Scanning Resolution

[drezha]

Starting this year, I'm starting to scan all my bills and letters etc so I have an electronic copy.

But I'm at a loss as to what to scan them in at and save as.
I was assuming PDF but what res is best? I don't really intend to print them, just store them on the PC but I don't want 5Mb+ files.

Anyone got any ideas?

[AMDave]

150dpi might be alright for b&w text but for colour, 300dpi is ok, but 600dpi is better and gives you a "good" quality reproduction when you re-print things. For photo quality you would want to increase that as your scanner allows for "great" quality.

Something to remember; You can always lower the quality at print or edit time, but you can never get it back after it was scanned.

When it comes down to it, you want to scan at the max resolution you think you can afford and when HDD space gets tight, archive to DVD.

We'll all be moving to blueray & HDVD sooner or later and then you'll have oodles of space and be copying your rack of old data DVD's onto a handful of disks. DVDs are cheap enough now to tide you over until the new disks hit the mainstream.

I don't scan and store documents much but this is how I would approach it. Now I think about it, you are onto something.

[drezha]

I don't scan and store documents much but this is how I would approach it. Now I think about it, you are onto something.

I read my Dad's new book thats just been published...The Paperless Office.
Paperless Office (Though what seems funny is that he originally had it as a PDF that was sold. Then the Institute of Charterd Accountants decided they wanted to publish it as a book )

Guess I kinda caught the bug

[Ototero]

Why not just photo them with a digital camera then save to computer. I've done that a few times. Even the camera in a mobile phone is ok.

[gatekeeper53]

All my bills except the water bill come electronically so no scanning I just store them as is. When I run low on disk space (no sign of that yet) I'll just slip in another 250 gig hard drive and archive the old one.

[Keith75]

If your scanning them as grayscale or color then you would want around 150 dpi which will be sufficient for viewing and printing to an inkjet printer.

If you are scanning them as lineart, which would be best for plain type, then you need a higher dpi setting of around 300-400 dpi.

Saving them as .PDF files works fine but you could also save them as .TIFFs and use LZW compression which will make a huge difference in size.

Keith

[Strongbow]

75dpi is fine!

anything over 300dpi would be a waste!

[Keith75]

Remember that screen resolution is around 96 dpi. I would assume that in some cases you would want to zoom in and that is why I would suggest 150 dpi.