RedBlueGreen SmallMediumLarge WideNarrowFluid
You are here:Hampton Photo Arts arrow Printing arrow Scanning
Scanning
Image

Move your memories from old boxs and photo albums to a newer format. We can scan your photographs, color and B&W negatives, APS film, slides and artwork correcting faded color damage, and store them for you as digital images on a CD or DVD. View them on your computer and share your new digital images with family and friends through email.

As time has passed, so have the methods that we have used to view our family's most precious memories. The slides, negatives and photo albums that we and the generations before us have used to preserve our family's history are no longer the media that we use in our everyday lives.

Think about it, when was the last time that you actually took out that slide projector, set up the screen and showed the kids or grandkids those slides that your parents took of you and your siblings as you were growing up?

Our job is to take your old slides, negatives, and photos and convert them to a digital format, storing the resulting image files on a DVD or CD so they can be viewed on your computer.

 • We apply dust/scratch removal (ICE) on all color negatives and slides.

Hampton Photo Arts Detailed Scanning Information

Resolution

We will generally scan your images at a resolution of 1000, 2000, 3000 or 4000 dpi. When you see "dpi" it means "dots per inch". With early scanners only black & white could be scanned and a "dot" referred to a dot of black. Today's color scanners use the term "pixel" to describe these dots and a pixel could be any one of millions of different colors. When we say dpi, what we really mean is pixels per inch or the number of color dots for each inch of scanned image. If we were to scan a negative at 100 dpi it would not have Hampton Photo, Arts and Framingthe clarity or sharpness of an image scanned at 4000 dpi.

That would make you think that the higher the scanning resolution the better right? But that's not necessarily the case. Most printers today will print a photo quality picture at 300 dpi because most of us can't actually see a resolution any higher than that. Where the higher resolution scan comes in is when we want to enlarge an image. Lets do a little simple math here and it should be a bit clearer.

A 35mm slide has an image size of about 1.3"x .84". If we scan the slide at 1000 dpi we wind up with a scanned image that is 1300 dpi by 840 dpi. That means we can enlarge this image about 3 times its original size, or about a 4"x 3" print and still keep the 300 dpi we need for the printer. Scanned at 2000 dpi, our image size becomes 2600 dpi by 1680 dpi which can be enlarged to about 9"x 6". If we scan that same slide at 4000 dpi we have an image that is 5200 dpi by 3360 dpi and we can now make our enlargement about 17"x 11". As you can see, if your intention is to be able to make larger prints of your images, the higher scanning rate will be important to you.

Most people find that a scan resolution of 2000 dpi will meet their needs for whatever prints they might want to make. Keep in mind however, that if you plan on cropping your images (cutting out parts of the picture you don't want to see) this will reduce the final physical size of the image which reduces how much you can enlarge it in the future. In these cases, you might want to scan at 3000 or even 4000 dpi.

Scanning prints is just a bit different because most prints will only provide us with an equivalent resolution of about 600 dpi. That's because we are scanning a print and not the original negative. What that means is that you won't generally be able to make an enlargement of a print scan that is much more than twice the size of the original print without losing some of the quality of the print. We will generally only scan prints at 300 dpi or 600 dpi since scanning at a higher resolution will only increase your cost and not your quality.

 Bit Depth

Now lets look at another aspect of the scanning process. This is called the "bit depth". Each pixel that we scan is made up of three colors - red, green and blue (RGB). The properties of each pixel are stored as bytes. That means that each pixel requires 3 bytes of memory to determine the properties of that pixel. With professional grade scanners we can enhance those properties so that we can determine differing shades of each RGB pixel. This allows for the finished image to have more "depth or shading" rather than just being a two dimensional image. We will scan your images as either an 8 bit or a 16 bit image which means that the file uses either 8 shades for each RGB property or 16 shades for each RGB property to describe each pixel.  For most people 8 bits will be more than sufficient but for those whose images include professional photography or who may desire to digitally manipulate the scanned image with photo imaging software later on, the 16 bit scan is for you.

