[chickypow]

what resolution do you scan at?

I am soooo excited, I just borrowed my parents scanner and have 10 years worth of photos to scan in..woohoo! I can scrap about life before baby!

[momentousangel]

I scan at 300 dpi.

[MichaelsMomJo]

I scan at 300 dpi also.

[DDecker]

I scan at 600 dpi, but be careful and keep the scanner bed VERY clean!

[Sharebear57]

How exciting, Erin! You are going to have so much fun looking at all those old photos again!

I scan at 300 dpi if I plan to keep them at the size they are at, and 600 dpi if I plan to enlarge them or do any major cropping or editing work. Can't wait to see the pages you do with all your new (old) pics!

[tracyb]

I scan at 600 also...I made the mistake of scanning photos at 200 in the past. At 600 you will have more flexiblility in sizing your photos in your LOs. Always easier to size a photo down than up!

[chickypow]

Thanks everyone! I've been scanning at 300dpi but will look at scanning at 600 maybe...

[Susan Neff]

Sometimes I scan at 1200 or even 2400 dpi - it all depends on what I plan to use the image for.

If I know I'll never make the item larger than it already is, I scan at 300 dpi. But if I do want to make it larger, then I evaluate the difference between what size the item is, and what size I want to enlarge it to. The goal is to have the image be 300 dpi once it's enlarged.

Clear as mud?

[Karooch]

Yes, I find that a lot of old photos I have are really small. So I scan them at 1200 so I can present them at a reasonable size on my layouts. And many of my photos are not well composed; the subjects are too far from the camera. My family were never very good photographers and felt it was important to get all the body from top to toe in the picture. So for those I'll scan at 600 dpi or higher so I can crop them.

[TallCool69]

I also scan at 1200 dpi.
That way I can re-size almost any way I want!

[drs75]

I scan at 300 ppi, unless I am going to enlarge a photo. If I plan on enlarging a photo, I scan it in at a higher resolution.

The reason I scan at 300, is because standard printing is 300 ppi (for example, if you were to have your pages printed in a book, 300 ppi is the recommended resolution).

If you were to have your digital pages bound in a book, you may not be able to upload the pages for printing if the resolution is too high--I've had that problem before.

I bought a film scanner for scanning in my 35mm negatives. It does a much better job than my regular scanner, because there is no glass diffusing the light. The negatives scanned on my film scanner are much crisper than if they were scanned on big scanner. Negatives I definitely scan in at very high resolution, well over 1200 ppi.

Also, make sure you save them as an uncompressed file (like TIFF--Not a Jpeg). Every time you make changes to a jpeg, pixels are lost, and the quality of the photo deteriorates. I'm speaking from experience. I've scanned in hundreds--maybe thousands of photos, and I didn't know what I was doing, and I will have to re-scan them all.

[AZTechnoScrapper]

Though Erin asked the question, I wanted to thank you all for your responses. I had always scanned at 300 dpi, but can see the advantage now of going up to 600 or higher for the purposes of resizing/cropping. I had never thought of that before.

You girls rock!

[drs75]

I just discovered a website that explains megapixels, dpi, ppi, and more. There are charts and "plain English" explanations that make these topics understandable.

www.design215.com

[ginaMO]

I scan at 300 dpi, but my scan program allows me to choose the size of the output, not just the original size. So if I want the photo to be larger, I usually do it there.
Drs75, thanks for the cool link. Lots of info on their site.

[cathyok]

A film scanner for scanning your 35mm negatives? I didn't know there was such a thing!!

I dream of having all my photos scanned in! My kids started the project last Mother's Day for me by making a movie/slide show on DVD with music and everthing! Then they also gave me a DVD with all the scanned photos so that I can begin scrapping these!

Thanks for all the good info!

[KathleenSD]

I scan at 600dpi. However, I am considering scrapping my big plan to scan all the pre-digital pix and the family pix. There are services that will scan for you and a much faster rate - this is one I liked and I think I am going to try - Digmypics.

It would take forever if I did it and I would love to have it all on disk.

[drs75]

cathyok, on Feb 17 2007, 06:52 AM, said:

A film scanner for scanning your 35mm negatives? I didn't know there was such a thing!!

I love my 35mm film scanner. I just scanned in about 20 rolls of b&w 35mm negatives taken in 1958-59, when my dad worked on the Great Lakes. This little machine, about the size and shape of a VHS rewinder (if anyone remembers what those are), is so easy to use. My dad was here, and after I set it up, All he had to do was slide the negatives along and push a button. It was so easy. We have both enjoyed looking at all these old photos. I will be spending a few weeks at their house next month scanning in more old negatives and slides. My dad has tons of slides that he would like to have scanned in all dating back to the 50's and 60's. The machine is a little expensive, but Costco.com has it on sale once in a while. This little machine has already paid for itself.

My little film scanner has the Digital Ice technology, which scans the negative/slide with an infrared light, and detects dust and scratches, and removes them. It doesn't work with B&W film, but with color film, it takes a lot of leg work out of cleaning up the scanned photos. My negatives look like they were taken with a digital camera. One slight problem, though, is that I've had to adjust the color of the photo, which actually isn't a problem, since I use Photoshop to adjust the levels of the photo before I scrap them.

If you don't want to spend the money for one of these, or you don't want to scan in negatives, a website that scans in your 35 mm negatives/slides is photomax.com. I've never used them, but one catch is that they store copies of your photos in a granite vault for safekeeping.

[disneymom]

Great question. Thanks for all the info girls!

[brandiev]

I'm one who also scans at 600 most of the time. If it's a bigger photo to begin with I might scan in at 300, but usually 600.

[K Scrappy]

I've always scanned at 300 dpi for paper things that I want to include on a layout, like programs, tickets, wristbands, etc. so that I know they are the right size when I print. Otherwise I usually stick to 300-600 dpi. I've tried and tried to get my slide scanner to produce a good scan and it hasn't worked too well so far. I have a box of slides from my Dad (great lifelong photographer) and then keep scanning with lines through them. I think it's a problem with my scanner itself, but I hadn't thought to bump the resolution up so high. Maybe that will help. Either way it's worth a shot! Love this thread!