Best picture file
 

Not sure if this goes here, but Im embarking on GCSE coursework, and i need to scan a few images, docs etc. I was wondering what is the best file to save as so i dont loose a lot of quality, Im doing this on windows because my scanner (xerox 2400) doesnt have mac drivers. i guess this is a second question, are there any 3rd party apps which make scanners work on osx?

You haven't told us what options your scanning program has for file types, so we can't give you a specific answer. Typically, though, .tiff is one option. Tiff files are uncompressed, any uncompressed file type will give you the full quality of the resolution you scanned at, without losing quality due to compression.

There are other choices as well, but unless we know what choices you have in your scanning software we can't give much further advice.

Yes, a few. Silverfast and Vuescan are two that come to mind.

Trevor

Doesnt look good for the scanner on a mac.

If your scanner is USB, then the preview.app may be able to see it.
Menu: File>Import Image...

I have the options of jpeg, tiff and max files

You Get Tiff, Jpeg and more in Preview.app

Then for best quality, use tiff, as it is uncompressed. JPEG is compressed. I'm not very familiar with max files, although I think that the Scansoft Paperport used to use those.

Trevor

ok thanks for the advice, i tried going on silverfast, but the site wont load for some reason, i'll try it tomorrow to see if it works

Hi Kel101,

I would be interested to Know if the Preview.app can see your Scanner?


Cheers

No it wouldnt give me that option, so i guess not :(

:( both apps dont support my scanner, silverfast doesnt even support xerox

have you tried running the windows scanner software in CrossOver? (last ditch effort!)

lol cba, i just stick to parallels, just a little time consuming thats all,

CrossOver is not my favorite app. I find it a bit buggy. It supports few apps, in fact. Can't even be compared with virtualization/dual booting

No. It can't be compared to virtualization and dual booting! It's an entirely different concept. Instead of loading an entire OS, it loads enough of Windows frameworks to allow the programs to run natively within OS X. While it's got a ways to go, what it does run is impressive.

Of course, what I meant is that CrossOver and, say, Parallels are based on different concepts. Each of them is good for particular situations.
The advantage of Parallels (and for some the disadvantage) that it really loads a complete OS - so if you hate dual-booting the app is for you. Crossover, as far as I know, has got a limited number of supported programs. For, example, there's no gaming with CrossOver (not a problem for me, but for some this can be painful)

To continue:
Gaming is a very important tendency in the market nowadays. I really know limited number of people who use CrossOver successfully. Of course it frees a lot of RAM, 'cause Windows is not running on your Machine - that's why some think it better than Parallels. And It lets you run certain apps in Mac OS without using Windows that's why some consider it to be better than Boot Camp.
But for me Parallels + Boot Camp have always granted additional freedom to use both Windows and Mac OS simultaneously. With loads of RAM, of course

The latest release of Parallels and VMWare allow booting the Boot Camp partition. This is especially nice now that I don't have to keep an image on a drive and anything I do from one carries over to the other.

This is, indeed, theoretically useful. But is it just me who's found that, using Parallels (on a 2ghz core 2 duo, 1gb RAM Macbook), booting Parallels takes so damn close to the same amount of time it takes to do a hard reboot into bootcamp proper, that most of the time I'd rather just do that and have the OS run native at full speed?

1gb of ram is not enough, you need ideally 2gb to run it smoothly

Yeah, noticed that. Ah well, it's not like I ever really use it for anything anyway. I'm just complaining for the sake of it.

As I said, this is the price we pay for simultaneous running of the two OSes.
It is not strange, in fact, that great amounts of RAM are required.

It depends on what type of apps you are using.
I heard people boast that they succeeded to run Parallels finely with 356 MBs of RAM allocated to Windows. I can't believe this, in fact. But this was some time ago with older versions of Parallels