Photo Scanning Recommendations
If you’re not going to enlarge your digital scans then don’t pay to have them scanned at a higher resolution than 300 dpi. Even if you will be enlarging them you are probably wasting your money. 600 and 1200 dpi scanning services do not mean better scans, but they do mean higher prices. For your typical photographs 300 dpi is the wisest choice.
A photo prints surface is not designed to hold the type of resolution that a photo negative is. If you plan on enlarging scanned images you are far better off scanning the negative if possible.
Wasting money is not the only reason to scan at 300 dpi. Photo scanning beyond 300 dpi produces huge files that slow down just about any use of your scans. Editing, viewing, and working with your files will be slower, and possibly much slower. And you will probably have to change the size of your scan smaller to use it for just about anything.
Top notch photographers don’t need to be coached on scanning practices as they already understand the issues. But if you are trying to gather some information to use for your own scanning project or to purchase scanning services, I recommend the relatively extensive discussion of scanning practices by Wayne Fulton at www.scantips.com
Your photo scanner should save your photos as a high quality jpeg. High Quality denotes that the jpeg has been saved at a low compression with negligible quality loss. Higher compression means smaller files but also lower quality. You can always make your photos files smaller with free photo editing software.
Dont rotate your original scans. When you send your photos in to be scanned, they are in a stack generally without consideration as to whether they are in portrait or landscape mode. Because rotating your jpeg scans recompresses them you can lose bits of information and suffer reduced image quality. Make sure you make copies of your original master scans to rotate.
Photo enhancement can require that your jpeg scans are re-compressed. This can diminish their quality if it is repeated frequently. Make sure your photo scanning service creates a copy of your original scans to enhance. You may feel that you can do better on some photos than what automatic enhancement provides. In that case you will want to go to your master scans, and make a new copy to start from.
If your photo scanning service offers inexpensive automatic photo enhancement it might be wise to take advantage of it. Even though there are lots of good free photo editing software out there it can be extremely time consuming and boring. So let the photo scanner run your photos through the automatic enhancement program especially if this is a low cost service, and save the manual improvement for a few really special photographs. You can also purchase automatic enhancement software, but trying to figure which ones actually work can be a daunting task.
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