camera raw question

[fiver49]

Good day... I shoot exclusively in RAW on my Nikon D40. Can someone tell me just what exactly the purpose of the "recovery" slider is in the Camera Raw 4.1 plugin? And how I can use it to my benefit?

Thanks!

[Chuck S.]

fiver:

The recovery slider will bring back highlights (the lightest tones) that may have disappeared from view in a moderate over-exposure. It's not magic, so if the image is really 'blown out' (highlights driven to pure white in camera), it won't do much. Suggestion: open an image in ACR 4.1, zoom in to 100%, and push the slider to the right while watching a very light area of the image.

[genevh]

In addition to what Chuck has said, it can also be used in conjunction with the exposure slider, especially on underexposed shots. One trick is to hold the ALT button down while using the Exposure and the Recovery sliders. This will make the picture go black, and you will begin to see white areas appear as you push up the exposure in an underexposed photo. These white areas will be your blown out areas. To try to get rid of them, slide the recovery slider to the right while still holding down the ALT button. When the white areas disappear, you supposedly have recovered the highlights.

This isn't an exact science, and how you set your exposure and recover your highlights can be a matter of personal choice and creativity.

Holding down the ALT key while adjusting the blacks slider turns the image white, and then as you slide the blacks slider over to the right, the black parts of the image will start to show up as, you guessed it - black!

Again, how far you go with it is a matter of your preferences and creativity in a particular shot. Holding down the ALT key (not sure what the corresponding key is on a MAC) while you make your adjustments will give you an idea of when your going too far based on the histogram. That's not to say going too far is a bad thing. This depends on the photo and what you're trying to achieve with it. The ALT key doesn't do anything when you're adjusting the fill flash slider, though. ;)

[JulieM]

Fiver49: Welcome! I just wanted to say that your gallery is terrific. Beautiful images! Thanks for taking the time to caption them - I enjoy knowing the locations of everyone's pictures. I look forward to seeing more of your work...

[Byron Gale]

On top of the guidance you've already received - you really owe it to yourself to watch Matt K.'s two videos "The New Camera Raw 101" and "...102" in the Subscriber's area.

I found it very helpful to see the controls in action as Matt worked with the RAW editor.

[NickLewis]

My way of looking at what's happening with the Recovery slider is that you are turning down the exposure on the highlights, without affecting the overall exposure less bright parts of the scene. You would want to do that if you'd increased the ACR Exposure setting, perhaps to capture shadow detail, which had resulted in your highlights blowing out.

But as Chuck says, this can't recover highlights that have blown in camera. There's no detail in them for PSE to work with. It only helps recover highlights that have blown because of settings within ACR.

Nick

[SilverFox]

Chuck,
I can see that everyone is familiar with using a forum. I, on the other hand, am older, have a keen interest in doing what all of you are doing, but I don't have a clue where to start. My dilemma? I have 8 very large boxes of photos that need to be scanned (eventually restored and printed) and have very little time in which to complete the task. By reading some of the posts here I can see that I have too much to do to learn PSE or other program right now. I also see that I can do the scanning immediately and do the rest whenever I can. My questions: Since I want the most detail out of every photo I scan (for future use in printing) and since I want to be able to enlarge the photos later, especially those that are only 2" by 2", and since most are from the late 1890s up to the 1950s, should I scan them at the highest resolution? Or, should I just take digital photos of them set to "raw" or what? (As you can see, I am not even sure how to pose the questions!) Thank you for your help. I intend to start tomorrow with the scanning or the digitizing of the old photos, many of which are B&W.

[NickLewis]

Hi, silverfox, and welcome to the forum. :)

Don't worry about not knowing how to use the forum. Somebody here'll jump in and help -it's a very friendly place. Chuck'll probably be on a bit later, once the planet has turned a bit more......

My feeling is that you're almost certainly better off scanning the photos. Reshooting them will get you into a whole set of problems about lighting them evenly, achieving critical focus and so on.

