I recently acquired a scanner and along with it a slew of family photos to scan and preserve. Although I am only scanning them right now I do plan on digitally restoring many of them. Physical sizes of images range from 8x10 to less than 1" square.

I've noticed that a lot of members scan at 300-600 dpi. Is there an optimal scanning resolution I should use to start? Is it related to the physical size of the image? Quality of the image?

I'm not concerned with the size of the resulting file. And I don't care if scanning takes a little more time at a higher resolution. But I do want to have as much detail as possible so I can work with the images in Photoshop.

I have a Microtek ScanMaker i900 with Silverfast software. I'm using Photoshop CS2 on an iMac. Not throwing around brand names but I don't know if the tools make a difference in what I'm trying to learn.

All comments welcome!

Jon

do a search on this topic...there was a lot of discussion and website sources recently posted regarding scanning...here is one
http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/photo-restoration/21216-scanning.html

Scan resolution depends a lot on what you want to do with the image. If you ever think that you may want to print an image at 5x7 or 8x10 you need to scan them image at that size (output size) at a minimum of 300 DPI. Slides need more DPI if you are going to print them.

This is a general "rule of thumb", but it's served me well over the years.

The following site is great for tips on scanning. http://www.scantips.com/

I used to scan at the highest resolution I could but all it did was add file size. Now I rarely scan above 600 DPI for photos, slides higher ofcourse.

My own scanning is dependent on the grain for film or the texture of paper. For maximum resolution, one rule of thumb I use is that if I can see the grain (or texture) of my original at the highest resolution, any further increase in resolution is just going to allow me to see grain or texture detail better, but probably won't help the image.

Gary Silverstein

Thanks everybody! I really appreciate all the responses. And the www.scantips.com site is a treasure trove of information. Maybe armed with all this new information I will do some of those old photos some justice.