Ask archival el-jay
Maybe the hive can help...
I'm scanning old family photos, and I have three questions about the process, from a technical standpoint. And oh-by-the-way, I am working on a Mac. Though I could move much of the process to a PC if you gave me a ghost of a reason I needed to, as the scanner is wireless.
The first two, presumably, are easy:
1. When I batch scan on the flatbed, I have to orient my pictures such that they're all portrait style (these are standard 80's era home snapshots). Some of these, many in fact, are really landscape. No biggie, I spawn them out of the directory structure in the 'finder' window, orient them properly, and save. However I've noticed that on average, this adds 1.5mg to the file size, even in the case where I simply "flip" them, which shouldn't affect anything at all. Considering the number of photos I have to do, it might become significant rapidly, so I wouldn't mind finding a way for it not to do this. However, even if I can't put a stop to it, the savings in time of scanning four photos at once is worth it. But why is it doing this? More importantly, is it doing something ELSE I don't know about that I should care about? I am scanning these as .tiff at 600dpi and I am doing the manipulation in Mac's native photo program.
2.a. My goal is mostly electronic storage/sharing/backup, so after some very lively discussion with the hus-bean, I am currently scanning the photos at 600dpi. I wanted to do 1200 but he's right, it's OMFG slow. However, I do want someone to be able to print the photos out if they should so choose and get something roughly equal to the 35mm snapshot prints I started with. Is this dpi adequate for that task? Said same hus-bean won't give me a straight answer on this, so I'm worried.
2.b. Once I get to the OLD family stuff.. my great granmdmother's photos, papers, etc. any opinions on the sweet spot for making SURE they're adequately reproducible? My scanner goes up to 4800dpi.
3. I really... really really REALLY want to be able to put EXIF data in these pictures. Specifically I want to be able to put in a date, a place, and a comment with the names of the people (I don't mind hijacking some standard but unused field for this). The reason I want this in the EXIF data is that I want it to STAY with the picture, I don't want to be dependent on a particular program or website down the road. Does anyone know how I can do this? I'd like some free method, obviously, but I would spend a reasonable sum on a program if it was easy to use and did what I want. I'm not against something command line if you have something to recommend, but it's got to be seriously stupid-proof. Sorry to all my hardcore friends, but I'm a Windoze girl through and through. I wouldn't know where to find a unix or linux prompt if my life depended on it. To an extent I can probably get some help from le hus-bean, but he doesn't have much patience with my windows-centricness.
I'm scanning old family photos, and I have three questions about the process, from a technical standpoint. And oh-by-the-way, I am working on a Mac. Though I could move much of the process to a PC if you gave me a ghost of a reason I needed to, as the scanner is wireless.
The first two, presumably, are easy:
1. When I batch scan on the flatbed, I have to orient my pictures such that they're all portrait style (these are standard 80's era home snapshots). Some of these, many in fact, are really landscape. No biggie, I spawn them out of the directory structure in the 'finder' window, orient them properly, and save. However I've noticed that on average, this adds 1.5mg to the file size, even in the case where I simply "flip" them, which shouldn't affect anything at all. Considering the number of photos I have to do, it might become significant rapidly, so I wouldn't mind finding a way for it not to do this. However, even if I can't put a stop to it, the savings in time of scanning four photos at once is worth it. But why is it doing this? More importantly, is it doing something ELSE I don't know about that I should care about? I am scanning these as .tiff at 600dpi and I am doing the manipulation in Mac's native photo program.
2.a. My goal is mostly electronic storage/sharing/backup, so after some very lively discussion with the hus-bean, I am currently scanning the photos at 600dpi. I wanted to do 1200 but he's right, it's OMFG slow. However, I do want someone to be able to print the photos out if they should so choose and get something roughly equal to the 35mm snapshot prints I started with. Is this dpi adequate for that task? Said same hus-bean won't give me a straight answer on this, so I'm worried.
2.b. Once I get to the OLD family stuff.. my great granmdmother's photos, papers, etc. any opinions on the sweet spot for making SURE they're adequately reproducible? My scanner goes up to 4800dpi.
3. I really... really really REALLY want to be able to put EXIF data in these pictures. Specifically I want to be able to put in a date, a place, and a comment with the names of the people (I don't mind hijacking some standard but unused field for this). The reason I want this in the EXIF data is that I want it to STAY with the picture, I don't want to be dependent on a particular program or website down the road. Does anyone know how I can do this? I'd like some free method, obviously, but I would spend a reasonable sum on a program if it was easy to use and did what I want. I'm not against something command line if you have something to recommend, but it's got to be seriously stupid-proof. Sorry to all my hardcore friends, but I'm a Windoze girl through and through. I wouldn't know where to find a unix or linux prompt if my life depended on it. To an extent I can probably get some help from le hus-bean, but he doesn't have much patience with my windows-centricness.