Huge files

[Joe Pelonio]

I'm engraving photos and text onto annodized aluminum, and the customer scanned the photos at 1200 dpi, so the file size of the first one is 89 MB.
It took about 15 minutes to get from the PC to the laser. I'm not going to buy a new computer for one job, but is there something like more memory or a faster video card that I can put in to speed it up? It's a Dell 4600 pentium 586 2.4 Ghz, with math coprocessor, 256 MB Ram, running XP, hardwired direct network connection to laser.

[Bob Tate]

XP doesn't even seem alive until it has 512. Memory is the biggest performance contributor. After you have memory then the bottleneck is Video.

[Joe Pelonio]

Thanks Bob.

[Jeff Chumbley]

Joe RAM is cheap get at least a gig


Jeff

[Joe Pelonio]

Looks like it has to be installed in pairs so I'll get 2 x 512 MB. Thanks.

[Jeff Chumbley]

Sorry just noticed its a 586 yes its pairs on EDO.

Jeff

[Dave Jones]

I've been doing a lot of anodized aluminum, and with my Epilog Mini-24 / 45 watt I found that the best results came at 600dpi. That would cut your file size 4:1 from 1200dpi.

Of course different lasers will be different.

[James Stokes]

Very seldom do I run anything above 400 dpi. I have found that to be good for anything I want to engrave. With that I can engrave text so small you have to use a magnifying glass to read it. For photos I try to keep those to 200dpi.

[Rodne Gold]

At best , the laser can resolve 150 ppi , so the formula for scanning is this:
DPI = output size/input size (in inches) * 150
IE if you have a 6" x 4" pic and are going to engrave it as a 12x8" the DPI you need for scanning is 12/6X150 - IE 300dpi
1200 DPI scans are stupid unless you plan to enlarge the scanned pic real big!!
Trying to run XP on 256 mb ram is a futile excercise , 1-2 gigs is the minimum , however it wont help with files the size you are talking about as these will page to disc big time , you need something like a raid array to deal with such stuff. We run huge digital printers where we regularily deal with such big files and worse , disc performance and processor performance are king here.

[Bruce Volden]

Joe

I appreciate it when customers use higher resolution!! Then I can run it through PhotoPaint and resample it to deal with file size. No whining~~if I had to dump a file that large to my old LMI (serial port) I could have went out for steak!!!???


Bruce

[Joe Pelonio]

In this case the photos are scans of pics taken in the early 1900s, so the
clarity was not too good to begin with, then old, so they are scanning at 1200 to try to keep as much as possible of the detail. I'm planning to experiment but will probably end up engraving at 600.

[Matt Meiser]

I know nothing about lasers, but you mentioned transfering the file from the PC to the laser across a network connection. What is the speed of that connection? If it is a 10 megabit network and you can increase that to 100 megabit or even 1 gigabit, that would significantly improve the time transfering the file across the network. 100 megabit network cards can be had dirt cheap these days.

Like I said though, I don't know anything about lasers, so maybe that's not the issue.

[David Fairfield]

In this case the photos are scans of pics taken in the early 1900s, so the
clarity was not too good to begin with, then old, so they are scanning at 1200 to try to keep as much as possible of the detail. I'm planning to experiment but will probably end up engraving at 600.

Bit of a tangent here, but glass plate photography in the early 1900s was magnificent quality, better than any 35mm film photography I've seen.
I collect old photos, and many of these turn-of-the-century prints is like looking into a crystal ball, perfectly sharp down to the minutest detail. What you probably have is a scan of a reprint. Any chance your client has original prints or the glass negatives?

Dave

[Joe Pelonio]

The client providing the files is a city, and the photos from their historical archives. I don't know what kind of originals they have, but when they scanned it at a lower resolution they were really bad. I'm guessing that they are scanned copies of originals, but these are for an exhibit and they want it to look as good as possible. Unfortunately everything is through another party, as this job comes from one of my wholesale customers.

[David Fairfield]

City and museum archives are really good sources for original prints. If you think the scan is less than ideal quality, maybe mention to the client you could achieve better results with a better original, should one be available.

It seems obvious but... I've noticed over the years that many otherwise intelligent people can be dense when it comes to doing something outside their area of experience. So they might assume for example, that working from a copy is as good as working from an original. Or they'll just give you a copy because they had it handy, instead of the original, then wonder why the final product image isn't sharp.

Dave