Scanning Formats (TIFF vs. JPEG)

Re: I don't think so--that's 10K per "square inch". Linear resolution would be the square root of that--100 dpi, no? Cheers, Chuck *************** You are not reading what I said. I never said ANYTHING about "pixels". When I said 10K per square inch, that was not a reference to "pixels", it was a reference to finished JPEG file size. E.g. 10,000 BYTES total file size per square inch. You can do that with 100 dpi resolution, and you can do that (using a lot more compression) with 600 dpi resolution. But I have found that if you have a JPEG whose total file size is 5,000 to 10,000 bytes per square inch (500k to 1 megabyte for an 8.5" x 11" color page), then in my experience there will be NO detectable degradation compared to a lossless file format, for purposes of viewing, printing or OCR (but monochrome images can be a lot smaller than that). Again, the file size of a JPEG file is independent of resolution, the issue is "how much compression are you going to use". And I have no argument that if you use too much compression, the quality will be crap. But, at the same time, there is too much emotion connected with the fact that JPEG is "lossy" and TIFF is "lossless". If neither a person nor an OCR program can detect a difference, then the "losses" can be concluded to be both insignificant and irrelevant. It's not like an executable program where all losses are absolutely unacceptable. JPEG can be crap if you use a lot of compression, but if you don't get carried away and keep the compression low to moderate, I maintain that a JPEG file is indistinguishable from a TIFF file for all practical purposes. By the way, several people have asked what resolution I scan at, and the answer is 300 DPI MINIMUM for everything, but I sometimes scan at 600 dpi if there is extremely fine detail present. I've used 600 dpi for some schematics where the "original" in a manual was a blueprint-sized page reduced to 8.5" x 11" (or even 11" x 17") and it was already at the point where you needed a magnifying glass to read it.