Scanning for a wedding slideshow Questions

[liya70]

Hi everyone

My friend asked me to do a slide show of her and her fiancé to show on their wedding. I’ve been doing slideshows for years now, usually for my own use or as wedding and graduation gifts. The problem is my friend gave me some regular photos (all the slideshow I’ve done before were from photos that I’ve taken with my digital camera), so now I have to scan them!! Any suggestions on the resolution that I should scan in?? also the slide show is going to be shown using a projector (also a first for me) what would you recommend the output to be?? BTW I’m using photoshop and proshow producer.

Please any input will be great, my friend can’t afford a professional so I’m her best bet.

Thanks
Liya

 

[giraffe]

I just had to do exactly the same thing. I scanned at 300 resolution. I read somewhere that scanning at anything greater does not make any significant difference other than larger file sizes. I post processed each in photoshop including reducing noise using noise ninja and post processing (including sharpening) in photoshop.

I tried to scan in only well focused photos as garbage in garbage out.

I also got to know my scanner settings real well as my scanner has many settings. I played with them to find the best settings to use for scanning old photos. Take the time to find your best scanner settings then you can basically use this setting for all the old photos saving you valuable post processing time.

I was able to use Proshow Gold and a projector - it worked real well.

Make sure that you test the projector ahead of time to understand the projector settings. For some reason I had to match my screen resoltion to the projectors resolution as when I first tried it only a portion of the photo showed on the screen.

--
Bert D

 

[liya70]

Thanks so much. on to scanning then

Liya

 

[Steve Traudt]

You can not necessarily just scan them all at 300 dpi. It depends on the size of the original print. If it was, say, a 4x6 print, then 300 dpi would likely be enough. But if it is a smaller print, or you want to crop it, then you'd need to scan it higher, maybe 600. You can always toss out the extra pixels in Photoshop.

The goal is to enough up with enough pixels, after cropping, for your projector. Your projector is probably either 800x600 or 1024x768 pixels. So after you scan an image and post process it, check out the pixel dimensions in the Image Size dialog.

You also want to leave yourself some "buffer" in terms of pixel dimensions if your slide show software lets you zoom. I use ProShow Gold and I find if I scan prints in such a way that you end up at about 1500 pixels wide, the quality will be good. I save them then as a JPEG, about 9 or 10. Be sure to do your unsharp masking, AFTER your final image size adjustment.

Keep in mind that when you scan it, you are thinking about dpi. But for the laptop/projector, all that matters is pixel dimensions.

Hope this helps.

steve

 

[Lin Evans]

Hi Steve,

Scan them to get a match in resolution to the projector being used. If the projector is 1024x768 then there is no significant advantage to getting an image much larger. Do a few test scans to see what it takes to equal 1024 pixels on the long axis then for that sized print that's about all you will get. Producer will internally render them at not much more than 800x600 then interpolate up or down anyway depending on the final disposition (DVD, executable, etc.) so anything much over 1024x768 will be a waste of your time. It would be better if they gave you the negatives than the prints. Scanning from a print usually involves much greater losses because the print has already be degraded a good bit over what you would get from a negative scan.

Best regards,

Lin

 

[liya70]

Thanks guys for your help, I’m now creating the slideshow (using proshow producer) , so I have more questions??

1- Should I use the 4:3 or widescreen aspect ratio (I’m showing the slideshow with a projector) ?
2- Should I use the anti flicker or not when creating the DVD??

3- What difference does the “Desaturate images to … % does?? It’s configured to 80% should I leave it as is or should I change the number??

Again Thanks so much.
Liya

PS. I have no idea how people functioned before the internet

 

[Lin Evans]

Thanks guys for your help, I’m now creating the slideshow (using
proshow producer) , so I have more questions??

1- Should I use the 4:3 or widescreen aspect ratio (I’m showing the
slideshow with a projector) ?

The projector will just output what it "sees" so do it so it looks best to you but remember that if you use a wide angle ratio you probably will loose some of the image since your originals were in a particular aspect ratio according to the camera you used.

2- Should I use the anti flicker or not when creating the DVD??

Good idea to leave the anti-flicker on for most applications.

3- What difference does the “Desaturate images to … % does?? It’s
configured to 80% should I leave it as is or should I change the
number??

When the image is displayed on a TV as a DVD, the brightness on TV is different than the defaults on a monitor so the images tend to be oversaturated and sometimes look "overexposed" unless you set the desaturation down a bit. Personally I use 90% but you might try both. For projection you want to leave the desaturation off.

Best regards,

Lin

Again Thanks so much.
Liya

PS. I have no idea how people functioned before the internet

 

[liya70]

Thanks Lin, I truly appreciate your help.

Liya