Re: scanning, digital

[P3D Robert Thorpe <thorpe@xxxxxxxxxx>]

>Lew Clayman/K Szafran wrote:

>Boy, do I feel silly.  As numerous readers have pointed out (on-list and
>off-list) - - there really is no point in comparing 3060 pixels horizontal
>resolution from the DC50 vs. a very nominal 7200 pixels from a scanned
>print, if my intent is to Webberize the result.

Late last year I bought a "Snappy" interface and a pretty nice video camera to 
get me up and running on the net. At maximum it has about double the resolution 
of a standard VGA screen and its regular mode is 640x480. The macs at my wife's
school have even lower resolution than 640x480. If you want to design you web
pictures so you don't have to scroll all over the place and wait forever for
them to load you will have to keep them at 625x340 pixels (maximum Netscape 
display area at VGA) or even smaller for systems with less resolution. You will
also probably want to reduce them to 256 colors to speed the process along
which 
also makes the pictures worse. My findings have been that people are more 
interested in NOT waiting forever for the picture to load than to have 
perfection in resolution and color integrity. Hey, it's just a TV. A couple 
of other good hints are to interlace your GIFs (and JPEGs when we are finally
able to) and to reserve the space for the pictures. That way, the people can
start to read while they are waiting for the illustration. Another hint, if you
are using thumbnails for illustration previews, don't scan in a big picture but
display it small. Scan the picture twice, once as a thumbnail and once full 
size. That way, viewers will only have to wait for the pictures they are willing
to wait to see.

Robert Thorpe


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