[RESOLVED] Best resolution and format for photographs and negatives.

[GlyndwrBartlett]

I have not done much scanning before and now I have a project to scan a large number of mainly old black and white photographs. There are also some newer colour ones and colour negatives. What are the best resolutions to use for B&W photos, colour photos and colour 35mm negatives? Also, is there a prefered format to save them in.

Regards,

Glyn

[matofthemint]

When I scan fotos I scan at 300 or 400 dpi; for negatives use the highest resolution your scanner has for scanning. Save as .tif (TIFF) so there will be no loss of quality, espically when you re-save.
If you want to make big prints, 8x10 or larger, or do some cropping, scan at a larger dpi. Generally I find 400 will handle an 8x10 just fine if there is not too much cropping, 600 if quite a bit.
If prints are to be 5x7 or smaller, 300 or 400 dpi is fine and the files aren't too large.

[Train]

Do expect your files to be huge. 12 to 25 MB are a standard when I scan using .tif
Archive type scans, I leave them large and burn them to cd/dvd as soon as I can .

Remember you can always make them smaller and they will look good, but you can try to make them larger, but I guarantee they will look absolutely horrible.

[GlyndwrBartlett]

Thanks Matofthemint and Train.