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Subject:Re: Help--Placing photos in HTML From:Matt Ion <mion -at- DIRECT -dot- CA> Date:Thu, 29 Jun 1995 05:11:20 PDT
On Mon, 26 Jun 1995 15:06:01 -0400 you wrote:
>Sorry, this is an elementary question, nonetheless, it still
>is baffling us. Our photography department has been trying
>to get photos into an acceptable image to place on the Web.
<IMG SRC="filename.ext"> :-)
>They have been scanning the negatives (not quite sure what
>software)
That's a bit odd - most scanning software is designed to work of prints by
default.
>and saving them as .bmp files.
That's fine for basic image storage, although you may want to try TIFFs...
compressed, they can save a bit of space.
>Not only are they
>huge files, bmps are not acceptable for our
>use--newsletter and WEB. They have no other choice--as far
>as they, or I know about.
What software are you/they using with the scanner? Most apps can save in a
multitude of formats - as I said, compressed .TIF would be sufficient for your
archives, and re-saving as, or converting to, .GIFs for the Web pages should
be easy.
>They then convert them to .gif files (for use on the Web)
>using Hijacker; problem is, not matter how high they are
>scanned, they lose a good bit of their detail and are not
>acceptable to place on the Web.
You will also lose a LITTLE quality in converting to .GIFs, since it's a
compressed-file format. JPEG will give even smaller files with a
corresponding loss in overall quality.
What you probably need is something that will do the conversion better; color
dithering and the like may not be perfect with what you're using.
Another suggestion is to scan the images in 8-bit color in the first place, or
at least convert to 8-bit when converting to .GIF. This makes for MUCH
smaller files (up to 2/3 smaller than 24-bit color .BMPs)
>And when she does send
>them electronically to be placed in PageMaker, they print
>without much contrast, i.e., everything is grey.
Sounds like a problem with the printer setup...
>2)Are there less expensive applications available to do the
>job?
I don't do anything in PageMaker, but I've done extensive scanning and
web-creation work.
Most of what I've done has been pictures scanned on a PowerMac with HP ScanJet
IIcx into 24-bit .TIFs, or snaps taken with a Mac QuickTake digital camera
(examples of this available on http://www.direct.ca/Graphics/1040bbs/studio.html)
I then use PMView to adjust color depth, brightness, contrast and gamma (and
when I'm feeling really jaunty, I like to play with the tinting and assorted
other goodies like "Solarize" :) When I need to do some actual graphic
editing, I then just pull the pics into ImpOS/2.
PMView is shareware (US$30 reg.), ImpOS is commercial and directly supports
several scanners (I don't have one of my own, unfortunately) and retails for
around CDN$130 in local computer shops.
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