A distant relative of mine contacted me last week about a family album that she had just inherited. In it are 20 some-odd tintype images in various stages of preservation.

She has scanned many of the images and emailed them to me. Together we've successfully identified many of them including my gggrandfather and his wife. Now I'd like to know what is the best dpi to scan these tintypes so that I can download them, access them in Photoshop, retouch them and then print them with modern archival paper and inks. If someone could outline in some detail just what needs to be done, I'd really appreciate it. Once I can access the images in Photoshop, I've got it made. The images of our gggrandparents are particularly in need of retouching. It's just that beyond using my scanner as a copy machine, I'm in deep you-know-what. lol.

Any help is much appreciated. I'd like to do a "before and after" with some of the images here.

Thanks,

Cliff.

Aside from scanning at about 600ppi (RGB, 8 or 16bit depth per channel) and more than the usual curves adjustment, they're pretty much like any other restoration. Do a search for "tintype" here and you'll find a lot of discussion and examples.

I only have one tintype to play with but I am attaching examples. I scanned at 300 ppi in RGB then did a little level adjustment and desaturating in Photoshop Elements 2.

I will go a lot further with cleaning it up but I am also of the opinion that it is okay for old pictures to show their age somewhat. I haven't been able to positively identify this little boy but his clothes and hairstyle place him around 1860.