High resolution will be better than low. When you finally print up, you need about 300 pixels per inch for true photographic quality. But bear in mind that scanning at a high resolution can't put detail into the scan that isn't in the print to start with. You probably won't be able to blow 2"x2" prints up to very large sizes without them looking fuzzy, simply because the detail is just not there.

What scanner are you planning to use?

Nick

[JulieM]

Silverfox: Welcome to the forum! I, too, am launching a project to scan a family archive of images. Mine are 35mm color slides and I may have as many as 6000 of them! Nick and others will be a great resource for you in this process...

[SilverFox]

Thank you Nick and Julie! I can already see that this forum will be my best help yet to help me digitize and restore very old photos of my family's ancestors as well as a future task of trying to learn how to digitize our slides, 8mm videos, VHS videos, etc.

I started to organize this morning. I collected everything I needed but when I connected my CanoScan LIDE80 scanner, it did not power up. I went online and read as much as I could about it. Everything points to the fact that it just quit on me and now I'll need to buy another. I'm researching for another scanner tonight. Any suggestions? I will need to be able to scan old glass negatives, as well as other old negatives, etc. I will also need to be able to get great scans of text as I am going to add photos to a history my Mother wrote that starts back in the late 1800s. She is 95 and lives with us now. She will help me make sure I get the right names on the photos....:) She is very interested in this project.

[JulieM]

Silverfox:

Your project sounds really interesting (and extensive!) Before I made my recent scanner purchase, I found this thread (http://www.photoshopelementsuser.com/forum/showthread.php?t=27868&highlight=scan&page=2) to provide a lot of useful advice about scanners and scanning routines. Also, if you do a forum search here, you will find other discussions on this topic. If that doesn't provide enough info, you should start a new thread since your question will likely get buried in this Camera RAW thread.

I ended up with the Epson Perfection 4990 Photo (http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/consumer/consDetail.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&oid=49164280) and I believe it can scan glass negatives. Epson is currently offering a $100 mail-in rebate on it. I also looked at the Nikon Coolscan V ED but decided against it because I will want to scan prints as well as slides. I'm only just beginning to learn about my scanner but like it so far. One thing I have discovered which might be of interest to you since your project does sound large is that the scanning times the the manufacturers provide in their specs are too low, and that is particularly true if you use the (amazing) Digital ICE process for removing dust and scratches. Seems my project is going to be a lot more time consuming than I thought!

Hope this helps.

[SilverFox]

Thank you, JulieM, for leading me to that other thread on scanners. Also, thank you for telling me about your scanner. I think that I will be needing more than a scanner that is just for photos because of what I am trying to do. What do you think? I read all the posts and followed all of their hyperlinks to get as much detail as I could. However, after spending about 2 hours reading one of the links called "a few scanning tips" I am frustrated. I am very confused because I really do not understand "resolution" and DPi. I had hoped that I would be enlightened as to what DPi I would need to use to get the best "future" use out of all the old 1800s and early 1900s photos I want to archive for posterity. There are old letters from ancestors that I want to scan, too. I need a scanner that is very good for both OCR and photos because my ultimate goal for the near future is to publish a book of my Mother's writings along with the photos, letters, and documents (such as graduation certificates and military records of my ancestors) that go with them. Some of the photos are as small as 2" by 2". So, you see why I must find out what the best DPi settings would be. I want to be able to print some of those really old photos for my Mother in larger sizes. She has very poor vision and has been asking me to enlarge those old photos so she can see them better. Then, the new larger sizes will be used in her book. Of course, the book is only a spiral-bound one that we will put together ourselves. Then, after I am gone, I want the next generation who might be interested in our family history to be able to manipulate the files for whatever use they want. If I mess up the files now, that is, if I do not reproduce these old photos/documents in the highest quality I can, and the original photos/documents get damaged, deteriorated beyond help, lost, or whatever, then what was the use of scanning them at all? I decided to get those fancy DVDs that are supposed to last longer, knowing that as soon as something else is invented in the future, I (or a family member) will archive onto this "new" media to preserve the photos and documents once again. Does this make any sense to anyone out there? Isn't there a simple source of information from someone who has already done what I want to do?

