digital archival format

[verkz]

i'm converting my slides to digital format using coolscan IV. file size for TIFF is 60MB each, which translate to just 11 photos per CD. i tried PNG but some of the colour information is lost (ie 16bits). is there any other lossless format besides TIFF which can preserve everything but at a smaller size? what format do you save as?

 

[Kit]

I'm doing the same. I don't see the point of archiving if you don't save it in a lossless format or the best you can get. You just have to be selective in what you archive I guess. CDs cost next to nothing nowadays.

 

[sulhan]

Hi...

Just to share this with you, why not scan images at 2400dpi (from slides) for archiving...this will aporximately gives you about 27 to 30 images onto a CD and still have space to include a simple HTML viewer....


Regards,
Sulhan

 

[verkz]

thanks for the input. i think i'll end up with a stack of CDs.

 

[Jason Ho]

Time to get a DVD-R

 

[Zoomer]

Did you enable RLE for your TIFF files?

RLE is run length encoding, and yes, its lossless.

http://www.prepressure.com/techno/compressionrle.htm

 

[erwinx]

why 16 bit tiff? beyond the range of 6 colour photo printers.

16 bit might be useful if u really need to recover highlight/shadow areas, but after doing so, just save in 8 bit tiff.

 

[ckiang]

Originally posted by erwinx
why 16 bit tiff? beyond the range of 6 colour photo printers.

16 bit might be useful if u really need to recover highlight/shadow areas, but after doing so, just save in 8 bit tiff.

Wait a minute, I thought the CSIV is a 12-bit scanner? I believe he wanted to keep every bit of data that the scanner produces? Of coz, whether it's really, really necessary is another issue altogether.

Wait another minute, we are talking about 12/16-bit per channel here, but could he be referring to a 16-bit (6-bit per channel - 64k colours) file as opposed to 8-bit per channel (24-bit/16M colours) file?

Regards
CK

 

[verkz]

oops, sorry about the confusion. (but i'm confused ;p)
what i did was to convert the TIFF (uncompressed) to PNG (compressed) and back again to TIFF. there seems to be a lost of information as the final file size is halfed.

i read somewhere that PNG supports up to 16bits only. the scanner produces 36bits of colour information. i would like to keep all that information (kiasu-ism).

dvd-r is still painful on the pocket and there are too many conflicting standards. more confusion... :embrass:;p