Jeff,
Thanks for the responce. Please see comments below.
"Jeffrey H. Ingber" wrote:
>
>
> I have a 6350 and can confirm that it will scan at 1200dpi optical
> resolution. Any resolution thereafter will be handled in software. If
> I do a 1200dpi color scan uncropped, the resulting image saved in
> xscanimage is *huge*, roughly 800MB or so.
>
> I just fired up xscanimage and noticed that the "bit depth" option in
> "Advanced Properties" only contains "8, 10, and 12" for the selection?
I believe that this referes to the individual colors. Scanners work
like monitors with R(ed)G(reen)B(lue). When all the colors have the
same value you get a greyscale. So 8 bits per "gun" gives you 24 bpp
color. 10 gives you 30. 12 gives you 36.
I'll try to find the docs for xscanimage to comfirm this.
Here is the definitive test:
1) scan an image at 1200 dpi and 12 bit depth.
2) crop the scan to a small, even size. One inch by one inch would be
ideal.
3) calculate the number of pixels. This would be X x 1200 x Y x 1200.
If you cropped to exactly one inch each way it would be 1 x 1200 x 1 x
1200 = 1,440,000 or about 1.4 Meg.
4) 8 bits is one byte. So if you had set the bit depth to 8 the
resulting scan would be about 1.4 MB (raw, not compressed via png, gif,
etc.) If you set the bit depth to 12, that would be half again as large
as 8 so the resulting scan would be about 2.1 MB (X x 1200 x Y x 1200 x
1.5). However, this assumes that the output is packed tight. The
software might use an entire 16 bit word to store each 12 bit pixel
(this would be a lot easier to program). In that case, the scan would
be about 2.8 MB. So the result, if we really received 12 bpp, would be
1.5/2.0 times the result of step three for greyscale and 4.5/6.0 time
for color.
Pumping your numbers for a full, uncropped scan through the equations...
1.4 MPixels/SqIn x 8.5" x 11" x 6 Bytes/Pixel = 785.4 MB
Very close to the 800 MB you said that you saw.
This is very encourageing. But perhaps not definitive (darn, this is
making me paranoid).
My Linux is down for the moment (I just upgraded my CPU to an AMD K7
650MHz and RH 6.2 can't deal with it. RH 7.0 with Duron support is
sitting here waiting to be installed) so could you perform a quick
experiment for me?
Scan a small image with bit depth set to 12 and save it as a png file.
Then look at that file with gimp and examine its properties. I believe
gimp will tell you what the color depth is. That should pretty much
confirm what is happening.
>
> From the box:
>
> 1200 dpi optical resolution
> 1200x2400 dpi hardware resolution
> 36-bit color
Yah, the box for my 5370C says the same thing. The razlesnatzin liars.
What they, and others, appear to be doing is scanning 36 bit internally
and using that data to calculate an "optimised" 24 bits. So only 24
bits ever leave the scanner. But they don't come right out and say
that.
>
> I'm not an expert on some of this marketing spin, so make of this what
> you will. The resolution seems a no-brainer, but the bit depth may need
> further investivation. FWIW, for the price of this scanner, you
> *should* get true 36-bit color, but I don't know for sure. Sorry.
Amen, brother.
>
> Jeffrey H. Ingber (jhingber@ix.netcom.com)
Thanks again,
Bob Washburne - rcwash@concentric.net
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