[genevh]

Lets try to give you some basic definitions that will hopefully help clear up the mud for you a little bit and make your decision making somewhat easier (maybe).

DPi: dots per inch. This is generally used in relation to ink jet printers and their printing capabilities. It is a measurement of how many dots of ink the printer is capable of putting down on a sheet of paper. While this allows the printer to print in greater (or finer) detail, it is not related to the resolution of the picture as seen on the computer screen.

Resolution: this is a measurement, generally expressed in pixels per inch (PPI), used to describe the amount of data present in the picture. For instance, my camera is a 6 megapixel model, and outputs pictures around 3,000 pixels wide by 2,000 pixels tall. If you treat this as an "area" measurement, it multiplies out to 6 Mp, the amount of data captured to make up my pictures. A 12 Mp camera will capture twice the data to make the same picture that my 6 Mp camera will capture, but when that same picture from each camera is printed as an 8X10 or 4X6, you aren't necessarily going to notice a huge difference in quality.

So, this may be somewhat simplified, but think DPi for your printer's ink output, and then think PPI for scanning and working on the scans on your PC.

It is generally accepted that 240 PPI is needed for a decent print. If you use that as a guide, my camera therefore is capable of making a 12.5" X 8.33" print of good quality with no enlarging or other processing involved. Just push the button and print. FYI: I have ordered 24X16 prints and they look good also.

Now, if you think of a scanner as nothing more than another type of camera, when it is scanning you are actually "taking a picture" of a picture. The nice thing about scanners, though, is that you can control how many megapixels make up your scan. The question is then, how many PPI do you want to scan at? Again, in order to make a decent print at any given size, 240 - 300 PPI is plenty. If that's all your concerned about, that is probably the target you would want to scan at. I have an older scanner that is capable of scanning at 1600 PPI, but all the pictures I ever scanned were done at 300 PPI and were perfectly fine when printed again later.

However, your project is different. You may want a higher resolution (more data) in order to do the restoration work on your photos. So you will be scanning at a higher setting. Understand, though, that higher settings will give you a higher quality scan, but its not going to make the picture itself look any better. In other words, if those 2x2 pictures are blurry at that size, they are going to be even blurrier when printed at a larger size. Just take any picture you may have on your PC now and zoom in on it. The more you zoom, the worse it looks until it gets totally pixelated and you can't see any detail at all. If the pictures look OK at 2x2, though, you should be able to print them a bit larger without sacrificing quality. Just how much will depend on the condition of the pictures as they are now, and how much you are able to improve them when you restore them. In other words, you should be able to give your Mom what she wants - pictures she can see!

The higher resolution scan will give you more detail in the resulting file to work on in your efforts to restore and make your pictures look the best that they can be made. Which sounds like your goal here. Realize though, that the higher you set your resolution, the larger the files are going to be. And the more hard drive space and DVD's your going to need in order to store them. My 6 Mp camera outputs files in the neighborhood of 5 Mb once they are downloaded to my PC. That's in RAW format. To get the most out of your scans you are probably going to want to save them in TIFF format, which is going to give you even bigger files. That's the trade-off. You are also going to want to have at least 2 copies of your files. One to work on, and one to have as backup in case something happens to the ones your working on. And don't make the mistake of keeping these files together. Its almost guaranteed that something will happen and you will lose some. Keeping them separate will allow you to always have an extra copy in case you need to bring them back.

So, after all that, if it were my project, I wouldn't scan as low as 300 PPI, but on the other hand, nor would I max out my scanner either. I would probably shoot for something in the middle, probably in the 600 - 800 PPI range, or maybe a little more, but not much more.

As for what scanner to buy, I will leave that up to the others who have newer and better ones than mine. But just like different camera models in the same Mp range can take better or worse pictures ( its the quality of the sensor and lens that make the difference ) so will the different scanners produce better or worse scans at the same settings. I just hope that all this verbiage helps you understand what you are looking at.

