Scanning DPI

[paulwd]

As title suggests I'm doing a lot of scanning of Old family photos my scanner DPI range is 50 to 6400 The higher end is unusable because of the size of the files that it creates, does anybody have opinions on the least or most I should be using. Thanks for your input.

[McMacro]

I would scan between 300 and 600dpi. As these are old photos, I see no value in scanning at the maximum as it will make very little difference when it comes to re-printing.

Edited to add: try and avoid scanning as jpg, change to tiff if possible.

Edited by McMacro on Thursday 16th February 16:30

[K12beano]

McMacro said:

I would scan between 300 and 600dpi. As these are old photos, I see no value in scanning at the maximum as it will make very little difference when it comes to re-printing.

Edited to add: try and avoid scanning as jpg, change to tiff if possible.

Good call. Especially if only viewing on screen or reprinting.


It depends also on whether you're intending to ar$e around with them much. Alternative is scan high ==> twiddle around ==> compress or reduce when you finally save.

[paulwd]

McMacro said:

I would scan between 300 and 600dpi. As these are old photos, I see no value in scanning at the maximum as it will make very little difference when it comes to re-printing.

Edited to add: try and avoid scanning as jpg, change to tiff if possible.

Edited by McMacro on Thursday 16th February 16:30

You will have to excuse my ignorance but what is the advantage of scanning in TIFF rather than JPEG

[Simpo Two]

It's what you save the result as. JPG is compressed (though in reality if you save at top quality the difference in real life is negligble). Depends whether you want to do further work on the file.

[paulwd]

Thanks for all the advice I'll try JPEG and TIFF and see the difference and whether the larger file size is worth it