Hello

I am scanning some very very old black and white photos some only 2x2 inches. I am using a 1200 DPI setting on my Epson 3170 scanner. I am really confused about a few things and hopefully you can help me. I want to be able to get them all printed 4x6 by a place like shutterfly. The files are really large, around 80 mg. and when I resize them using the Resize Wizard it asks "which halftone screen LPI will be used to print your image" and I am choosing 200. Is that correct? I end up with about a 7 mg .tif file. I know that is way too large to send as an upload and also these online services want .jpg files also. So my questions are:

1. Am I scanning too large?
2. What resizing tool should I be using in Photoshop 7?
3. Should I be saving them as a .jpg?

3. Yes

1, 2: I'll ask Swampy to reply... bet she will know.

First let me say, I don't work much with slides, but I would probably approach it this way.

You are going from a 2x2 slide to a 4x6 print and there is no proportional sizing or aspect ratio that will work easily. So I would first try to set the scanner and let it produce a 4x4 scan at 600 DPI (or bump that up to 1200 DPI if the initial results are not good). The idea is to get something closer to the needed 4 x 6 size. Then I would use the CROP TOOL in Photoshop to the 4x6 or 6x4 size and crop at 300 DPI.

Do any cleanup, touchup or corrections and save your work at this point as either TIFF or PSD. Archive to CD or backup server/hard drive.

Now you can save a copy of your work as high resolution JPEG for sending out to print at Shutterfly. Or, put them on a thumb drive and take them to CVS or local film processing outlet.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for your respose to my post. Swampy, the photo's are not slides. They are actual B&W photos I am scanning. Some are 2x2 some 3x5 etc, but I want them all to be an eventual 4x6. I guess the problem is wondering if I will get a good print from using the Resize Wizard using the 200 selection? I am really not sure how that translates to printing. Is that for actual photo's. In the listing it says "annual reports, art books". I'm getting photo's done. I will rescan them but this time save them as jpg. for print and tiff for posterity but I still don't know how to get them to a size that Shutterfly or CVS will be able to print. The 8 mg is too large and they won't accept them. Any suggestions?

I'm not familiar with "Resize Wizard". Are you using something other than Photoshop?

200 DPI is probably sufficent for prints. In Photoshop, you would set your crop tool to 4x6 or 6x4 for size and 200 DPI, then save as high res JPEG. This results in a file size of about 2.75mb.

Hi Swampy

Yes, I am using Photoshop 7.0 The resize wizard is under the help menu on the top. It asks you a series of questions of how you are going to print and then resizes the document. I am wondering if I should even be using it at all?

Thanks
Marnell

I wouldn't, because I'd want more control over what's happening rather than let Photoshop handle it. Ya learn something new every day. Never knew there was a Resize Image Wizard, so you can tell I never use it. LOL

Once you get your scans close to your print size by letting the scanner do the enlarging while scanning, do your touch ups and clean ups, then use the Crop Tool to further refine the print size. You're gonna need different crop sizes for horizontal and vertical, but you can set these as Crop Tool presets, if they are not already present. Set the size and set the 200 DPI, draw out your best crop for the image at hand and let Photoshop figure the rest out. Save as TIFF then save (perhaps to a different folder) as high res JPEG.