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Scanning old colour slides - tiffs & jpegs #1
Ruth Lathlean's picture
by Ruth Lathlean
February 28, 2013 - 6:30pm

I am finally embarking on the huge project of scanning a lot of old slides (from 1960s & 70s) and making photobooks. I have a Nikon Coolscan film scanner with a Vuescan driver and it gives excellent results although of course adjustments, especially colour need to be done in Aperture. I need the output to be jpegs for the books but because they are so lossy I am scanning as tiffs with files of about 30mB. I am putting them on an external drive and then importing them into Aperture as a referenced library on the same external drive. Then when I have finished the adjustments I want to save them as jpegs in Aperture. Hopefully someone will know a better way to do this than I have found. The only way I have found is to export them as jpeg original size and put them on the desktop or back on the external drive as jpegs and then import them back into Aperture. This is very tedious and convoluted and means I have copies in Aperture and also in folders on the external drive. Is there another way to save jpegs from the tiffs straight into Aperture?

The jpegs from the tiffs are about 7Mb but the ones that can be scanned directly are only around 2Mb or less and then have to have adjustments made and lose pixels. I know that scanning as jpegs is the easiest thing to do but everything I've read says not to do it if one want to print decent sized images. But as I'm scanning at very high res. (4000) does this make enough difference so scanning jpegs is OK? Sorry I don't really understand the technical features of this.

I am also thinking of deleting the tiff files (in the interest of huge storage needs) when I have the new jpegs from tiffs in Aperture. Is this is a good idea?

I hope someone can give me some clues on this workflow - there is not much on scanning on AE but I have read it all. Thanks.

Ruth Lathlean

David  Moore's picture
by David Moore
February 28, 2013 - 10:35pm

Hi Ruth
In Ap you have the tiffs (great) those are your originals and you don’t need the duplicate jogs in ap cuz you can always make them from the originals. If you email an image from AP then the preferences in AP have been set to make a jpg for you. If you make a book in AP then the program will upload jogs for you. Sometimes I have to send a client a bunch of jogs on a disk. I will export my tifs as jpgs make the dvd or thumbdrive for them and then delete the jpg on desktop. I do not need to reimport them. Database file systems are confusing enough so there is no need to add a duplicate just cause its a jpg. Cheers dbm

davidbmoore@mac.com
Twitter= @davidbmoore
Scottsdale AZ

Ruth Lathlean's picture
by Ruth Lathlean
March 1, 2013 - 6:14pm

I can see now that I don’t need to reimport the jpegs made from the tiffs. But I’m still unsure about keeping all the original tiff scans as well as the Ap tiff masters when I have imported the scans. If they are safe in Aperture should I be able to delete the originals on the external drive? It makes me a little nervous to do so but the storage will quickly add up with hundreds, if not thousands of scans in the pipeline.

Ruth Lathlean

David  Moore's picture
by David Moore
March 2, 2013 - 12:02am

Hi Ruth
Now we can talk of backups. An ap Vault doesnt back up reference images only the images that are managed and all the thumbnails and previews. Not sure what what Hd has the original scans, is the same one you might put a AP Vault in? This a family photo book? You might pick up a portable Hd at Costco, Best buy, etc when on sale, less than 90 dollars. Store all the originals there and give it to a family member not living with you, for safe keeping. I have a backup at home for quick recovery and one stored off site in case of being robbed or a fire.

davidbmoore@mac.com
Twitter= @davidbmoore
Scottsdale AZ

Ruth Lathlean's picture
by Ruth Lathlean
March 2, 2013 - 9:34am

The books I am making are travel ones as I don’t like thinking of all my slides from 100+ countries being thrown out when I die! I have been relying on Time Machine for backups but have just realised that it only backs up one disk - the main HD on my iMac. I’m therefore considering moving this referenced library (my only one) onto the main HD as another managed library. The external hard drive can continue to have my original scans (but not the Ap. Library) and be stored elsewhere as a backup. I don’t think I’ll use Vault as well. Thanks for your help.

Ruth Lathlean

David  Moore's picture
by David Moore
March 2, 2013 - 12:41pm

Ive had many discussions about what will last longer.. a HD of images or a book. Its always the book! Technology fails us in so many ways. Cheers dbm

davidbmoore@mac.com
Twitter= @davidbmoore
Scottsdale AZ

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