Re: Is it just me? Things on the forum are so quiet.

[zxiong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Hi everybody,

I think I owe the list many thanks.  A short while ago I posted a question
regarding scanning for postcards.  After many feedback from the list plus
some of my own investigation, I've now initialised production. I'm also doing
posters.  Here is some of my experience regarding scanning based on real
production.

My test image was taken on Velvia using Fuji GSW690III. So the original was
6x9, or to be exact, 56x84 mm. To do an A1 panoramic poster, the image had
to be cropped. The scanning was done on a drum scanner.  The image was first
blown up to 1 meter (40 in) and scanned on the actual size at 300 dpi (this was
how people do for pre-press).  The images was cropped to a ratio of 2:1.  I
got two scans done, one in CMYK and one in RGB. The file sizes were 297 MB in
CMYK and 215 Mb in RGB.

I had the two files digitally retouched and took the RGB file to a digital lab
to have a duplicate transparency done.  The highest resolution of their film
recoder was 3048 dpi.  My scan resolution was slightly higher than that if
you reduce the poster size to the actual film size (6x9).  The duplicate was
very impressive and it was hard to tell from the original unless under a high
power lupe.

The guy in the lab was impressed with my image and printed a part of the image
for the size of 48x96 in (125x240 cm) for free.  This was done by their
Lightjet 5000.  The print was done on photographic paper except the exposure 
was done from the digital file via a computer.  The result was indeed 
astonishing to me.  A photographic blownup of 48x96 in from a 6x9 original
via the digital route was impeccably sharp and void of grain.

Food for thought.

Zonghou Xiong