Question About Digital Images...

i dont scan my digital work because its already on the computer ,i just set my sizes and resolution etc for each piece and have never had bad feedback on the quality of any of my work .:)

you NEVER enlarge. it doesn't matter what the software is. the detail would simply be lost.

you have to look at it at a 100%. while there are methods to enlarge certain kinds of images. there is detail loss and unless you know how to repair it and know what to look for, never enlarge anything.

have you ever used silly putty on the comics? then stretched it out - what's left? you get a larger image, but its faded and distorted, and that's what you will get here. it may not print because of this.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Thanks for the quick feedback. Ok, siince I can't enlarge post-scan, how do i ensure that the image is large enough? Is there a way to set the h x w before or during the scanning process?

not sure why your wanting to scan digital work ,when it should be already on your computer ,unless im missing something here :)

when you scan it will show you either 72dpi or 300 dpi. set this to the highest your scanner can go without interpolation. while my scanner is capable of higher, i set it to 1200 dpi, it gives me a rather large image that is easy to work with. don't worry about the height and width.

and that is true, if you are doing digital images... you have to start with a large canvas.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Mystic Sparrow -- sorry for the confusion O_o I create drawings using colored pencil and ink, and the pieces are various sizes. I want to be able to scan them onto my computer, using a scanner. The problem that I am having is that the resulting digital images are too small to be used for the various products on POD sites. I don't know how to fix this.

Mike Savad -- my scanner's highest resolution on only 600 dpi. Does that limit the size of the scanned image?

oh ok ,now im not confused thanks for the explanation :)

I only scan at 300 dpi, that makes the images printable up to 300% of the original size on FAA, I personally think that's plenty, any more and I think it would start to look odd. Many scan at a higher resolution so that's a personal choice. The dpi isn't about quality so much as enlargement.

in a scanner 300dpi is 1:1 typically, but the best thing to do is simply try it.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

David King -- Ok, that's good to know. Still curious as to why that wouldn't be true as well when scanned at 600 dpi. With the way the images currently are, I can't even get FAA to give me the option of making a print. Plus, on other stuff, the image is TINY, and it's very aggravating.

how are you saving these? save these as a tiff file and be sure its saved without being resized any where. and don't save for web either. even at 300 dpi you should have a decent sized image. but if you have a program or even the scanner program saving it some weird way, that could be an issue.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

ohhhhh....so it could be the file type....interesting...i'll try the image out as a tiff. thx so much.

If you scan at a lot higher then 300 the file is going to be too large to upgrade to FAA anyway with their 25M limit.

Mike, why would you not just save it to a jpeg instead of a tiff first?

Mike, if FAA prints as low as 100dpi and you provide an image that was scanned at 300dpi that creates a 300% enlargement. All my images are available as prints on FAA that are up to 300% larger than the original. For example, I scan an 8x10 at 300dpi, upload it to FAA and I can have a print made up to 24X30.

i've got it figured out...the pic size has to be at least 680 x 866 px in order to make a print, at least on FAA. Don't know yet about the other places.

Floyd, I've scanned as large as 16X20 at 300dpi and after editing and saving as a jpg it was less than 10mb. Floyd, I also scan to TIF and edit in TIF because that provides a higher quality image than editing a jpg, but then I do save a jpg for upload.

FAA really prints as low as 100 dpi? does that even look good?

The sizes depend on your pixels. Unlike other sites we never crop or skew images to fit standard sizes, instead allowing the artist free scope to just upload what they have

The only limits we have are that one of your dimensions is going to be forced to fit the following list:

8"
10"
12"
14"
16"
20"
24"
32"
36"
48"

The other dimension will be scaled proportionally to maintain the aspect ratio of your image.

4800 pixels is 48" at 100ppi So you can work out your sizes really before even uploading

We allow 25mb only and you can change the compression as low as 10 before it hurts the image

Never enlarge your images as that degrades the print quality and we will refuse to print and, if your images are too large file size, you can compress to 10 in Photoshop before losing quality

If you sell an image we will refuse to print if the image shows.......

Pixellation
Blockiness
Bad cropping
Blurriness not in keeping with the image (ie not meant to be there)
normal font signature (Arial, Times New Roman etc)
signature cropped half off the image
large watermarks
noticeable camera flash
Upsized images

We do not do quality control until you sell so, it is your responsibility to quality control your images carefully before uploading. You do this by zooming in a photo editor to 100% and then carefully going over the image, checking for the above defects

We require Adobe RGB or sRGB and do not accept CMYK or ProPhoto

I hope that helps

Carole, I've only bought one print of mine from FAA and it was a 200% enlargement so 200dpi and it looked good. I'm sure FAA wouldn't print 100dpi if it didn't look good.

because you'll be editing the file after, and scanners only save it as a jpg or a tiff. jpg loses integrity with every save, and you want to avoid that. tiff doesn't compress and you can save it as a 16 bit file as well.

the prints can print lower than 100dpi actually. however you really want to strive higher than 600 px. most of my images are 5000+ px, some are 10,000px. the bigger it is, the larger the print and the extra pixels will make the images look sharper.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

"because you'll be editing the file after, and scanners only save it as a jpg or a tiff. jpg loses integrity with every save, and you want to avoid that. tiff doesn't compress and you can save it as a 16 bit file as well. "

Good to know, thank you Mike and thank you David.

I don't scan much at all for FAA. I have a few things maybe but I just saved them to jpegs and went with that. Not even sure what images they were if they ever sold.

Anyone here ever do Kodak color slides? I have a ton of images on slides that have been thinking of screening for uploading.

Floyd thanks Mike?

Floyd and Mike were nice to each other?

Am I in a parallel universe?

its the effect of the comet, prepare yourself for other strange events...


you need a good slide scanner. the choice by everyone here now is that epson v600. you can cram in 5 slides if you set the crop yourself. or a whole platen if you get the v700

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Printed images from FAA look fantastic. They wouldn't be in business long if they didn't.

Mike and I are really close friends. All that other stuff is just an act we do to raise the entertainment value of the threads.

Okay... that may be a stretch...

v600 or v700... I will check it out... thanks again...

--is entertained, even if I do mentally come up with better comebacks for all you rank amateurs.

Abbie, why are signatures in "normal fonts" not accepted?

I only enforce the rules, not make em....well, apart from the discussions and groups....I make these ones but, quality control I don't. So again, no idea apart from they mainly look ugly and popped on and you just want to clean them all the time as they look like dirty marks.

Huh. That one surprised me but I guess so. Not that I am known for "normal" anywayz.

Yah, yah... shaddup :PpPpPp

the other main difference between the two scanners is price. the v700 is a full upper platen scanner if i recall, and its close to a $1000. if you don't use their scanning template you could probably cram a lot of slides on there if you wanted too. basically its two scanners in one. it would allow you to scan in 8x10 glass negatives too if you had them. i don't have them, so i got the smaller of the two, and its much cheaper (if they still make them). i think the 500 doesn't have a lid scanner. it took me a long time to find this model that can do that. in the past i couldn't scan any slide. this scanner has a nice depth of field so it has different uses. the color balance could use work though.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com