scanning old printed photos to add to FB

katejo

I want to scan some old printed photos from the 80's to send to others/put on a web page or FB. I have done a test one but it remains small in the corner of the frame. Is there a free software program available to improve this or would I have to buy expensive photo editing software? Not sure whether I can do it at all.

macman

What resolution did you scan it at?

2010

katejo wrote: »

Is there a free software program available to improve this

http://imageresizer.codeplex.com/

googler

Most scanning software allows you to select the area to scan, so that you don't scan the whole A4 scanner bed, when you only have a 6x4 print in the corner.

Look at your scanner options, it sounds like you're scanning A4, when you want to home in on the print

johnmc

As others have said; on the scanner options you should have a preview option, which is a low resolution scan.

Move the scan area to the previewed size.

If they are just meant to be viewed online then anything more than 80 dpi will be wasted, as pictures will be displayed at 70 dpi and the size increased to account for it.

I always scan at the highest I can, store in a single folder and then use Irfan View http://www.irfanview.com to batch reduce for the web.

katejo

OK have tried selecting the size and accepted the default resolution of 200. I still haven't got it right as I am not sure where on the scanner to lay the photo. I have tried several places but part of the photo always gets chopped off. It doesn't help that the size doesn't actually match the 6 x 4 or 5 x 7 exactly.

katejo

johnmc wrote: »

As others have said; on the scanner options you should have a preview option, which is a low resolution scan.

Move the scan area to the previewed size.

If they are just meant to be viewed online then anything more than 80 dpi will be wasted, as pictures will be displayed at 70 dpi and the size increased to account for it.

I always scan at the highest I can, store in a single folder and then use Irfan View http://www.irfanview.com to batch reduce for the web.

i didn't see your reply before I typed the one below.

macman

200dpi is far too high for web use, you just need 72dpi.
It doesn't matter where you place the original on the platen, what you need to do is crop the scan area before you scan. You can only scan in pro to the original though.

johnmc

macman wrote:

200dpi is far too high for web use, you just need 72dpi.

Agreed. I have a standalone (read="old") scanner and from my experience I lose quality of the picture if I scan at anything less than 1,000. In particular it loses shadow detail and affects the contrast.

By scanning at a higher rate it gives a much better copy without spending ages messing around with colour balance, Brightness and Contrast etc after scanning.

I place the scanned photos into a single folder and then run Irfan View in batch mode which automatically converts the pictures to web size.

Yes, I could buy a modern scanner which may well do a better job, but this one works fine, thanks. :-)

Prothet_of_Doom

I had to send a number of documents to a client, before the start of a contract, just at the same time I had a new lap top and I couldn't get the printer/scanner to work. Luckily I had a second printer, but used my phone to take .jpg's Because of the size, I then copied them into a word document, and saved (or printed) them as a PDF, so that I could email them easier.
Client, was happy.
Scanner is now working, but nobody with a decent camera really needs one.

macman

You can't scan for anything other than web display using a camera that takes only JPEG's.
Decent graphics quality does not use JPEG's, it requires usually TIFF or RAW files, which are not lossy.