I have an Epson 10000XL scanner which I am using with VueScan software to scan art pieces that range in size from 2"x12" to 4"x8" and enlarging them in 10% steps in Photoshop to sizes in the vicinity of 40". What I am doing is similar to the scanning requirements when scanning a negative and enlarging it.
I am using VueScan which gives me control over focus, pixel density and multi-scanning.
I have a few questions I am hoping someone can help me with.
What exactly does focus do? Does it resolve the focus of a single pixel? If so, if I manually tell the scanner to focus during preview, should I be able to blow the image up in the preview window and look at a single pixel and see if it has a clean edge? No matter where I set the focus, when I do this, each pixel looks like a little sqhare with a clean edge. If this is not what focus does, what does it do? Should I be able to see the results of focus somehow by blowing the image up in the preview window?
Another way focus can be improved, I am told, is by multi-scanning, scanning each pixel in several steps. Can someone familiar with VueScan tell if this is what I am doing when I indicate in the Input tab of VueScan that the scanner take a number of samples. Does anyone know if a 10000xl is capable of this?
The other issue here is, obviously, resolution, i.e. the number of scanned pixels per inch and the number of pixels per inch in the image sent to the printer. The highest optical resolution on a 10000xl is 2400dpi. If I enlarge an image scanned at 2400dpi in Photoshop, say, 6 times, the resolution should change to 400dpi without interpolation of the pixels. When I enlarge an image, I can tell it to enlarge the number of pixels by, say 10%, or I can tell it to enlarge the image size by 10%. In the first case, the size of the image enlarges and the number of pixels remains the same. In the latter, the size enlarges and the density decreases. Which method will give me the best final outcome, in terms of resolution?
I am enlarging the image in 10% steps in order to get the best pixel interpolation. If I let the dpi decrease, maybe this is unnecessary. Can anyone inform me on this?
Since my output is an Epson 9900 printer, I don't think that I need more than 400dpi for the printed output.
Thanks,
--Kenoli
