Scanning photos

[Obi Wan Kenobi]

I have a load of older photographs from before my Digital SLR, some on APS prints, sme on 35 mm film and slides

I want to make digital copies of them to store on hard drives.
What is the recommendation about scanning these?
What is the optimum DPI I should use?
I am using photoshop CS4, what format should i save them in?

Many thanks in advance

 

[boBQuincy]

Powerful Jedi are you, know this you should.

Prints are best scanned on a flatbed scanner, 300 ppi is all that is necessary to get all the information on them.

Slides and negatives are best done on a dedicated film scanner like a Nikon Coolscan V ED. Epson's V750 is also highly rated but usually not quite as good as the Nikon. A much easier option is to send them to a scanning house such as Pixmonix (this is not an endorsement but their website has a lot of good information on the topic).

For web or monitor display 1200 ppi is enough, for prints try for enough to give 300 dpi at whatever enlargement size you are interested in. I like to save scans in a lossless format such as PSD or TIF.

 

[seashoreCM]

Use 2400 DPI or perhaps a little more for slides and negatives taken with a typical point and shoot camera.

Use 3600 DPI or perhaps a little more for slides and negatives taken with a good DSLR or professional camera.

But don't go above the optical resolution of the scanner. All that does is make the picture files bigger while not providing any more picture detail. If the final digital print, say enlarged but maintaining at least 300 dpi, represents more than the total number of pixels you got when scanning, wait until printing time to expand the picture as needed. A scanner that doesn't have the optical resolution for the above suggested DPI's is not suitable for the job.

One thing that is time consuming and pretty much unavoidable is checking each scan for blown highlights or buried shadows and adjusting the brightness and contrast and rescanning if needed. But you might become good at eyeballing the slide or negative first and adjusting the scanner and getting it right with the first scan.

Digital camera hints: http://www.cockam.com/digicam.htm