What is the best resolution to scan old family photos? At what dpi do i no longer get more detail out of the photos? (Kodak, 35mm)
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I am in the process of scanning my family photos to save long term and wanted to know how high DPI do i need to scan the photos to get all of the detail?
I sent out several thousand old photos to be scanned, and the service I used scanned at 300 dpi. (They also offered a 600 dpi service.) I'm very happy with the results I got at that resolution. I've also scanned several photos on my home scanner at 200 dpi and found the results to be perfectly acceptable.
scanning negatives will lead to better results, but sometimes that's just not possible. My mom's got some family photos from the 40s and 50s - those negatives are lost to time.
Each film and each paper and each lens has a maximum resolution. The best films can get up to 160 lines per mm of resolution. Great lenses can resolve ~50 lpmm. The best paper will resolve 100 lpmm.
Each scanner has optical limitations too. Not so much like one will do 1200 dpi and one will do 2000 dpi. But, for example my Epson V500 will do 6400 x 9600 dpi optically. However, nothing actually changes over ~2400 dpi - in practice the optics on the scanner can't actually resolve greater than ~2400 dpi.
Long story short: scanning prints for web, I scan @ 300 dpi. Scanning negatives for archive, I scan @ 2400 dpi
The small number of the scanners resolution is all you will really get from what I've read by testers online. For actually scanning old family photos I don't use over 300 dpi. For negatives if you ever have them above 4000 dpi is mostly grain and not image. I normally scan negatives at 3200 and slide film at 4000.
I'm glad you asked this question because I was trying to scan some old family photos today and I scanned them at 300 dpi. They came out okay but I wish I still had Photoshop to fix them up as they are faded and some areas are damaged and could be filled in. I first used black and white but grayscale worked better.
I've been scanning in a lot of 35mm prints lately, mostly taken with a cheap Kodak Cameo 35mm camera, and my scanner does a maximum of 600 dpi. I find that 300-400 dpi resolves the most detail, and beyond that there is little additional gain.
Why would you solicit technical mumbo-jumbo about scanning,
when the discernining eye will tell you whether or not your conversion is successful?
What happened to the proposition that, `beauty is in the eye of the beholder? If it looks good,
it is good. Most scanner software will permit the user to preview the result before the scan, and
looking at one of today's big-screen monitors, you have an opportunity to see the picture enlarged,
well beyond the size that you might be printing it at. Beyond the scanner, there are great photo editing
and retouching programs likr Photoshop, Corel and even basic Windows photo editor, and these tools
can help you bring your scanned pictures to a state of digital perfection, taking those old photos and
turning them into eye candy...
.....looking at one of today's big-screen monitors, you have an opportunity to see the picture enlarged,
well beyond the size that you might be printing it at.
The average monitor comes no where near duplicating the fine detail that is available on a print, slide or negative. I don;t know what the exact numbers are but it might be double what the average monitor can display.
The human eye can see about 250 dpi at an average viewing distance. Average viewing distance would be the distance you might hold an image at in your hands or if you're sitting at desk in front of your monitor.
If you have a widescreen monitor with a resolution of 1920*1080 that has physical dimensions of 16in.*9in. the image is being displayed at 120DPI or about half the detail the human eye can see. As the physical size of the monitor increases the DPI decreases.
Displays that have higher resolutions are available but are very expensive and not all that common yet. To take advantage of this higher detail in the future when these monitors are common you're going to want to scan at whatever is the maximum detail possible within reason.
Just to elaborate a little more on the original question. When you look a 4*6 print at viewing distance assuming it's from a decent camera, decent print etc. you can't see the fine detail in that image. As you bring the image closer those details will emerge.
If you were to scan that image at 300DPI and print it at 4*6 generally speaking the viewer is going to see as much detail as the image can provide. The problem though is if you want to enlarge that image to say an 8*10, the detail that would emerge had you scanned at a larger DPI is not available.
Husband has been working on a project for a friend, scanning old family photos and restoring them. The pics are about 3x5-4x6, and he's been scanning them at the max resolution of 12,000dpi.
Fair warning, the files are HUGE. So big, even on his tricked out video editing machine, he's got to make sure nothing else is running because it eats up the RAM.
If we weren't scanning them with the intent to restore and crop, would probably go back down to 600.
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