photo scan archive

[mrelmo]

i'm sure there is more involved than what i am looking for, but i would like to know what the dpi settings should be on a 4x6 and 5x7 color photo when scanned to save for future printing, i know the higher the better but do i need to go to 1200 i am using a canon n670u scanner with a ip4200 printer

 

[pharmacist]

mrelmo,

scanning with 300 dpi is more than enough, anything larger will be overkill.

 

[mrelmo]

thank you

 

[qwertydude]

If it's film then I'd say go a little higher. 300 dpi on a 4x6 equates to only 2.16 mega pixels. Film to print loses some equivalent megapixels but experts say that a film print 4x6 is anywhere from 8 to 15 equivalent megapixels or so. I'd go with 600 dpi since that equates to about a 10 megapixel print which will help preserve data in case you decide to blow it up to a larger size later on.

 

[Grandad35]

I have scanned in all of our family photos (somewhere around 3000 of them), and used these general guidelines:
1. "Heirloom" photos (like large format 4"x5" B&W negatives) were scanned at 1200 dpi and reduced in size in post processing to about 4000 pixels on the long side.
2. "Soft" snapshots (from P&S cameras) rarely warrant any more than 200 dpi.
3. "Sharp" photos can benefit from 300 dpi. If you want to print them at a larger size in the future, experiment with 600 ppi to see if the image supplies any additional data from 4x the number of pixels. Unless it was shot on a good camera and processsed by a quality print shop, don't expect any real improvement from 600 dpi.
4. On "Textured" photos, you will have to play to see what works in post processing to remove the artifacts from the texture, and this may dictate a higher scan resolution and a blurring post processing operation, followed by a size reduction.

You also have to decide how important file size is to you. If you have tons of disk and backup space and won't be sharing the images, go for larger files (more dpi). If you have lots of photos or want to e-mail the scans, it is important to watch the file size by keeping the dpi down. After processing, my 800x1200 ppi files average about 150K and my 1800x1200 ppi files average about 250K.

Your scanner's "Optical scanning resolution" is "600x1200 dpi", so anything above 600 ppi will be interpolated (estimated) in at least one direction.