scanning and workable image size

[carpman]

Hello quick question on scanning image and using image size that is workable.

I am about to go through an old family album and start scanning images, i have started with couple of 4x4 images and after scanning on epsom 4490 with vuescan i can get uncompressed tif in region of 300mb.

I have a good system amd 3700, 2gb ram raid5 with scatch disk on raid 0 and when editing these images in gimp i still using loads of swap. I am going to upgrade to 4gb ram and see how that goes.


Back to question, the resolution on these image is in region of 6000x6000 which is nearly double what my D200 produces and i get good prints with that, so can i safely reduce size down to say 3200x3200 with losing detail?

Or should do basic recover of scan then resize for more delicate edits?

was thinking of scanning at lower resolution but this seems to defeat point of have good scanner.

I have bigger images to scan and hate to think what working with them will like.

cheers

[Cassidy]

Let your eyes do the walking not the numbers!

[Dave.Cox]

It also depends on what you plan to do with them. For screen presentation you don't really need more the 72ppi. For print, 300ppi is sufficient, or maybe 600ppi for prepress, unless you are going for super size. It is helpful to have a high resolution scan sometimes for restoring, but then you can reduce, unless you are going for a large size.

[carpman]

Originally Posted by Dave.Cox

It is helpful to have a high resolution scan sometimes for restoring, but then you can reduce, unless you are going for a large size.

This what i mean, most images will need restoring so want to get much detail as possible to start with, images will be used for both print and screen and as not sure what size prints (not super size) i may want so need reasonable size file.

So at what point should scale large scan down? straight after scan or after some restoration?

cheers