And good luck with your project!!! I hope you post some of your work once you get into it.

And sorry this is so long......I tend to get long winded at times. And if this is no help at all, let me know and it will go away.......;)

[NickLewis]

Hi Silverfox,

I think you're in danger of worrying too much about the resolution you need to scan at, and letting that drive your choice of scanner.

As Gene says, a resolution of 240-300ppi is perfectly fine for printing purposes. So if you were going to scan something, and then print it at the same size, you need only scan it at about 300ppi. The results will be of photographic quality.

Now, you want to enlarge some images. Suppose you want to enlarge a 2"x2" photo to, say 8"x8", that is, a four times enlargement. Then, for photographic image quality, you would ostensibly need to scan the original at 4x300ppi = 1200ppi, in order for the final output to be at 300ppi. But, and it is a big "but", it is highly unlikely that your many decades old originals actually contain that much detail. As a result, you will gain nothing by scanning at that high resolution. Your files will be bigger, but no more real detail will be contained in them. Hence Gene's suggestion to limit yourself to about 600ppi or so.

You'll probably realise that every modern scanner is capable of scanning at higher resolutions than this. So don't let resolution drive your purchase. What you need to do is get a scanner that can handle both printed material (photos), film and transparency well. In your case you also have a need to scan glass negatives, of course. I'm not up to speed on what are good and bad scanners nowadays, I'm afraid. Many scanners can do these things, but not all can handle film and transparency well. They are dedicated scanners that do only these things, but then they won't handle printed material.

(I'm not sure why you are concerned about OCR by the way - this is about scanning text documents, and then turning them into editable word processor documents, which I wouldn't have thought was what you need.)

When you start scanning, I suggest a little experimentation with scanning and then printing at various sizes in order to discover what works best with your particular source materials and set up.

Like Julie, I think you may get better advice on scanner models if you start a new thread with a suitable title. That may attract input from people who are more knowledgeable about scanner hardware, but won't necessarily be interested in a thread about Camera Raw, which is where we are now. But please be aware - you're looking for a machine that will produce a good quality scan, not one that can achieve a suberb but unnecessary resolution.

By all means post back with queries.

Nick

P.S. you are sure your current scanner is dead, aren't you? Have you tried a different lead, checked that the PC port is working and so on?

[SilverFox]

Thank you genevh and NickLewis for the super information. I cannot say it often enough--this is the best forum I have ever joined. I have learned so much already in just a few days.

Gene, your explanation is just perfect in length. I printed out the info and will start experimenting with the sizing I will need to be able to print copies of the old photos. I understand that I will be limited by the quality of the original photo, but, with your explanation, I have a starting point.

And, Nick, I printed out your information, too, and especially liked the part about enlarging the 2" x 2" photos to 8"x8". That was simple enough for me to understand. I guess what I really need is a chart of "formulas" for measuring and enlarging. Do I have to create one myself or does anyone know of a website already showing them?

Nick, I need the OCR because of scanning in the text of my Mother's book. It is about 150 or more pages long and is a very well-written history of our family ancestry. I need to be able to edit it. What is lacking are actual photos to go with the text, hence, the need to scan and restore and then add them to the text. I will scan Mother's book into MS Word or some other software (another thread or forum might help me decide what software to use--does anyone know?). Then, I hope to be able to restore these photos with PS Elements as soon as I get them all scanned and insert the restored photos into the scanned documents.

Also, Gene, by writing the information about your camera I was able to comprehend megapixels better. I got a new camera for Christmas last year--a Canon EOS30D and decided to take all photos in Raw, which is actually why I started reading this thread on Camera Raw.

I still need to add, however, that the reason I am worrying so much about the resolution is because I figure that future technology will allow just about any resolution to be printed or shown. What I worry is that my scans will not capture all the pixels in the original photo so that one of my descendents will (at the least) be able to see a printout or video output as good as the old original and (at the best) be able to see a printout or a video output better than the original due to a high quality scan and a high quality manipulation (via software like PS Elements.) I am already able to enhance some of the old photos to show up faces that couldn't be seen well enough by the naked eye in order to help ID them.

