A PLANE PERSON'S GUIDE TO SCANNING AND EDITING PHOTOS SCANNING 1. Always scan at the highest resolution your scanner and software will allow, then you might never need to do it again. 2. As insurance, save images as .TIF files - JPGs lose quality at each save. 3. Save monochrome images as grayscale rather than RGB - it's more efficient. 4. After scanning, an image file only contains pixels. Software often shows dpi, inches or cm, but those are applicable to a scanner interface or a monitor or a printer paper surface, not the digital contents of an image. 5. Edit a .TIF image file using any photo editor (see below). 6. Try to stick to the ratio 3/2 image width/height. 7. When edit finished, save whole image and keep as a "master" image file. 8. Select File,Save As, select file type JPG, file name as required, then check that the size of file (via Windows Explorer etc) suits your purpose. 9. Pixel dimensions don't usually need changing - the file size is reduced by the conversion from TIF to JPG, and the amount of compression depends on the settings in the editor software. Even my typical 2700dpi scan of a 35mm slide, producing 5300x3500 pixels in a 55Mb TIF file, will reduce to a 2Mb JPG file with a fairly high quality JPG setting, or 500kb with a low setting. EDITING Most scanners are supplied with a photo editor program, often a "special edition" (ie less powerful version) of an expensive commercial product. Rotate the image as required to level the horizon. Crop intrusive borders and unwanted areas outside the aircraft extremities. Use the cloning tool or brush in the editor to paint over corners, dust, hairs and other blemishes. If really desperate, you can use Windows Picture and Fax Viewer (WPFV) to view a TIF image, then edit it with Windows Paint software (in WPFV press Ctrl/E or click the icon to the left of the Help button). It's basic, but you can use Select,Cut,Paste,Pick Colour,Brush,etc to do cropping and retouching. ORGANISE FILES Organise your files in a suitable folder hierarchy. To do that, highlight a parent folder, select File,New,Folder and name new sub-folder. As an example, ABPIC images could go in c:\myweb\ab\abpic\uploads. Easy.
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This text updated 2008.11.09