Low Cost Photo Scanning Tips

Dont be fooled into paying a photo scanner extra money to scan your typical photographs at higher than 300 dpi. Just because a scanning services offers photo scanning at 600 and 1200 dpi doesn’t mean that you are actually getting a higher quality scan. What it means is that you are paying extra money for something you are not really getting.

A photo prints surface is not designed to hold the type of resolution that a photo negative is. If you plan on enlarging scanned images you are far better off scanning the negative if possible.

Photo scanning typical photographs at higher than 300 dpi has a downside beyond the extra cost. Higher resolutions create bigger files and that means slower loading and bigger file storage requirements. Most of the uses that people scan their ordinary photos for require smaller files and that means resizing your 600 and 1200 dpi files smaller. Thats time consuming and wasteful.

Photography experts and professionals already understand their own needs and have formed opinions about photo scanning methods and practices. If you are someone trying to sort out information with the intention of scanning your own photos or purchasing scanning services then I highly recommend a very comprehensive article on the subject by Wayne Fulton 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.

Whether you rotate your own photos after scanning or the scanning service does it make sure that you dont rotate the original scans. Most photo scanners require that your photos be in a stack when you send them in without regard to their orientation. Because your photos are recompressed during the rotation process you may loose bits of information and that can reduce your image quality. So keep your master scans untouched and use a copy to rotate or manipulate.

Create copies of your master scans to use in any digital manipulation. If your photo scanning service offers manual or automatic photo enhancement make sure that they only manipulate copies of the master scans. Automatic enhancement programs can make your photos look better. But they dont make all of your photos look their best.

There are all kinds of software both manual and automatic available to edit your photo scans. The manual editing software offers you complete control and unlimited do-overs. The automatic versions do a lot of good to most of your images and some good to the rest. Manual enhancement should probably only be used for those very special photographs otherwise you will be bored silly. Trying to choose an automatic enhancement software can be tricky because it takes some experimentation to discover which ones actually work. If your photo scanning service provides economical automatic enhancement that may be your best bet.