SCANNING FOR THE WEB
by, Sidney Burton Jr.


  • NEEDED MATERIALS

    -Scanner
    -Photo Editing Software (capable of saving as JPEG, JPG and or GIF file formats)
    -Web page construction and publishing software, or  FTP (File transfer protocol software)
    -A plan, Story Board, or basic layout
  • PIXELS 

    Images on screen are made up of tiny dots called PIXELS the standard screen resolution is 72 dots per inch. A typical modern laser printer is either 300dpi or 600dpi. That is why an image aimed at printing can be scaled down in end quality for end result of the web screen. That is also why some images you from the web that you print don't look so good, they were not intended for high quality printing but for rapid file transfer.. 

    Keep in mind that screens used by most recipients will generally be either 800x600 pixels or 600x480 pixel so you must crop and resize accordingly and proportionally.

    As you can see monitor size, as well as resolution will have an effect on how the image will be finally viewed.

    You must look forward and choose the amount of the screen that you want your graphic to occupy and how long you want the recipient to wait (remember patient is a virtue). 
  • FILE SIZE

    Here is a table of JPG image files their pixel size, amount of compression, resulting file size, and appearance on your screen.
PIXEL SIZE 60X Compression 30X Compression
800x600 45kb 70kb
600x450 31kb 46kb
400x300 17kb 25kb
200x150 6kb 9kb
100x75 2kb 4kb
  • FILE TYPES
    Only files saves as one of the following types can be normally decoded and displayed by modern web browsers and E-Mail programs..
    JPG - (Joint Photographers Exchange Group) various levels of compression, 
    GIF - (Graphics Interchange Format) transparent backgrounds and animation
    PNG - (Portable Network Graphics) newer format

STEP 1

  • Scan Your Image

If you plan to use your images for printing, scan at either 300dpi or 600dpi and save it as an original TIF file. Remember color graphics files at 300dpi or 600dpi resolution can be very large up to 40mb.

If the file is just for the web you should scan at appropriate resolutions or convert, resize, and rename the original as guided below.

  • Set the final scanning area to just the part of the image that you want
  • Set the resolution to 75dpi
  • Set the scale size to the final size that you want (if your scanning software does the conversions to pixels at the appropriate resolution that's a plus)
  • Save the resulting file in the appropriate folder as a JPG file at 30-60 times compression.

STEP 2

  • Insert Your Image

Their are many HTLM editors my favorite is Microsoft front Page it has a great interface for allowing you to insert images into web content. 

If you are using a strait HTLM editor insert the code is [<img src="filename.jpg" ></a>] where you want the graphic to be, (replace the filename.jpg with the exact location of the image file where it will be located on the server).

Many HTLM editors like MS Front Page will update the location of the graphic file, to the same relative location in your web server's tree.


Copyright (2000) SBurton Services
PO Box 147 Boston, MA 02122
Voice (617) 427-4376 ~ EMail  sburton@sburtonservices.com