 

File sizes and File types

Lets see how resolution and bit depth play a part in the final size of your images. Lets go back to our slides that we scanned while talking about resolution. At a scan resolution of 2000 dpi, our image wound up being 2600 x 1680 pixels or a total of 4,368,000 pixels. Scanned at 8 bits this results in a file size of 13,104,000 bytes or 13.1 MB. Scanned at 16 bits, the resulting file size is twice as large at 26.2 MB. The same slide scanned at 4000 dpi results in an 8 bit image file size of 52.4 MB or 104.8 MB at 16 bits. On computers only a few years old, it can take quite some time just to open a file that large!

JPEG

JPEG stands for "Joint Photographic Experts Group". It is an image file format that allows for the compression of some of the data from your image. That means that to store the image, the file will throw away some of the information data used to create your picture. The idea is that most people can't differentiate between minor changes in shade but can see minor changes in brightness so some of the bytes used for shading are lost. This results in a slightly degraded image each time the image is opened and then "saved". If you just open the image to view it but don't save that image, instead just closing the original image, there is no loss to the original image - other than what was lost saving it as a JPEG image to begin with. Each time an image is saved however, additional data will be lost. The trick here is that if you want to modify a JPEG image, do a "save as" and rename the new image. This means that the original remains without data loss. The amount of compression performed by a JPEG file depends on the quality selection made at the time the image is saved. The lower the quality, the more data is lost. We will generally save your images at a "high" quality setting. Looking at our 2000 dpi slide scan again, this will result in a file size of about 3 MB. A 4000 dpi scan will result in a file size of about 11.5 MB.

We save most files in JPEG format.

 °JPEG file format is the most popular image file format in the world today. It’s popular because it saves a lot of hard drive space. A high-resolution picture with 25MB of color information can be shrunk down to about 1MB using JPEG compression.

ºThese data disks can not be viewed on a television through your personal DVD player.

 
Canvas Printing

Printing on canvas is incredibly versatile and a great way to create a ready-to-hang image or artwork. Every canvas that we print  is protected with a UV coated acrylic finish to guard the print from dust, moisture and fading. Do you want your canvas stretched on bars or non-stretched? Framed or unframed? Customize the work to make it truly your own.

 
Art of Photography

Art of PhotographyPhotography is an amazing art form. A photograph album is a catalogue of life's history as seen through the camera. People, animals, nature, holidays, celebrations and even disasters are captured instantly and recorded as part of history. It is through the powerful presentations of photography that we better understand the progression of time and life. Hampton Photo Arts has over twenty years of experience working with photographers as they seek to capture and preserve the history of families and communities.

When families get together, both children and adults love to look through photograph albums. They enjoy seeing the childhood photos of older family members and compare themselves to ancestors who lived a hundred or more years ago. Photos are among the most important treasures of every family. They should not be faded and dull. They contain the smiles, tears and emotions of generations. The staff members at Hampton Photo Arts display excellence in the art of photography reproduction. They work with the highest quality materials. They know how to create family memories that will be just as beautiful one hundred years from now as they are today.

 
Learning to Paint Watercolors

Watercolor is an easy, fun medium for creating art.  Color theory, composition and design can be explored freely with watercolor paint, paper, and brushes.  Several techniques may be used with watercolors for varying effects including painting wet on wet, wet on dry, layering washes, and more.

Watercolor paper comes in cold press, hot press, and rough.  Rough paper has the most texture, and its hills and valleys can result in interesting effects when paint is added.  Hot press is the smoothest and has the finest texture.  Cold press has a moderate amount of texture and is the paper most commonly chosen by watercolor artists.

Watercolor paper comes in several weights ranging from 90 lb. to 300 lb. based on the pounds per ream of paper.  Most artists prefer to use at least 140 lb. paper.  Papers vary somewhat between manufacturers, so sampling different papers is advisable.  Paper can be purchased in pads, in blocks or in large sheets.  The large sheets are usually the most economical and can be torn into whatever size is desired.

 
Hamptons east hampton, southampton and bridgehampton. hamptons art and frames art supplies, framing and photo store in bridgehampton.