Advice on scanning photographs

[dinger]

Any help would be greatly appreciated with this question. When scanning photographs what are the best settings to use (resolution, dpi etc) in order to get the best out of the scanner. I appreciate that there will be some loss in image quality, however, I can make small adjustments in Photo Shop once the image has been scanned.

MTIA.

Dinger.

[ramjet]

Hi Dinger, it depends on where the images are to be used.
If they are to go on the web then 72 DPI is fine, if you want to print them out then 300-600 DPI minimum is recommended.
You should be able to adjust the settings using the software that comes with your scanner. Some scanners won't work with the latest versions of windows ie. XP, Vista etc, so you might have to search for updated scanner software on the Internet.

Cheers, I hope this helps, Roger

[dinger]

Many thanks for the reply and advice. I will give it a go shortly.

Dinger.

[Michael Leek]

Dinger

It's always best to scan at the highest resolution possible. I use a Canon A4 scanner that also allows me to scan negatives. I set the resolution and quality settings to the best/highest possible, thereby maximising image quality. Obviously you can still make adjustments in Photoshop or similar, but you will have, as a master, a high resolution filed copy. When adjusting resolution (dpi) for the web it is best to allow a photo hosting site to do this automatically - via Photobucket or Flckr, etc - or do it yourself when you've finished editing but making sure you save this web image under a different file name so as not to lose the original high res master.

Hope this helps.