John, I started out using 150dpi (just happened to be wat I scanned my bank notes at) then crop the chip (cropped just touching the edge of the chip)at 236pixels X 236 pixels and color set at 16 million. I do each one EXACTLY the same so all my chips appear the same size & not squashed or stretched when displayed via Checkmate. Here's the ODD THING: after seeing your post, I looked at my file sizes. They range from 12K to 20K that's a big difference considering ALL chips were scanned on the same scanner & same computer with NO settings changed. It's not just a few 12k's and a few 20k's they are scattered pretty evenly (big ones & small ones). Any explainations or guesses?