Tech Tuesday - Scanning Slides

"Eat That Frog" says Brian Tracy. "Get a grip and just do it" says Elyse Doerflinger here. I have finally done it; I have eaten the frog, I have gotten a grip and I have taught myself how to scan slides with my trusty old Espon 4490 scanner.  Just don't ask me how long I have owned this technology. I have always loved it, but now I love it even more!

This picture was developed in slide format in October 1967: 

Here are the settings I used to scan it today:

Settings in Epson Scan 
Professional Mode:

Document Type: Film 

Film Type: Positive

Image Type: 24-bit color 

Scanning Quality: Best 

Resolution: 800 dpi 

Document Size: This is the actual size of the slide. 

Target Size: 11x17 is the closest dimension to that of the slide and is also the largest size I would most likely print it. 

Unsharp Mask: Level: Medium

Then I rescanned it with Digital Ice checked off at the bottom and it removed most of the markings on the film. 

Here I must make a confession. It is 2:31 in the afternoon. Time elapsed since I scanned this image is about four hours. Except for a quick grocery trip (when I got really frustrated) and lunch, I have been trying to figure out how in the world to get this image to upload to Blogger. 
                                 
Problem #1: The image was huge - 342 MB!

Problem#2: No matter how small I made the image, Blogger kept rejecting it. 

Solution (after much angst and pulling of hair): Opened the image in Photoshop Elements 8 and chose Image, Resize Image. See settings below:

Now I am headed back to the drawing board. Although I love the quality of my scanned image, it is far bigger than necessary and the process has slowed my computer down to a snail’s pace. With some more tweaking of settings I should be able to find the magic formula for creating a good printable image that won’t create a humungous file. Humungous my computer does NOT like!

Let me know if you have any formula suggestions.

Happy Scanning!

Scrappy Gen