Scanning Photos... What resolution?

**roosta21** · February 10th, 2006, 04:38 PM

I am scanning some old photos. What resolution should I use? Is 600 dpi sufficent? I am primarly scanning old baby pics and family pics to back up in case of a disaster.

**Imperion1** · February 11th, 2006, 12:34 PM

300 dpi works great for photos. 200 dpi is sufficient enough though. Remember, the higher the dpi, the larger the file size will be.

**Martoch** · February 11th, 2006, 12:44 PM

Are you planning on printing them or not? 600 dpi will leave you with some big photos...but that's what you want if you're planning on printing them out again if you lose the hard copies.

**roosta21** · February 11th, 2006, 06:41 PM

I may print a couple in the future. I know that 600 takes up more space but i think its less than a meg.

**Imperion1** · February 11th, 2006, 10:00 PM

An 8x10 @ 300dpi saved as a .jpg file is a little over 6.5mb. A 4x6 @ 300dpi saved as a .jpg file is under 1mb. Weird about the file size.
And if you're gonna print photos @ 8x10 or larger, then 600dpi would be little better.

**buckaro** · February 12th, 2006, 08:44 AM

The higher the res the better, you get better detail, you want it as high as posible so you can print it larger if you want with just as much detail etc.

**osprey4** · February 12th, 2006, 09:05 AM

My personal preference for old photos is to use a high resolution to capture as much of the original detail as you can, 1200-2400 dpi. You can always save them to a CD-R. But no printer can improve a poor or low quality scan.