I understand that I will be using many DVDs for original scans and for duplicates that will be the restored versions. I have purchased two external hard drives and a DVD burner that will burn a DVD on both sides. Now, I need a new scanner as I did try another lead and checked out the PC port to try to see why my older scanner wouldn't power on. No luck there.
SilverFox

[NickLewis]

I guess what I really need is a chart of "formulas" for measuring and enlarging. Do I have to create one myself or does anyone know of a website already showing them?There are several calculators out on the web. Try this page (http://photorepairshop.com/Pages/ScanningGuide.html), or Google "scanning resolution calculator" or similar.

Nick, I need the OCR because of scanning in the text of my Mother's book. It is about 150 or more pages long and is a very well-written history of our family ancestry. I need to be able to edit it.Is your mother's book typewritten? I'd rather interpreted what you said earlier as meaning it was handwritten. I ask because I'm not sure how well OCR programs will cope with handwriting.

I still need to add, however, that the reason I am worrying so much about the resolution is because I figure that future technology will allow just about any resolution to be printed or shown. The problem isn't that future technology will improve - current printing and display technology is already well ahead of what you need. The limit is set by the past technology that made the prints. The issue is that very high scanning resolutions will exceed the amount of information in the photograph.

Imagine you have a 2"x2" photograph looking straight down onto a perfect chessboard. A chessboard is made up of an 8x8 grid of squares. In this example, there'll be one square every quarter of an inch. That is, there are only 4 pixels per inch of information in the image. Scanning at an arbitrarily high resolution won't give you a more detailed image - because there's no more detail to be had. (You actually need more than 4ppi because of a thing called the Nyquist theorem and because your scans won't necessarily be lined up with the chessboard ("in phase" in the jargon)). But nevertheless, there's a relatively low scanning resolution, probably somewhere around and about 15-20 ppi beyond which the image of the chessboard can't be improved.

Photographs are made up in the same way. Digital photographs are indeed made of discrete dots, but film based media aren't quite so regular. Nevertheless, there isn't an infinite amount of detail to be had - there's a limit set by the grain structure of the film, the fibre structure of the paper and the nature of the chemicals used to form the images. How well the image was shot and printed. Also, in your project, there will have been deterioration over time.

By all means scan at high resolutions - it won't make your pictures worse. But the scans will take longer, and the files will be bigger and more difficult to manipulate, without any benefit to you or your descendants.

Exactly what resolution you need is difficult/impossible to calculate without a great deal of information about the nature of the photos you're scanning which you won't be able to get now. Which is why I suggest experimenting.

(I should make clear that resolutions of a few hundred ppi apply to printed photos, which is your main project, as I understand. If you're scanning negatives or films, then you can and should use higher resolutions. Not because what I wrote above is inapplicable in principle, but because film contains a great deal of fine detail, having been explictly designed to be enlarged. A 35mm negative should be scanned at resolutions of several thousand ppi, particularly if it was shot on low speed high resolution film like Velvia or Kodachrome.)

But no-one - now or in the future - will be able to see more detail than is in the original photograph. It isn't there to be had. Photo manipulation software, present or future, simply makes the existing detail more easily visible.

Nick

[Byron Gale]

Just to add... Wayne Fulton's site (http://www.scantips.com/) is worth a bookmark in your scanning information collection.

[SilverFox]

Thank you, Nick, for the resolution calculator site. I feel safer using something like that rather than depending on myself to do the calculations.

