Photo Scanning Do’s and Don’ts
If you’re not going to enlarge your digital scans then don’t pay to have them scanned at a higher resolution than 300 dpi. Even if you will be enlarging them you are probably wasting your money. 600 and 1200 dpi scanning services do not mean better scans, but they do mean higher prices. For your typical photographs 300 dpi is the wisest choice.
Most people have not thought about the fact that a photograph’s surface was not designed to reproduce an image like a negative is. So scanning a negative to enlarge a photograph makes sense, but a photo’s surface does not have enough resolution.
Wasting money is not the only reason to scan at 300 dpi. Photo scanning beyond 300 dpi produces huge files that slow down just about any use of your scans. Editing, viewing, and working with your files will be slower, and possibly much slower. And you will probably have to change the size of your scan smaller to use it for just about anything.
If you are a professional photographer or someone with a great deal of expertise in photography and photo scanning then you have already developed an understanding of what your particular needs are. If you are not well versed in photo scanning and are just looking to scan your typical photographs then you need to check out Wayne Fultons excellent article on this and other scanning topics at www.scantips.com.
Make sure that your scanned photos are saved as a high quality jpeg. Photos saved in a jpeg format are compressed to lower the file size. High compression causes the jpeg to loose bits of information that are gone forever. High quality jpegs have very low compression and lose very little.
Scanning services usually require that your photos arrive in stacks without regard to their orientation. After scanning, when your portrait photos need to be turned upright, make sure you dont rotate your master scans. Always leave your master scans intact and use copies of them to rotate. Any kind of manipulation recompresses your files and can cause quality loss.
Some photo scanning services offer automatic photo enhancement. What you need to know is enhancement, or any manipulation, can cause jpeg files to be re-compressed and cause some quality loss. Make sure your scanning service provides you with a complete set of master scans and then a copy of them for the enhancements. Don’t ever use the originals to make changes. Always use a copy. You may find that you want to work on special photos yourself. When you do, always start with a fresh copy of the master scan.
If your photo scanning service offers inexpensive automatic photo enhancement it might be wise to take advantage of it. Even though there are lots of good free photo editing software out there it can be extremely time consuming and boring. So let the photo scanner run your photos through the automatic enhancement program especially if this is a low cost service, and save the manual improvement for a few really special photographs. You can also purchase automatic enhancement software, but trying to figure which ones actually work can be a daunting task.