I've got a reasonably good handle on imaging coins. But I just started a paper money collection; small-sized $1 silver certificates. On my first try I used a scanner because paper money lies nice and flat. Scanned at 300 dpi. Looks great on the screen EXCEPT it's WAY too large. I want the image to fit the screen; no scrolling back and forth. So I reduced the image 50%. Now it comfortably fits the screen BUT artifacts have now appeared. Moiré patterns and Washington looks like he's in front of a screen door. How do I get a screen-sized image that still resembles the real thing?
You will be better reducing the image in Photoshop or another editor, than reducing it via scanning at lower resolution. So scan at 300dpi (and keep for archival purposes), then load the scan into Photoshop and resample at 150dpi or whatever size you decide, then use that one for your web site. Moire is of course a fact of life, and different editors will do a different job with it as they reduce the image size; If you're already reducing in some application and getting bad results, you might try a different one. Dave
I scan at 600DPI, and export to Photoshop in TIFF format. Apply filters, cropping, layers, sizing, etc and save as a JPG or PNG if you want a transparent background. Anything between 800-1200 horizontal pixels works good on a forum... Remember not everyone has a screen running at 1920+ Horizontal or full screens their browser. Oh Lordy, I remember 320H was pushing it on the web LOL
