huge project in progress, Epson endorsement

[Jill]

I just put all the files on one disk at the printable size. Your way seems more proffesional! Does it take a long time for you to make 3 seperate files? Any tips? I am working on 4 photo albums right now.....very time consuming!

[BigAl]

Does the 2450 have a transparency/film adaptor? My "old" Epson 200 film scanner is now a bottom end scanner (1200dpi), and I'll probably be in the market for a new scanner quite soon.

About the album, like you, I think the best way to go about it is to have two separate sets of images: one set of "low" res jpegs scaled to monitor size which can be viewed with ACDSee or something like that, the other the images that are print quality tiffs. Your idea of using the browser as a viewer for cross-platform portability is a good one, but Macs sometimes can't read CDs written on a PC.

[G. Couch]

BigAl, the 2450 has the transparency adaptor built into the cover. (No need to buy a sperate one). A good review can be found here

It's an excellent scanner, although if you are scanning nothing but 35mm, a dedicated film scanner is still your best bet.

[kaulike]

Does it take a long time for you to make 3 seperate files?

Not really---I use Irfanview to batch-process. Once I get a high-res batch of masters, I can just tell Irfanview to crank through them and adjust size, resolution, even gamma value and rotation. The only tedious part is writing the HTML because I'm one who has to have it just right.

Does the 2450 have a transparency/film adaptor?

Does it ever! It comes with three different transparency holders, one for 126 and medium format film, one for 35mm slides, and one that holds two filmstrips of 35mm negs. You can also just plop transparencies down on the platen, of course. It works pretty darn well for a $350 scanner. I'll post a real review if I get a chance, otherwise go here for a comparison with film scanners: http://www.virtualtraveller.com

...the other the images that are print quality tiffs

I have actually found that PNGs tend to work better as masters. They are platform-independent, and with lossless compression are much smaller than TIFF. TIFF sometimes invokes problems going from Mac to PC etc. since the byte ordering is different.

Mac vs. PC is an old thread, of course, and hard to get right. It is getting to be less of an issue, however; since I only produce these for family I will probably treat problems on an individual basis. I wish there was an answer for cross-platform presentation; HTML files are pretty much the lowest common denominator as far as I can tell.

One thing I did differently from BigAl is to provide a large JPG to family rather than a real high-res PNG or TIFF master. This is because 99% of my family wouldn't know what to do with a TIFF, and the large JPG is much smaller. I have offered to provide the "real" high-res master of any photo to anyone who wants one, but have yet to be taken up on the offer!

I also like to produce two sets of masters, one for home and one for storage, in case of fire or whatnot.

Thanks for the responses! It's interesting to see how different people tackle the same problem.

[BigAl]

One thing I did differently from BigAl is to provide a large JPG to family rather than a real high-res PNG or TIFF master. This is because 99% of my family wouldn't know what to do with a TIFF, and the large JPG is much smaller. I have offered to provide the "real" high-res master of any photo to anyone who wants one, but have yet to be taken up on the offer!

You're in good company!!! Dan Margulis used one of my slides on a course, and he asked for a high res, high quality jpeg.