I also have a question on scanners. I am starting to look at large format scanners. Not Super scanners but 11 x 17 format. Any good leads and prices. Thanks William M. Greaves AIA President Architects iN Design 1232 Wivenhoe Court Virginia Beach, Virginia 23454 http://www.architectsindesign.com [log in to unmask] 1(757) 496-6489 phone/fax Doug Hoy wrote: For scanning 35 mm slides, I got a dedicated film scanner (Minolta Dual Scan III). I've been told that film scanners can better capture the colour and resolution in slides. After doing a side-by-side comparison with an Epson flatbed (with film holder in lid) at a friend's photo store, we could see slightly more resolution and truer colour with the Minolta in poster size blowups, but the Epson did surprisingly well. Some things I've learned: 1. Dust is the enemy. When you do hi-res scans, you discover just how dirty your slides really are, even after careful cleaning. You can use dust-reduction software, but it always reduces resolution. Only the infrared "digital ice" capabilities of the higher-end scanners can get around this. Next time, I'd go with the low-end Nikon scanner, just for this feature. The scanner hardware is a fraction of the total project cost. 2. Let's see, 5000 .tif images at 35 Megs each....is that 175 gigabytes? Anyways, it's a lot of files, and you need to be superorganised about naming them and managing directories. Or invest in software that helps do this. I use iPhoto, but it's starting to groan under the weight of 2000 images. You can use .jpgs instead, but they degrade every time you save them--not good for archiving. 3. And I thought I was done after taking the picture! There are a multitude of settings for scanning, and a multitude of post-processing tweaks. I've found Photoshop (Elements) to be the most useful software, after trying some other things. For some good scanning tips, go to: www.guides.sk/scantips2/index.html#menu 4. A film scanner holds several slides at once, and has batch routines to speed things up, but it can still take half an hour to clean, load, prescan, focus, adjust exposure, scan, crop, correct, and save each image. I thought I was going to capture all my slides at highest quality, and do away with the physical transparencies--Hah! Now I'm down to pitching out slides that don't meet my new, higher standards, scanning at PhotoCD settings, but most importantly priorising what I'm going to scan first. 5. Everything is always okay in the end; if it's not okay, then it's not the end. Oops, wrong group. Doug Hoy Canada Science & Technology Museum ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes). If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).