Why are photos going to 72?

[LookingUp]

I scanned my photos as 1600 dpi to restore them. I brought them down to 300. For some reason I open them and they re 72 dpi. I can't figure that out. I must be doing something wrong. I am bringing them back up to 300 dpi to print. Is going that wrong?

[Wolfman]

When you change them to 300dpi, what are you using to change this?.... maybe you need to change your parameters in what ever program you are using for output.... check to see that output isn't set to 72.

[andrewrodney]

And it doesn’t really matter anyway. That is just a tag so you can calculate how ‘large’ the output might be if you divide up those 1600ppi over whatever lenght of the original.

IOW, if you have 3000 pixels along one axis, that could be a 10 inch print at 300ppi OR 41.6 inches at 72ppi. But the document has 3000 pixels in either case.