On Wed, Feb 18, 2015 at 6:33 PM, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote: If it's an original with decent reproduction quality and in B size (11"x17"), then 300 dpi is adequate, provided that you scan it into a lossless bilevel image format (e.g., TIFF Class F G3, G4, JBIG, or JBIG2), which could be embedded into a PDF file. Please do NOT use anything that will apply lossy coding intended for continuous-tone photographs (i.e., JPEG) to it, because that causes horrible artifacts since JPEG deliberately throws away the high-frequency components and blurs the edges of lines and text. With a lossless bilevel encoding, a 600 dpi scan will definitely be bigger than 300 dpi, but not absurdly huge. I'd recommend trying 300 dpi. If you inspect the scanned images and find everything easily legible (at least comparable to the paper, which isn't always terribly legible), then there's no good reason to go to 600 dpi. If you're going to submit it to Al for Bitsavers, it's possible that he might want it as a TIFF file, rather than already wrapped in PDF. (I don't speak for Al, so I'm only guessing at his preferences, and in actuality it would be best to check with him.) Eric

On 18/02/15 8:33 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: For printsets, 600dpi may not be overkill - it is probably about right; some of that linework and small text really is spidery. If in doubt, scan a page and ask for opinions, though a good rule of thumb is: "When viewed pixel to pixel, is all the text and linework completely clear and unambiguous or is it breaking up, and hard to decide if that is a B or an 8". --Toby