22 Jul
2019
22 Jul
'19
6:18 a.m.
On Jul 21, 2019, at 6:16 AM, Joseph S. Barrera III via
cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
I'd suggest that in 2019 when bits are cheap and high-quality scanners
nearly as cheap, "crappy quality digital image" is a bit of a straw man.
Yes, I've seen plenty of barely-readable or practically unreadable scans,
but they were made years or decades ago.
What dpi qualifies as not "crappy"? 300dpi? 400? 600?
That's not a particularly meaningful question. 300 dpi can be adequate, 400 is more
likely to be, 600 is plenty for just about every purpose.
But asking about adequate DPI is like asking a race car driver about adequate horsepower.
It's just one tiny detail among a much larger set of more relevant issues.
A high resolution scan with bad exposure, or insufficient dynamic range, can be nearly
unuseable. Post-processing scans to make them easy to read is not at all a simple matter,
especially for old faded documents.
You can also cause trouble by a poor choice of compression methods, but fortunately people
using scanners typically know enough to avoid JPEG and the like.
paul