Need help with format and size for digital picture frames

[csziggy]

Mr. csziggy's brother called today and he is buying MIL a digital picture frame for Christmas. He wants everybody in the family to bring pictures to put on the frame. I've got the scanning equipment - flatbed and negative/slide scanners - but I am not sure what resolution, size and format to use. BIL has not actually bought so I can't lean on him for the model and look up the manual

Is there a standard or more common size and resolution for most digital picture frames? I'm assuming the pics should be in JPG format, but can they be progressive or should I default to regular?

I only have four days to scan in 30+ years of family pictures! I will start scanning them in at higher resolutions that I would expect but I would like to resize to the correct size to make transferring to the memory card easier.

Thanks!

[marzipanni]

1. I poked around the 'net and found a pretty good forum page about this -

http://forums.cnet.com/5208-7809_102-0.html?threadID=320105&start=15

[csziggy]

2. Thank you! But it looks as though I need to find out exactly what BIL is buying

Since the size and aspect ration vary from frame model to frame model. I am not going to change the aspect ratio unless the directions for the photo frame say to. Our pics are all in original 35mm format and Nikon D70 or Canon PowerShot ratios. And with such a short time frame, I cannot attempt much photo restoration, though at least I can use PhotoShop to adjust the color on faded or color shifted images.

I did some searching, but I only had four hours sleep last night and a long day today. Then BIL throws this at me and I was just stumped. If he had only told me at Thanksgiving. Well, maybe he meant to, but we missed that get together.

[Corgigal]

3. just looked it these a few days ago

I looked at a Pandigital 7.0 . It was on sale at Kohl's for about 60 bucks. Founds the spec on it, it has fair ratings but it's hard to find any of these digital frames in stock right now. If you have an Kohl's in your area then you might want to get take a look. Here is a link for the specs

http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-photo-frames/pandigital-7-inch-pantouch/4507-13499_7-32991491.html?tag=mncolBtm;rnav

[targetpractice]

4. If you are scanning...

... scan for 2 or 3 megapixels... To keep your options open when scanning special photos, slides, and negatives... You should scan with high enough resolution to make prints... Today's digital picture frames will shrink the images to fit the screen resolution and make it look nice.

2048 x 1536 pixels - 3 megapixels
1600 x 1200 pixels - 2 megapixels

That said.. the resolution of most consumer photo frames are quite low... 640x480 or 800x600 resolutions are most common.

[targetpractice]

5. I re-read your post...

Since you have flatbed and slide scanning ability... I'm guessing that you may do some scanning for other reasons... maybe for print or graphic design?

If you plan touch up or color correct the scans... Make sure your color management settings are for sRGB since digital photo frames are sRGB devices.

[csziggy]

7. I'm a photo geek - we've got thousands of slides and negatives

I've been trying for years to get scanned and organized. But the last couple of years I have not been doing much with it. I got a new slide negative scanner last spring and have barely used it. I realized the old scans I made with my Acer Scanwit basically sucked and need to re-do those.

I'll make sure my settings are correct for the digital photo frame - sRGB is fairly new to me. I am not sure if the Silverfast SE that came with the new scanner (Plustek 7200) will let me set to automatically scan to that color management or not. Off to find out!

Thanks!

[csziggy]

6. I've got a dedicated slide/negative scanner that will do 7200 dpi

But that is excessive for just about anything since that shows the grain of the chemicals in the emulsion nicely. The software with it (Silverfast) is set to name the dpi to scan for. But if you're scanning a slide or negative, you want to scan at a very high dpi so that when you want to print a 4x6" or 8x10" it will be at roughly 300 dpi.

I guess I can scan at the highest efficient resolution, save to CD, then create a CD of the best pictures at a lower resolution for quick transference to the photo frame. Unless the photo frame comes with really easy to use software that will re-size for them, the chances of anyone in that household being able to re-size the pictures is pretty low.

I'll work with 800x600 probably unless I can find out what specific photo frame BIL is buying.

Thanks!