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Question: What dpi do you use to archival scan of your collection?
ndleo
Posts: 4,076 ✭✭✭✭✭
What dpi do you guys use for personal collection cards? I use 600 dpi for most buy/sell scans, but was wondering if 1200 dpi is worth it.
Mike
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I use 400 dpi for everything. Even that is plenty. 300 dpi is the standard.
Nic
Guides Authored - Graded Card Scanning Guide PDF | History of the PSA Label PDF
300dpi is print resolution. Like if you see a picture in a magazine it's probably 300dpi. 300dpi print resolution goes back 20 40 60 years. I'm sure some people are printing a little better these days.
Screen resolution is traditionally 72dpi. That is a standard that was set a long time ago though. I set everything at 100dpi for screen. 96 may actually be a better number though.
My monitor is running at 1920 x 1080. 1080p monitor. 13.5" tall. 80dpi tall. It's fudged in there somewhere. The 72dpi screen resolution number goes back to the VGA days. Even if you have a 4k monitor it's not actually showing you 4k pixels unless your resolution is set to whatever x 4000. Even then the source has to be 4k. I've been running at 1920 x 1080 for 15 years. My eyes are telling me to zoom in.
4k refers to 2160p resolution. As in 4x as much as 1080p (1k) resolution. 3840x2160 is 4k.
My 27" monitor runs at 108.79 PPI since it's running at 2560x1440 resolution.
In general, books and magazines are printed at 150dpi:
https://petapixel.com/2017/01/06/dpi-explained-everything-need-know-print-resolution/#:~:text=Magazines typically print at a,lower resolution when enlarged though.
I don't own a 4k device. My TV is rear projection. I can see all the pores.
I see what that guy says. But, 300dpi is what you're supposed save an image at for print. Maybe I wasn't clear. That's the number I've been taught and used when communicating with photographers and artists since the late 90s. They may actually print at a lower resolution. Or higher resolution for that matter.
300 dpi
I do 300 for slabs and 240 for raw. Anything much larger than that is overkill and just chews up memory space. Not to mention that if you want to post those images on a place other than CU, where they autofit them, you have to go in and resize the image to about 5%-10% of your original if you're scanning at 1200.
Arthur
I do 600 dpi for everything. front/back scans are saved in folders based on sport, player or generic categories. the resolution is high enough that I can inspect cards via scan zoomed in as opposed to using a loupe if needed.
myslabs.to/smzcards
600DPI is my personal minimum. I've plenty of disc (primary and redundant), and can always get more. I don't want to go though the pain of scanning stuff again
Unless otherwise specified my posts represent only my opinion, not fact.
General rule is you don't scan at a higher dpi than was used in the printing... unless you're trying to enlarge. 300dpi is fine... 1200dpi is overkill, and a waste of storage.
What do we think the resolution is that PWCC uses for its high-res pics?
You can't see it better than the dpi your monitor displays. If you're seeing it on your monitor it's about 80dpi. Or less if the information isn't in the file to hit screen resolution.
If you scan a card that is 3 inches tall at 1200 dpi you have to zoom till the card appears 45 inches tall on your monitor to see the actual pixels.
They use photography, they don’t scan. See the current PWCC thread for some discussion on this.
Nic
Guides Authored - Graded Card Scanning Guide PDF | History of the PSA Label PDF
A scan is photography. If you mean they're shooting to film, it's digitized at some point anyway because you're viewing it on your computer.
But digital scans and digital photos are two completely different technologies for acquiring/digitizing a source image.
It all makes the same kind of files. When you display them in a browser it's all the same thing. The only advantage of shooting with a camera really is that you're not taking the image perpendicular to the object. You can shoot at an angle. Well, and use different lighting. All a digital image is is a bunch of dots regardless of what color they are or what makes them that color.
You can have a real bad high res image or a real good low res image.
Copy Stand
Wow. I received more info that I ever expected. Thanks to all.
The file still has a dpi based off the resolution... Looks like 931 DPI......
Your file may be at 931. But, right now I see it at 72.
All of the images you upload to this page get processed automatically by the server.
You can put it on a web server and let people hit it. But it would have to show up at 68.6 inches on my screen for the 931 to be a real thing. My monitor isn't even 68.6 inches tall.
The numbers in the file are all theoretical. The bottle neck is the number of actual light bulbs, pixels, in a monitor. And the video "plumbing" in your software and hardware.
Without turning this into an Imaging 101 class, you're definitely over-simplifying this a little. While your monitor may always be at 72dpi... a 931dpi source image will allow you to zoom in nearly 13x without any pixel distortion. The only reason to scan at a high dpi is to enlarge or zoom.
Correct. I was just clarifying (maybe not well) how they acquire the image.
Nic
Guides Authored - Graded Card Scanning Guide PDF | History of the PSA Label PDF
It will allow you to. If I save your image its 1800 pixels tall. Which is better than I expected. They dont cut it down so much on this site. but your original is almost 2800 pixels tall. Most sites wont give you that much space. The image I see isn't the same as the image you have on your drive. If your objective is to see Sir Charles nose hair. it's not there. It all comes down to whatever makes you happy though.
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Were talking about zoom-ability on a 72dpi monitor. If you right click on the image and open it in another tab/window, you get the full res pics, the server hasn't done anything, the HTML has just shrunk it down to fit in the thread. If I right click copy image and paste it in Pshop, it is 72dpi, but 40x60 inches!
The server processes the image. Like, when you upload an image to eBay. eBay doesn't want you saving a huge image to their server. so they shrink your picture.
This site only cut his image down by 1000px on the tall side. That's real generous.
I'm sorry I tried to teach you something.
I only checked the 2nd image. Maybe these guys dont chop your pic at all. Most sites do.
Ebay does limit photo size and reduces the resolution to a max amount,. This site, collectors.com doesn't, though I'd think there would be a file size limit for uploads. What were you trying to teach me?
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