Goleta DeskTop Publishing User Group
Meeting Information

Getting the Picture

Last time we talked about why when you scan a print you may find it looks a lot different on the monitor (darker, lighter, washed-out, muddy, colors wrong), then after you correct those problems so it looks good on the screen you print it, only to discover the print looks wrong again, but in a different way.

This time we will use a flatbed scanner and a 35mm scanner (Polaroid 4000) to demonstrate some of the issues of getting photos and other images into the computer in preparation to reprinting them. We will use the popular Epson 1200 color printer to show some of the consequences of earlier decisions.

We will see the difference between doing a 24-bit color scan of a print at 300ppi (pixels per inch) on the flatbed and a 36-bit scan of the negative at 4000ppi on the Polaroid. The Polaroid gives us much more information, but that is not an unmitigated advantage: the Polaroid is much more expensive than the flatbed, and the files are much bigger (110MB per picture) which means they are more expensive to manipulate or store. We'll see that there are some conditions under which the flatbed really is the better answer.

We may have another scanner or two as well, to get a better idea of the range in price and capability available.

Remember, the meetings are free and open to the public. Please bring a friend.

Please send email to gdtpug@troutcom.com with suggestions for topics you are interested in seeing covered. Or even better, volunteer to give a presentation!