Believe it or not, my Mother bought a computer back when the Tandy-type PCs came out for home computing. She actually had her book on 5 ¼” disks! Once she finished, she had her book all printed out and we each got a copy. (She actually wore out her computer!) Then, once I retired (2003) I got interested in adding the photos to her book and having it reprinted. By this time I had no idea how to copy the data from Mother’s disks or even if her disks were still readable. I called around trying to locate an old computer that had 2 disk drives—5 ¼ and 3 ½ or 5 ¼ plus a hard drive. Also, I needed the software called Bank Street Writer. No luck. I decided then that I might as well do it another way by scanning it into my newer, faster computer. My CanonScan Lide80 was doing it well. I do have some chapters scanned and edited. Now, having to purchase a new scanner, I want to make sure I get something versatile enough to serve me for this project and later for scanning the newer 35mm slides, 8mm movies, etc. dating from 1967 to now. (However, I do want to scan Mother’s handwritten recipe book. I thought it would be a neat Christmas gift for her grandchildren. Cannot a scanner handle handwriting? I thought that handwritten signatures can be digitized and used on such things as letters of recommendation on resumes, etc.)

I had no idea that film based media would be limited by the chemicals used or the fiber structure of the paper. I had assumed that it only applied to how well the image had been shot! If it was a little out-of-focus I knew it could never really be fixed. Other than that….Oh, well, I can see that I need a lot of help. I see now, too, that I will not be able to adequately assess the quality of these originals and therefore, must just do my best. I am a little discouraged, but I will experiment, as you say. (And, I will continue to read, read, read!) Hopefully, I’ll do OK. It really means a lot to me to do this project well.

I will be scanning old negatives, too. When I read the websites both you and Byron have suggested, do you think I will have enough information to scan all the different types of photos (prints, negatives, 8mm movie film, etc.?) How do you know what kind of film was used to take the photos? I see where you say, “A 35mm negative should be scanned at resolutions of several thousand ppi, particularly if it was shot on low speed high resolution film like Velvia or Kodachrome.” I remember Kodachrome, but is there some way to know what film the person used for taking photos? I remember Ecktachrome or something like that, too. I do not know what Velvia is, so you see I need to learn a lot more.

Again, all of you who have responded to me have no idea how grateful I am for all the information everyone has given me!
SilverFox

[Rusty]

Hello again, SilverFox,

I hope Charles (Inspector) sees this thread because he has scanned old glass negatives. He will be able to give you appropriate comments. I have been scanning old slides and negatives. Charles and I both have and use the same Epson scanner that Julie suggested, the "4990 Photo".

Pay attention to the info on the Wayne Fulton site that Byron posted. I found out real quickly that I was scanning way, way too high. More resolution is not automatically a good thing. As Nick and Gene have both said, the scanner isn't going to create what ain't there.

Before you buy anything made by Epson, check out the Epson Store and look at the page of reconditioned stuff. It is considerably less expensive and comes with the exact same Epson Warranty as brand new product. The problem is, you never know what is going to be available. I was lucky, the "4990" was there the day I looked and I bought it. You may go 3 or 4 months before that item appears again on that page.

Scanning old stuff is a fun project.

Rusty

[NickLewis]

Silverfox,

I really don't want to discourage you. There's no need. It's perfectly possible to get excellent results from what you are planning to do.

All I'm trying to point out is that is that arbitrarily high scanning resolutions won't achieve anything. There's a point at which you've done the best that is possible, and future technology won't conjure up a further pot of gold at the end of this particular rainbow. :)

As far as handwriting is concerned the scanner will capture a picture of it fine. That's what you see on letter signatures, etc. But what OCR software does is convert the picture of text that it scans into characters in a word processor. These aren't the same thing at all. The first is a picture of a pattern of ink that forms the shape of a letter "A", say. The second is the character itself as a building block in words. Think of a very young child. When it starts to learn to read and write, it may be able to copy the shape of a letter it sees printed, but it doesn't yet have an understanding of what that letter means, how it used, or that "a", "a" or "a" are all different shapes but mean the same thing. OCR software lets the computer distinguish between the shape and the meaning.

I'm not sure that readily available OCR software will cope with handwriting, particularly cursive writing as opposed to hand printing. There certainly is handwriting recognition software available (e.g. on PDAs or Tablet PCs), but my experiences of it are that you have to train it and be quite disciplined in your writing, and it's not the same as scanning pre-existing copy anyway.

