In my opinion: the originals never can be beaten. That's why it has a dedicated word for it. As they are the original pieces. The rest are just replicated versions (which is not necessary a bad thing, they are just not as valuable as the originals).
But in an other hand: I can perfectly understand the scanning, and replication scene as well, as sometimes originals can be lost, deleted or forgotten - so in that case if they weren't any replacements, nobody could have imagine how was the originals looked like, or even existed. Nonetheless: I always tend to aim for the original pieces as it's almost always the best thing anybody could do.
Original is a bit of a fickle term. A scan is an original scan of the real work, just as a .wav is an original audio file of real audio. But what "original" means is oftentimes very different amongst many people. An original piece of art oftentimes is interpreted as a piece of art for which there is no obvious source material (i.e. not fan art or art based on the work of others, which is to say that it is not recombinatorial). Original oftentimes relates to its source material or point of origin as well, such that a .PSD or .TIFF may not be considered original even if it contains original material.
Many use the term "authentic" to mean what you talk about when you say original I think, that is, the term that comes closest to the authorial intent of the work. Despite this though, many pieces that are authentic are not reproducible digitally. Most pieces by Amano, most originals of his work are done on physical media and thus any representation of his work digitally is, by this definition, inauthentic. The same also holds true for artists like Hyung-Tae Kim or Min-Ku Kang, whose work often doesn't start on digital media, but is actually remediated work.
The reason many artists use physical media and then transport it to digital is due to the combinatorial style it presents, as watercolors (as an example) are impossible to reproduce, at the moment, on computers. They just don't handle colors the same way and the media used for watercolors also gives it a different digital consistency versus physical consistency. So to say that a lot of the digital work people receive or put up here is original or authentic is a bit of a misnomer.
Renders, on the other hand, are a different story. Renders can only exist digitally, and thus in terms of being original or authentic, they will always be more original or more authentic than other born-digital pieces of art. That is, their digital integrity cannot be compromised because they cannot exist in the real world except as reproductions, just as much as art transferred to computers is a reproduction.
It is rare that a file truly be authentic or original if we are talking about layered art, primarily because most layered art as distributed is merged. What's more though, even art with layers is itself often merged into focused layers, and those focused layers are not representative of a process nearly so much as a product. So if we are to talk about art in terms of quality, I generally view it as a hierarchy, and not in terms of a binary authentic/inauthentic.
Generally, in terms of quality below is my process for determining quality, from highest to lowest (note that this list is not exhaustive and largely represents the quality of digital art in terms of its representative possibility space).
Vector art/Renders (generally the highest quality art can be digitally due to the fact that these art formats can only exist digitally, note that resultant images are not the same as the storage containers of these images, such as .dds or .eps, which are file-types these pieces of data sometimes fall under)
Layered art with unmerged layers (or layered art with scanned components and defining layers to aid the art's representative qualities on computers - generally what one might define as unlayered art with layered art put on top of it to make it look "nicer")
Layered art with merged focus layers (three or four major layers comprising the piece)
Layered art with one transparency layer/no layers (generally production PSDs used for promotional purposes)
Pre-processed art from layers (TIFFs with processed layers, as an example)
Post-processed art from layers (jpg/png/gif - PNG provides best reproduction, jpg/gif generally provide very poor reproduction)
Raw Screenshots
Raw Photos
Raw Scans
Raw Faxes
Please note that the top is not the "best" it simply allows for the most reproductive qualities to be embodied into a given piece of art through computing. Please note also that size is not something I use to determine quality. A scan at super-high resolution is not of the same quality, in my own estimation, as a layered logo at very low resolution, even though many might disagree with me.
On an another note, I was wondering if you can help me through what kind of software you recommend if I want to make some backups from various discs I got (these are quite data oriented press and gaming materials). Mainly because I want to make sure the CD and DVD discs won't get scratchy, but also want to keep the files if anything happens with the original ones. Is there anything particular I need to be aware of (the .iso file format looks promising enough) or other tricks which could be deal breakers? To be honest, this could be my very first step to start that long awaited preservation project of mine (after that I would love to rip the file structures as well, and scan the discs or their booklets).
Also miracle, with regards to your question about .iso, .iso is a good file format but I would say using .mdx might also be another format to consider simply because it provides metadata for the disc images which .iso does not inherently. That said, .mdx is a proprietary file format (though much like .psd, functionally open) and .iso is not, and while they both copy the same data and are functionally similar, .mdx has better provisions for for tracks and metadata, good for archiving and generally "understanding" disc contents. Of course, there's a lot more reading on this easily available at Wikipedia if you're interested in knowing more. Or you can PM me and we can chat about it. It's an interesting subject for me and I've talked with record labels about it before and how to best archive LPs and EPs, amongst other media constructs.
RedSwirl, I wasn't implying that the link was all scans, rather just presenting some information I thought was interesting with regards to scans. But you are definitely right.
Aaaand here's something interesting for consideration with regards to quality:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsZMZ86zgF4
