>What's the best way to scan a photo? (bird, of course). Should I use 8-bit
>color? 24? How many dpi? 100? 200? 300? Saved as a .gif file? .jpg?

I assume you're scanning a print. If you're planning to display it
at the same size it's scanned at, there's no need to scan above
100 dpi. That already exceeds your monitor's capability ( the high
quality scans are provide for scanning things to then display bigger,
and for higher quality output to say a color laser printer or better
yet a film writer).

Go ahead and scan at 24-bit color. 24-bit JPEG files are generally
about 1/3 the size of an 8-bit .gif file and looks better. Try
various levels of "quality" or "goodness" or whatever your software
calls it, generally you don't need anything close to highest quality.
Just check out the result and diminish quality until either you puke
from it or the size finally gets down to something you consider
reasonable.

If you've looked at any of my images, they're .gifs (due to an
old PhotoShop) at about 60kb-90kb. When JPEG'd they'll be more like
25kb. That's a great size for the web. You can always store bigger
versions for those folks who want to take the time to download.

Use "progressive JPEG" if you can if you want to make these available
over the web. This causes the bad image->better->better->best kind
of downloading you might've noticed on some web pages, rather than
the old-style writing from top to bottom. It's more entertaining
for the thumb-twiddling user and takes virtually no more room than
a "straight" JPEG as it's pretty much just a re-arrangement of the
data.

If you're doing a lot of things, consider PhotoCD. Negatives and
slides can both be scanned quite economically in volume (35mm,
that is). These give some high-quality scans and gives you
a way to keep the scans without using up all your diskspace.
Of course, with gigabytes being available for a pittance
nowadays..

For more information on incorporating photos into web pages (if
you're into toys I'm sure you're into this) check out:

http://photo.net/photo

There's a link to good advice on this topic.


- Don Baccus, Portland OR <donb at rational.com>