Scanning Photos - Resolution Tips

by stampkrl | More from this Blogger

Scanning old photographs to digital images is actually quite easy. I recently started a large scale project to scan all old family photographs to digital media. The project has two goals. The first goal is to have an archive of my family photos in case of a disaster. Hopefully my family will never experience a fire or natural disaster to our home but if it happens I don't want any regrets. The material things can always be replaced; the memories are priceless to me. The second goal is to have a little fun by creating slide shows and sharing the photos with family and friends.

Once the photos were sorted the scanning could begin. First, a basic understanding of dpi (dots per inch) or ppi (pixels per inch) is required. Six inches scanned at 100 dpi or 1 inch at 600 dpi will create 600 pixels. Both will show as the same 600 pixels on your screen. For comparison a popular screen resolution for a 17 inch monitor is 1024x768 pixels.

Knowing my final project was ultimately a slide show DVD movie I used the following as my scanning guide.

Photos size/scan resolution * Under 2 x 2 inches/600 dpi * Up to 4 x 6 inches/300 dpi * Larger than 4x6 inches/100 dpi

No need to scan everything at the highest resolution you can. It will take more time to scan everything at the higher dpi. Keep a close eye on the size of files as you scan them. If the file size is over 1MB you are probably scanning at a resolution higher than necessary. Just because you can scan at a high resolution it doesn't mean you should do it.

Sorting all my photos in advance was a huge help to speed up the process. In less than a couple hours I was able to scan 120 photos. I saved all of my cropping, editing and retouching for later. Take frequent breaks if you undertake a large project. Bringing your old photos into digital media opens up a whole new world of possibilities.

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