Need Help with Scanned Image Size

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I'm not sure if this should be here, or in the Music section. But, here goes anyway,

I'm trying to scan a piece of sheet music and read it into Finale for editing using the SmartScan software that comes with Finale. I run a B&W scan set to 1 bit depth, 300 dpi. It scans to Preview, and in Preview it shows as being about 800KB in size. Then, when I save it out of Preview to my Desktop as a TIFF file, it suddenly becomes 7.2MB. How is that possible? How am I going from 800KB to 7.2MB?

Any insight will be appreciated.

Many thanks!
 
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most likely, it's the file format. A bitmap image (if I recall correctly...) only has information for black and white - with no tones in between. Tiff files are different, and can allow millions of colours - they're also used for high quality image files where compression isn't wanted. If you want smaller file sizes for bitmap images, consider jpg, png or even gif. Gif images are limited to 256 colours (with some apps allowing for customisation of the colour palette) but larger images can have very large file sizes. In a lot of cases, png can have smaller filesizes than jpg, and with a better looking result.

It all comes down to file types and quality settings. Tiff is just mainly reserved for high quality images, not bitmaps, so if you want a smaller file size, a different format is needed. Try the other formats I mentioned above. I would think all of those will give a smaller filesize.
 
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VegasGeorge said:
I'm not sure if this should be here, or in the Music section. But, here goes anyway,

I'm trying to scan a piece of sheet music and read it into Finale for editing using the SmartScan software that comes with Finale. I run a B&W scan set to 1 bit depth, 300 dpi. It scans to Preview, and in Preview it shows as being about 800KB in size. Then, when I save it out of Preview to my Desktop as a TIFF file, it suddenly becomes 7.2MB. How is that possible? How am I going from 800KB to 7.2MB?

Any insight will be appreciated.

Many thanks!

i would sugguest using gimp or another graphic program to convert to .jpg file

tiff files are always large
 
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For quick converting to jpeg, preview will also do the trick.
 
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From Preview, with your file loaded, select File, Save As and you can then select any of a number of file formats. TIFF *is* a bad choice, as it usually does not include lossy compression, and as suggested above, likely is treating your black and white as just two colors of the millions each pixel can be. Selecting a different format like JPG or GIF should do nicely.
 
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VegasGeorge
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Thanks 'yall. I really appreciate the help!
 

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