Advice from all you photography experts!

[grantasmic]

Hope someone out there in Dibb-land can point me in the right direction! DH has a 'milestone' birthday in the next couple of weeks and being at my wit's end knowing what to get for him ... well, what do you get a chap who's got everything - even a brand new, shiny, DVC?! , my clever DD (Brer_Claire) suggested a memory book. Anyway, to get to the point: I spent a whole evening searching through the family photos (and all the ancient b & w ones from way back when before Adam was a lad!), scanned them, tweaked them and uploaded them. Once I had each of them in the proper place, every blasted one came up with this message: low resolution photo, not recommended for printing.

So, my question to you is: What can I do? I've used the highest setting on the scanner (300 dpi) and they're saved as jpegs.

Help! and thanks in advance ...

[Guest]

300dpi is the highest scanner setting? Mine does 1600 x 3200 dpi and it is now discontinued. AFAIR the one before that did 1200 dpi and that was old.

[Guest]

You need a new scanner if the max res is 300dpi. Have you thought about taking the pictures to Boots etc and get them to do it. Might work out the same as a new scanner (depending on the number of pics) though

[Guest]

bear in mind 300dpi is what we use for printing here, ie CDs etc so usually it should be enough, however if you have small photos you are trying to scan and make bigger then 300dpi wont be enough, have you checked on the scanner that it can do higher than 300dpi, ie if we scan something really small like a photo we scan it at 1200 and this enables us to work on it.

[grantasmic]

Thank you everyone! I'm such a klutz! Following all your advice, I've now discovered that there are higher settings - I've never tried the 'advanced scan' settings before, cos I don't fiddle with things I don't understand Thank you! thank you! thank you! There's always a Dibber who knows just what to do!

Now all I have to do is dig out all the photos and start again ...

[Andre]

Upload one for us to see first, some may be suitable anyway (especially if you want to use tham smaller than the originals were). What size are they (as in how many pixels wide and high)?

Andre

[KK_Cat]

Originally Posted by grantasmic

Thank you everyone! I'm such a klutz! Following all your advice, I've now discovered that there are higher settings - I've never tried the 'advanced scan' settings before, cos I don't fiddle with things I don't understand Thank you! thank you! thank you! There's always a Dibber who knows just what to do!

Now all I have to do is dig out all the photos and start again ...

See more...

You're not alone! Thanks for this, I didn't know (or rather never even thought of) that I could change resolution when scanning.

My Dad asked me to make bigger copies of 2 small photos of his parents a few nights ago, and I was going to do it over the weekend. Knowing this will now hopefully make the job easier. I would have just scanned them "as is" and just assumed that it was the best you could get from old photos.

I've just had a quick check of my scanner and it's set @ 200! Had a bit of a search around and in Tools found Change Resolution button (never looked in there before ) it goes up to 2400 (bit of a difference, huh ). I mean, I only have the scanner 5 years

[Guest]

FYI some scanners have selectable resolutions more than the pixels in the sensor. They interpolate to get the higher resolution. There is hardly any point in doing that. If you really want more pixels then I'd think a picture editing program would do it better.

[Andre]

Agreed, don't bother scanning beyond the OPTICAL resolution of the scanner. This should be quoted in the manual, or maybe the help files. Anything greater than that has been added by software and won't help you much.

The other thing to watch our for is printed (e.g. magazine) photos rather than true photographic prints. They are comprised of small dots which can confuse scanners, and you can end up seeing repeating patterns which weren't there before. If that happens, look for a "de-screen" option in the scanner software.

Andre

[grantasmic]

Thank you Andre and Malc_b for you advice, but have to admit most of what you've said has gone completely over my head. And thank you KK_Cat for letting me know I'm not alone! Glad this has helped you too!

Here is one pic scanned at 300dpi and this is the info from 'properties' - 870 pixels x 549 pixels, res 118 pixels/cm, size 1,399 KB. The pic is nearly 40 years old so has faded quite a bit, too!



I don't really have an 'all singing, all dancing' photo editing programme - and probably couldn't figure it out if I did! - just the prog that came with the scanner. The only changes I've made are: cropping to take off the ragged corners and an 'auto fix'. If you can recommend an 'idiot proof' piece of software that would fix some of my old photos I'd be very grateful!

Thanks for all your help and advice and, above all, your patience!