Scanner parameters

[peta62]

Hello,
I hope this question can go into this thread, feel free to move it into more proper one if not ;-)
I have tons of analog pictures and I would like to get them into computer and of course process in Photoshop. I have very bad experience with scanners about ten years ago, mainly since it was not able to get colours right, but it had other flaws too. I have so many pictures it is not realistic to go into a shop, I want to do it by myself, if possible. So the question is, does anybody have experience what resolution and colour quality has the scanner to have in order to get the picture ( not slide ) close to the original ?
Thank you,
Peter

 

[Dreamers]

hm not sure about the scanners themself.
There are a lot of them aviable and a lot of different brands.
I'd say if ( depending how much money you want to spend on it) you look for one about 100 bucks and above you actualy can't go wrong with the quality.
I got myself an all-in-one lately and for the scanning part it does an OK job, so if you look for a scanner only you can get a prety good one.
Mine scan's at 2400x4800 dpi, input scanning is max 48bits/24bits but the output is 16bits/8bits (which is normal I think).
You also might want to look into the supported file types it has, pdf, jpeg, tiff and bitmap.

Anyways, I'm not realy expert at this kind of things so, but i hope i pointed some good directions you can keep in mind.

All the best,
Dreamers.

 

[peta62]

Hello,
thank you very much. I do not understand what exactly it means input and output in terms of scanner. I know there is usually one value for printer and one for scanner when it is a combo, but how do they work on scanner I do not have a clue. Would it be possible to post some scanner challenging scan here ? I had problems mainly with fine colours like on this one.
As I wrote before, I have a lot of old pictures, places I will probably never see again, so I do not mind to spend a bit more. European prices are higher, so I was looking at something around $300.
Thank you,
Peter

 

[Dreamers]

yay i see it's a bit dark.
Was the original that dark aswell?

You can still restore some of the details from images with the Levels control, but this one is realy dark.

 

[peta62]

Hello,
yes, it is dark, but it is not the issue, since it was shot after sunset, so the lower half should be dark. Problem is with the sky, there were really fine transitions between colour tones, they are totally gone after scanning. And that is why I started to look for scanner parameters which ensure better results.
Thank you,
Peter