Scanning Photos

shopbot

I want to start to scanning all my non-digital photos onto my computer, so that as time fades them I will still have a good digital copy. What is the best resolution to scan them in at? My initial inclination is to scan them at the very highest resolution (3600 dpi) however researching on the internet seems to suggest a resolution of no more than (600 dpi). The idea behind this is that you could be scanning for detail that does not exist.

Anybody want to give me their thoughts or tips please?

I would also like recommendations for the best scanner software to use: It is an Epson scanner and came with software. I also have Paint Shop Pro 9 and Irfanview.

Thanks
SB

penrhyn

I'd just experiment with different resolutions until you are happy with the result, 600dpi seems about right though, scanning at maximum resolution will create huge files.
For tweeking the results I suppose Photo shop elements is a good choice, however dispite having this I manage to do everything I want with Picasa 2 which has the advantage of being free, does no harm to give it a go.

Cheers.

ayeshasi

yeh, i use picasa too. Very easy and its free.

Omertron

Picasa doesn't make any changes to the underlying photos. This is good and bad, it means that if you want to see the original you can, but if you want to touch up the photo and then print it via an internet photoshop such as snapfish, you may come unstuck.

cwoodham

Your scanning resolution will partly depend on what you want to do with the images later. For example you may want to crop and enlarge part of an image and print it out. I've read on some forum (cant remember where) that printing should be at least at 300dpi, so if you scan at 600dpi you can enlarge this by a factor of two and it should print okay. I generaly scan photos at 800dpi with my Epson scanner.

jazzy

I scan everything at 600 pix/inch, but keep the output file size to around 30mb. I find that this size is a sufficent size for printing everything up to around A3 size. I also save my images in a Tiff format but for general purpose use jpeg format (save to jpeg after you have done the final image editing etc). Also in jpeg format the image size will be reduced considerably from the 30mb.

penrhyn

Omertron wrote:

Picasa doesn't make any changes to the underlying photos. This is good and bad, it means that if you want to see the original you can, but if you want to touch up the photo and then print it via an internet photoshop such as snapfish, you may come unstuck.

Good point, you have to remember to save a copy of the modified picture.

nickmack

shopbot wrote:

I want to start to scanning all my non-digital photos onto my computer, so that as time fades them I will still have a good digital copy. What is the best resolution to scan them in at? My initial inclination is to scan them at the very highest resolution (3600 dpi) however researching on the internet seems to suggest a resolution of no more than (600 dpi). The idea behind this is that you could be scanning for detail that does not exist.

Don't scan in at 3600dpi, this is a waste for photos! As you suggest, you are trying to capture detail that is not there. All you will do is create a huge file. 600dpi should be sufficient.
Try scanning in one photo at 3600dpi resolution. You will find two things:

1) It is slow to manipulate the image
2) When you zoom in, you can see the dots making up the image.

Remember that if you save as a JPEG, this is a lossy compression format. This means you will lose some quality. If you have enough room, save as TIFF or BMP, otherwise set the JPEG Quality level quite high.

I would also like recommendations for the best scanner software to use: It is an Epson scanner and came with software. I also have Paint Shop Pro 9 and Irfanview.

I use the Epson TWAIN software that comes with the scanner and import directly into Photoshop. It works fine.

shopbot

Thanks Everyone!
From reading everyones comments I think my plan will be scan in at 600dpi and save as a TIFF then archive to CD for storage. Then convert the photos I want to keep on my PC to smaller jpegs.

charlieheard

Omertron wrote:

Picasa doesn't make any changes to the underlying photos. This is good and bad, it means that if you want to see the original you can, but if you want to touch up the photo and then print it via an internet photoshop such as snapfish, you may come unstuck.

Picasa does make changes to the underlying files in certain cases. Have a look and you will almost certainly find "originals" subdirectories. I think this is for red-eye corrections.

When you want to send photos to an online printshop, just use the export function and it will export the photos as you want them to look. Just make sure you use a high quality (low compression) for the JPEG files