Quoting Rifter:

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Equally important is to make sure your monitor is properly set.  Your editing adjustments are affected by how you see pictures on your monitor, and while it may be a big improvement from what you see locally, it may be worse when it hits other people's viewscreens.

The votes will tell, if it looks worse on other monitors (and most users will follow the advice of such votes and withdraw).

Quoting Touti:

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Quoting RossRoy:

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Here's an online tutorial on dust removal.

Interesting articles on that site.  I just learned how to properly clone, remove dust and scratches and how to straighten images.

Yeah, I like that site. I just found it this morning actually! 

Again, a lot of misunderstanding about how scanning works with DVD Profiler.

For purposes of using your scanner, the ideal setting should be whatever its optical resolution is. If for example your scanner has an optical resolution of 600 DPI, that means that any setting over that is just a resize in the scanner software... exactly the same thing as changing image size in an image editing program!

Once the image is scanned, DPI doesn't enter into the picture. At all. From this point, "DPI" is strictly a printing and prepress term... the higher the DPI, the smaller the printed image and vice versa. Not that it really matters, but the standard "DPI" for most monitors is either 72 DPI or 96 DPI.

For purposes of images primarily intended to be viewed onscreen (as they are with DVD Profiler), the relevant figures are pixels wide by pixels tall.

ANY image submitted via DVD Profiler is AUTOMATICALLY RESIZED to a MAXIMUM of 500 pixels wide by 700 pixels tall, whichever puts the other below threshold. It's best to import your images at these dimensions from a quality image editing program, such as Abobe Photoshop.

Additionally, the image is JPG COMPRESSED by a factor of 50% when it is submitted to the online database. This is why you should move the JPG quality slider in DVD Profiler all the way up to 100, because submitted images are JPG compressed twice, so the first compression should be little as possible. If importing your image externally, you should save it from your image editing program as a BMP. If you save it as a JPG, then you're RECOMPRESSING the image THREE TIMES, once by the image editing program, again when importing into DVD Profiler, then yet again (at 50%) when the image is submitted.

For best results, I reccommend these steps:

- Scan your image at 300 DPI into Adobe Photoshop. Anything over 300 DPI is serious overkill. On today's scanners, setting the DPI to below the scanner's optical resolution is not going to degrade the quality of the final image.

- Rotate the image to straighten it, crop off white borders, and use Photoshop's controls to make the cover look its best. I usually use levels, shadow/highlight (brings out "crushed" detail in dark shadows and bright highlights), nik's Pro Contrast, and nik Sharpener Pro. Remember, you're trying to match the original cover, not modify it.

- Once done, resize the image. Set the resolution to 72 DPI (not that it matters, but it's standard), make sure "keep aspect ratio" is ticked, set the resizing method to "Bicubic Sharper," and put in "500" for horizontal pixels. If it puts the vertical pixels to over 700 (it most likely will), then instead enter "700" into the vertical pixels. The horizontal pixels will automatically resize to below 500.

- Do a "View," "Actual Pixels," and inspect the final result.

- Save the image as a .bmp.

- Import the .bmp files into DVD Profiler. Make sure JPEG compression is set to the highest quality setting (100).

- When you submit the cover scans to the online database, they will not be resized (you already did that), and they will be JPEG compressed by 50%. Since you set the JPEG compression to best quality when you imported, and you saved the images as .bmp, this will maintain the best quality for your submissions.

I'd like to see a number of scans redone that have the silver or gold foil in the artwork redone professionally as others here have attested to..
like I still don't see an upgrade here for this Tom Hanks movie Philadelphia..

Quoting Grendell:

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The only thing image resolution (DPI) is going to affect after final resizing is how big the image is when it prints on paper.

...and when you view the image on screen in an application other than one like Photoshop.

I've been in the graphic design industry for more than 41 years, and been working with computer imaging since before the Apple I. I might have an idea what I am saying.

Quoting SpaceFreakMicha:

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How can I calibrate my monitor?

Monitor Calibration Wizard is freeware

heh, all I know is that when scanning in things to be printed by professional photography labs, they don't go over 300dpi at all. I've had 5x7's made, and 20x24's made, and all of the digital sources are at 300dpi.