At 09:07 PM 6/1/2006, Henry Wiencek wrote:
><snip> I have succeeded in scanning a document into my laptop, so I
>know that everything works, but my question is: what format should I use?
>JPEGs deteriorate with multiple copying--right? (That's what the Epsons
>instructions say.) Should I use BITMAP or TIFF? A major factor is the
>time required to make an individual scan. Since we have hundreds of
>documents to scan, we don't want this to stretch into July, but we also want
>good-quality files in a format that is widely usable. My test runs on both
>BITMAP or TIFF seem to take about 20 seconds per scan. Does that sound
>right? Sorry to be such an ignoramus. <remainder snipped>
The main factor to consider is the ultimate usage of the scanned
files. BITMAP files have no advantage over JPEGs or TIFFs. JEPGs are
highly compressible and, consequently, have the advantage of taking up less
space on your storage media. The deterioration you speak of only pertains
to repeated writings of the same file. There is no deterioration of image
quality if you are simply opening and closing the file, as you would to
view or print it. As long as you don't rewrite the file on top of itself,
there will be no loss of quality of the file. If, however, you do need to
re-save the file contents on top of itself, the TIFF format would be the
best option. TIFF employs a "lossless" algorithm, so you will not lose any
image quality with repeated writes of the file, plus TIFFs can be
compressed for smaller files, but not as small as a corresponding JPEG.
If you are simply archiving the files, without any intention of modifying
them, the JPEG format is the one you want. If you're planning on modifying
and re-saving the files (e.g.,making annotations directly on the image),
scan them as TIFFs.
Hope this helps,
Bryan Logan
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