So you could scan your mother's handwritten recipes and print them out - like doing a photocopy really, but turning it into a typeset book is likely to be a slightly bigger project, and it may, in the long run, be easier to copy type them.

On the subject of film stock - there are codes on the edges of negatives that identify film stock, but I really wouldn't worry. Velvia is a Fujifilm slide film, of very high quality. All I was meaning was that there is more detail in that type of film than in high speed films, the early types of which were quite grainy.

You mentioned 8mm movie film. Are you hoping to scan them as movies, or just wanting to capture stills? If the latter, a flatbed film scanner will likely do the trick. If you want to make movies though, then either you have to project and rephotograph them with a digital video camera, or you need something like a telecine machine. I'm not aware of any of those on the consumer market, or at consumer prices, so you'd probably need that done professionally.

This is an entirely doable project - just time-consuming. Don't be put off it!

Nick

[genevh]

It is a very worthwhile project, also, and I cannot encourage you enough. :)

[SilverFox]

Thank you, Rusty, for the suggestion that I look into reconditioned scanners. I want to see if I can maybe get the Epson 4990 for a low enough price that I might also be able to buy a good document scanner. I am not sure now that I should try to use a scanner that is both photo-and-document-scan capable. I might be disappointed with the results. The old glass slides are very hard to keep from breaking, therefore, I want to do them first. I would appreciate any more input about working with them. Are their other threads/forums that you could refer me to that deal with such things? I cannot spend hour after hour searching for forums and then reading all the threads...I am too tired at the end of the day to do so.

Nick, you have used a very simple analogy concerning the difference between OCR software and handwriting recognition. I guess I was not thinking of handwriting recognition, though, when I said that I was going to scan Mother's handwritten cookbook into the computer. What I want to do with it is actually leave the pages in her handwriting for all the grandchildren (and other descendents) to see. I thought some of them might like to see what their grandmother's (or great-grandmother, etc.) handwriting looked like. Just a sentimental thing, I guess. So, technically I could just make photocopies and do that project that way. But for storage purposes, I want to digitize the data and store it on disks.

The 8mm and other film I'd like to digitize and keep as movies, not as still shots, although if I come across someone in the old movies that I don't have a good still print or negative of, then I'd like to learn how to make a print from a movie film. (Another project???) I have a Canon DV video camera and had hoped to get the loan of a movie projector in order to copy the old videos. I have a little box that is supposed to help take a video of a movie. I haven't used it yet since I haven't had time to locate an old projector. (Yet another project...)

Again, thanks!

[NickLewis]

Hi Silverfox,

Why do you think the 4990 wouldn't be a good document scanner? I'd have thought it was fine, unless you want the documents to be automatically fed. You'd have to turn the resolution down a bit, but that would apply to anything.

As far as your mother's recipes are concerned, then if you want them left as handwriting, there's no problem. Any document scanner will do that.

Sounds like you're all set for the movies once you've found a projector....... (I think those little boxes may be getting harder to find by the way, so don't let go of it!!)

Good luck!
Nick

[SilverFox]

Nick, I hadn't gone to the Epson site yet to read about the 4990. After I posted last night I read about the 4990 and think it will work for both the photo projects and the text copy/edit projects.
I can't wait to get started. Also, I just spent some time viewing the gallery shots that were winners for last week (whatever that means--I'm so new I have no idea yet what this PS Elements site has to offer!) I'm hooked on photography and would like to share a couple of my shots. My question is: Are all the shots in the galleries manipulated by PS Elements or are there some straight shots?
SilverFox

[JulieM]

Silverfox: Images in the gallery are not required to be manipulated in PSE. Many but not all of the images you'll see have been post processed with PSE (or even other image editing software) but straight-out-of-camera shots are posted as well. My gallery has both. I hope you'll start your gallery soon!

[SilverFox]

Thank you, Julie, for responding. I think I want to learn how to set up a gallery. SilverFox