1500 dpi 8x10 tiff scans. Anybody working at this level.

[troyammons]

I have a drum scanner and have been working on MF and 4x5 scans

mostly at the 3000 dpi level with 6x7 and 2000 dpi level for 4x5,

but I have recently acquired an 8x10 camera and am getting ready to

spend a few months slowly preparing to shoot, scan and print a color

photo at 40x50 for a gallery competition next year sometime. I have

plenty of time, but the problem is this.

 

I want to print at 300 dpi on a lightjet, so I want to scan at 1500

dpi to give me roughly a 12000 x 15000 file native. This is the same

size file as a 4x5 scanned at 3000 dpi. The problem is in the past I

could really not work on a file that big, especially in 48 bit tiff,

and that is where i would like to work. I have a 3.8ghz Pentium with

2 gb of ram, but as I understand it PS has a 2gb limit. Hopefully I

wont have to do much to the scan, but in the past a lot of times my

programs die with files that large. I use photoshop, PSP (definitely

cant handle big files) Picture window pro, Neat image, Focus magic

and a few others.

 

Here is one of my more plasticized heavily worked P67II crops with

a super sharp lens I just bought. This is a 3000 dpi test crop. i

basically reduce the grain a bit, sharpen and do a minor color

correction. This is a 3000 dpi scan, so a 1500 dpi scan should

hopefully need less work.

 

http://www.pbase.com/image/47232386

[todd_west]

I let my lab worry about all these headaches and just order prints. ;~)

 

12k x 15k at 48 bit is about 1.1GB in memory. A practical working limit for a 32 bit processor (most of the Pentium line) is about 1.4GB, so it's not surprising you're seeing things crash. I've programmed up in that range a bunch and if you do special memory management and fiddle with OS settings it's possible to get beyond it, but from the perspective of working with off the shelf software the best thing to do is to throw an x64 processor at it. This usually allows 32 bit code to consume somewhere around 3.4GB.

[kelly_flanigan1]

CS2 goes above 2 gigs of ram but watch your other limits with a PC that maybe 2.5 or 3 gigs etc based on hardware.<BR><BR> With a box that "doesnt have enough ram" it normally should not die; but justs puke to the slow HDA when one runs out of ram.<BR><BR> With a giant file one should strive to get back to 8 bits after one has done a certain amount of PS magic; so one can move on. Retouching and spotting can be done after curves and levels. <BR><BR>With some PC boxes they DO lockup; if they are not settup right; or have weirdness. Our old HP P4 2 gig box with XP would lockup with a file between 750 to 800 megs; the entire box would not respond; and had to be unplugged with all data lost that one had open. We rebuilt it with an Asus board and it can open larger files without locking up . The HP box had motherboard weirdness. Even the older Piii with 1 gig here can open up a 800meg file without locking up; it just takes along time. The old Piii can even open up a 1 gig file; but each action takes a coffe break.:)

[lee hamiel]

I'm not that experienced at this point - what I tend to do after doing a large scan is to save it as a tiff & reboot - then after a few tweaks save what I want & purge the history as it occupies quite a bit of memory. I also tend to do a rough crop at the scanning stage to minimize the size of the initial file.

 

Good Luck

[silent1]

Maybe I'm missing something -- 180 megapixels at 48 bit color should be just under 1 GB file size, uncompressed, and should be workable on a machine with 2.5 or 3 GB RAM (assuming PS has been told it's okay to use 2 GB), though it might be marginal with only 2 GB installed (there isn't room to store both the image and an altered copy in RAM, so you get paging, which means a HUGE slowdown). Even working in RAM, however, with any currently obtainable clock speed, you can expect to see updates after a change take anywhere up to several minutes -- and you'll think the machine has locked during that time, as PS uses 100% CPU to get the job done soonest.

 

The advice above to get to 8 bits per channel (24 bit color) ASAP in the workflow is very good -- that's a 3:1 reduction in RAM and HDD throughput requirement for each update, and a similar 3:1 reduction in the time any alteration takes to occur. Beyond that, if there's any way to do it, consider maxing out your motherboard's RAM (it'll probably handle 3 GB, anyway).

 

Of course, this begs the question of why bother with 8x10 if you're getting the same pixel count as you would with 4x5. Just like lugging th bigger camera? Or do you also do optical or contact prints on occasion?

[troyammons]

I have a 6x7 a 4x5 and a 8x10 so the option is there to shoot whatever i want. The reason is hopefully i will get a much cleaner 1500 dpi scan from 8x10 than I would doing a 3000 dpi from 4x5. A 2000 dpi scan straight off my scanner is alomst perfect and 1500 is even nicer. Very clean and very sharp. A 3000 dpi scan takes a good bit of work to get it the way I want.

 

No I dont like lugging them around any more than you do, but this is mostly for one particular location and the lug is about 500 feet from the parking lot. I have been planning to shoot this location for 3 years with 8x10 and I am finally getting around to it. I am going for the utmost photo quality, that is if I can keep the film flat. Also I might end up doing a larger cropped print like 4 x 8 feet, but then at 300 dpi my computer would really be crawling.

[peufeu]

Try disabling history or at least setting history undo levels to just 1 (ONE undo), even completely disabling Undo.

[c4-contemporary-art]

I know it's not made anymore - but you can pick up a new copy of live

picture 2.0 on ebay for NOTHING. Like - $20. It's MADE for stuff like that.

Brilliant program. You can open files as large as you want. You FIRST select

an AREA you're going to work in - and then you edit only that area. The file

format allows you to do this selectively. Really nice system - if a bit quirky in

terms of user interface.

[mark_blackman1]

Ive worked off 10x8 scans to produce 48" x 79" prints (a crop, obviously). I used Vuescan to create a 48 bit 'raw' file and did all adjustments in CS. My PC only has 2GB of RAM so I was faced with the same problems you have. My approach was to get the 'big' stuff out of the way first, croppping, adjusting colour, contrast, curves etc. My approach was to create a smaller version of the working file, usually 20x16. I made all the various adjustments on this, noting all the various settings as I went (I suppose I could have been clever and created actions). Once satisified, I reduced my history counter to 3, and worked on the main file, re-applying the same changes.

 

This seemed to work quite well, and compared to the time taken when I first tried working with the larger file I saved several evening's work. Once all done, I did a final sharpen and only then reduced to 8 bit colour, on the asumption that I would not need the greater detail anymore. Having re-set my undo counter to 10, I then spent a long time 'spotting' the print.

 

The final file was just short of 1GB at 300 dpi. Printed on a Durst Lambda (at 400 dpi), I really did get what I was expected.

[mighty_imaging]

I would check with your chosen lab for their output requirements. We only require people to save their files at 204 DPI. Our Lightjet 5000 images at this resolution, and we are able to produce beautiful sharp prints from files saved at that size. You can save files at 300 DPI, but do not really see any difference in the print. Unless you need the added resolution for other purposes, you may be able to save yourself some headaches by cutting down on the original scan resolution.

 

Stephanie Patterson-www.mightyimaging.com