Digital BW, The Print

> From: Barry Koblenz
>
> I am part of a large project in which we are scanning thousands
> of old glass plates & films. It
> was proposed that we at least calibrate our monitors for Win & Mac.
>
> Decision makers are asking for a detailed explanation for this
> request. I have been asked to
> articulate just why we need such hardware / software.
>
> Can someone offer such an explanation?

You didn't say if you were scanning color or B&W. Color is obviously more
demanding.

Monitor calibration is important if you intend to manually adjust the images
until they look good. If you're doing that on an uncalibrated display, then
you may actually be degrading the images, not improving them.

If your goal is simply to scan the images, not to edit them, then monitor
calibration is less important. However, scanner calibration is probably more
important.

Fortunately, scanner calibration is about the cheapest form of calibration,
because it doesn't require any equipment other than a scanner target. An IT8
target is a common example. There are an number of inexpensive profiling
packages out there that can handle scanners. My software is quite old, so I
can't give you specific recommendations from among what's out there now, but
it's simple enough in principle that I would expect any package would do a
decent job.

--

Ciao,               Paul D. DeRocco
Paul                mailto:pderocco@...