

The following tip will produce quicker scans. Reduce Crop | Preview area on flatbed scanners to improve scan timesĪ lot of time involved in scanning is taken up with the movement of the scan head (for flatbed scanners) or the media holder (for film scanners). Even when compressed the files are much larger than JPEGs.īurn TIFF files to high quality CD-R or DVD disks for permanent archival. TIFF is a good choice for archiving files, and for image operations in image editing applications like Photoshop(TM). Instead, use TIFF, which stores all of the data of an image without any loss, even when compressed. So if you plan on editing or otherwise modifying your images at a later date, JPEG isn’t the ideal choice This effect is compounded if you save a file, then make some changes and save again. Use TIFF if archiving or editing files from VueScanĮach time an image is saved as JPEG, some information about the image is lost, even at the highest quality (and lowest compression) levels. This means you can start with a clean slate each time. It’s also a good idea to reset to defaults whenever you start a new job.

Now try changing one option at a time and re-doing the scan. If you’re having problems scanning, reset all the options to their default values by choosing the File | Default options command from the File menu. The default options have been designed to work well with most images and on most systems. If friends or relatives want a copy, make them a copy from your main copy.ĬD’s can fail, wear out, get scratched, get lost, get eaten by the dog - so always keep two copies! Cloud vendors can go out of business - use two different ones. Only use the master copy if your main copy has problems, otherwise don’t touch it again. Burn two sets of CD’s, keep one set for yourself, and store a master copy separately.Īlternatively, upload the images to a cloud service, and for good luck use two different cloud vendors. With VueScan, set Output | JPEG file to do this.Īfter every day’s work, burn every image you’ve scanned to a CD, label the CD, and then make sure you can read the images from the CD. Few people will see much difference between JPEG files and file types such as TIFF and BMP, but JPEG files take up only 10 per cent of the disk space of these other file types. Save disk space by scanning all photos and slides using the JPEG file format. Otherwise, be discriminating - nobody needs to scan out of focus pictures of a cousin’s friend’s back garden from 10 years ago (smile). Of course, if these are the only existing photos of your parent’s wedding, then you probably want to scan them all. Most people can go through a set of 36 photos or slides and quickly see the 7 or 8 that they would like to scan. A good rule of thumb is that you should only scan one out of five pictures from a roll of film.


The best way to save time when scanning in a lot of photos is to first make some hard decisions about what you scan. Just adjust the settings and use the File | Save image command on the File menu to save the image once more. The raw scan data for both preview and scan is kept in memory. If you want to try different ways of processing a negative or slide, you don’t need to scan it more than once.
