not too expensive). 
I have a new HP 603C Color printer (that uses a "Photo" cartridge + a color cartridge, 
very expensive cartridges...). The glossy HP paper is too heavy for my purposes. 
Currently I have found that the "Sharprint" Inkjet papers, "Coated Plus" for 300-720 DPI 
(Coated on both sides), is what produces the best results for my purposes (200 sheets 
for about $15 at Office Depot). But the many hours of experimentation have not produced 
printed images that are as good as the original photographs. 

Hope I was not too winded.

	Anastasia 

-- 
Anastasia Czerniakiewicz
503-292-1476
http://www.teleport.com/~painting
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