Pro Photo -- Make Backup

T4i

:santa2: Hi All,

I'm in need of a photo expert. I've just collected my pro photo of my two daughters and its very nice (should be for £120). I want to make copies of it for CD back-up.

The photo is 8x10, I have a brother dcp-110c scanner. I have PSPx(10) installed.

My question is this:-

How do i make a full quality scan of it? What do I use to make this scan. My brother software or PSPx? Do I scan to image or scan to file? Do I scan in .tif? .tiff? (is tif and tiff the same?) .jpg? .bmp? .raw?

Also as it is a 8x10 photo what DPI do i scan it at? My scanner does 1200dpi max.

When I try to scan to .tif it scans and opens PSPx but then I get a can not read error. ??????????????????

I wont be priting them myself so what is the best format to use so I can take it to be re-printed at a photo shop.....

Thx all,
Me

skippy64

To ask the photo printing shop to print your 'Copy' of a professionally taken photograph you are in fact involving them in a criminal act and if the photographer who took your picture found out you have illegally copied his work and reproduced it you could find yourself and the photo printers being sued for a breach of the 1988 Designs and Copyright Act.
Most likely the printers you take your scan to would probably refuse to accept it as the company they work for may have a policy that if they did accept a job for printing/scanning and they did get sued they would pass the responsibilty onto the person who booked the job in and let them take the fine.
Best advice I can give is see if you can go back to your photographer and order more reprints at a discount. At the end of the day he or she is only trying to earn a living by providing a service and everybody did this to them they would probably not be around to continue to provide photographs of other peoples kids !!
BTW I am a professional photographer myself and if I sound a bit strong on this matter its only out of a professional respect to other hard working photographers all across the country. :xmassign:

espresso

Personally, I think that is very sensible to back-up your only picture digitally to CD, as your printed picture will eventually degrade with time.

It doesn't really matter if you use your Brother software or PSP to do your scanning. Normally when you scan, it will display the result on your screen and then you can save to a file type of your choice.

It obviously depends on the actual printer that will be used to print your picture but I would suggest that you scan your picture at 300 dpi and save it as a jpg file.

I have been very pleased with the quality of printing from my local ASDA store, who charged £2.20 for a 10" x 8" print, although on their website they are now quoting £1.20. They usually have a scanner for scanning in your own pictures on the machine, but as you want to archive the picture to CD anyway, you would be better scanning it yourself.

HTH

:rudolf:

Atlanta

T4i wrote:

:santa2: Hi All,

I'm in need of a photo expert. I've just collected my pro photo of my two daughters and its very nice (should be for £120). I want to make copies of it for CD back-up.

The photo is 8x10, I have a brother dcp-110c scanner. I have PSPx(10) installed.

My question is this:-

How do i make a full quality scan of it? What do I use to make this scan. My brother software or PSPx? Do I scan to image or scan to file? Do I scan in .tif? .tiff? (is tif and tiff the same?) .jpg? .bmp? .raw?

Also as it is a 8x10 photo what DPI do i scan it at? My scanner does 1200dpi max.

When I try to scan to .tif it scans and opens PSPx but then I get a can not read error. ??????????????????

I wont be priting them myself so what is the best format to use so I can take it to be re-printed at a photo shop.....

Thx all,
Me

Hi there - you mention first of all that you are wishing to scan in the photos for back up (fine) but then you say that you will be getting them reprinted at a photo shop???? If they were your own photos - taken by yourself - then that would be ok to go somewhere for a digital output, but as skippy64 says, copying professionally taken photographs without the permission of the photographer is indeed breaking the law (I dont know whether you are aware of this or not). According to the law you could face either a fine or a prison sentence for doing so (might seem odd that but its true).


http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1988/Ukpga_19880048_en_1.htm

Of course what you decide to do is entirely up to you (choosing right from wrong) - but I'm a great believer in what goes around comes around where these things are concerned.

Take care and God Bless

charlieheard

espresso wrote:

It obviously depends on the actual printer that will be used to print your picture but I would suggest that you scan your picture at 300 dpi and save it as a jpg file.

JPEG actually compresses the picture by discarding some of the information. Most picture software will allow you to decide how much you want to throw away. When you view it, the software uncompresses the information to display it. This was useful in the early days on the web, where high quality was less important than speed over slow connections (anyone remember 2400?), so JPEG (and GIF) were often used.

However, if you ever alter the image and save it, it will again throw away some more information, and you get left with less and less perfect copies. If you want to keep the picture for a backup, I would recommend you use the TIFF format, as it does not lose any information. The downside is that the file will be much, much larger than a JPEG, but disk (or CD) space is cheap.

Atlanta

When I try to scan to .tif it scans and opens PSPx but then I get a can not read error. ??????????????????

Is it possible that the photograph paper has a copyright protection embedded in the paper as illustrated on this Kodak site?

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/researchDevelopment/technologyFeatures/digitalWatermarking.shtml