scanning high quality photos

[skr8pn]

I've got some high quality photos (wedding pics) that I need legitiment backups off. Since it took the photographer over a year to get them to me I have zero intentions of going back to him; he wouldn't release the orginal files to me anyway. So, since I've ordered about $1000 worth of pics from him I want to scan them so I'll have a backup to put them on a CD/DVD and put a copy in a safe deposit box.

OK, with all that said, logic tells me since they are excellent pics you should be able to scan them with no color correction or descreen or other various settings. Plus I was going to use 48 bit scan and save them as a tiff. These are anywhere from 3x5 to 8x10. Probably won't be able to get a scan of the 11x14 and 16x20.

Anybody have any thoughts or things that would make for better scans.

 

[manning]

What scanner will you use??

 

[skr8pn]

I've got a Canon CanoScan 8400F. It's not the top of the line but not to bad either. I've had some good luck with other stuff, but don't want to find out 10 years later I should have done "X" instead of "Y" and got better quality.

 

[Groucho]

I would tend to stick with the scanner's photo preset, you may or may not want to fiddle with color correction.

Also, skip tiff, go with png - it's lossless compression so you lose no quality and they'd compressed, unlike tiffs which are uncompressed (and hence, huge).

I'm surprised that the guy won't give you the original files especially if you paid $1k for the photos! Heck, we paid a lot less and got the original negatives just back in 2002. Of course, hopefully you won't need the services of a wedding photographer ever again.

 

[skr8pn]

I'm surprised that the guy won't give you the original files especially if you paid $1k for the photos! Heck, we paid a lot less and got the original negatives just back in 2002. Of course, hopefully you won't need the services of a wedding photographer ever again.

Fortunately/Unfortunately I grew up about 4 doors down from him. So I've known him since I was 5. No special treatment, thats for sure. Honestly, great pictures, you couldn't ask for better, just not to timely. By the time I got them the "newness" of the wedding wore off and you wonder why in the world did we order so many pictures.

OT
If I get married again, I'm hiring boB Quincy, hands down. I hear he works for beer and/or whine. But I too hope to never have to go through that again (I meant that in a good way).

 

[orchjoe]

Scan in the bigger photos in sections... when all else fails post them online somewhere that will handle the big files. I am pretty sure there are plenty of people that would be willing to photoshop the pictures together.

Myself included.

 

[seashoreCM]

I suggest scanning each photo (that fits in the scanner) all at once. If you scan in sections, you need to "stitch" together the sections which needs some skill and in some cases needs special software.

I have found that 300 DPI is adequate to scan any photographic print. Here we are talking about individual square inches as opposed to how many pixels across the picture as a whole. So if you have two photos of the same subject but of different sizes, scan the bigger one to get more picture detail. More than 300 DPI means bigger files and unnoticeable quality difference. More than 300 DPI scanning a smaller picture is usually inferior to 300 DPI scanning a larger picture. (If possible, use 3,000 dpi optical for negatives and slides unless or until you have verified with a magnifying glass and "with a fine toothed comb" that fewer DPI would suffice.)

Scanner hints: http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/scan2.htm