family album, loads of questions from a photo novice

[AngeTaylor]

My parent died a while ago and on clearing out the house I came accross hundreds of photos from 1930- to about 10 years ago.

I have decided to scan all of them to create a fabulous photo album for my brother as a wedding present later this year.

I have already scanned most of them at 600 DPI (suggested by my partner who knows more about photos than me)

I plan to order 3 copies of the book which at about £300 before any discounts so wont be cheap and for this reason I dont want to make any obvious novice mistakes.

Most of the photos I have scanned date from the 1960s and are only about 2 1/2" x 2 1/2" and most of them look ok on my PC screen.

I have seen lots of people mention that if its over 300 it gets pixelated but can I change it now without rescanning everything. And if I can change them what do I need to use? I have no photo editing software at the moment

Also if I want to add 12 of these small photos per page (I think thats the only way I would get all the photos on a 70 page book) can I order a single test page to check the way they would come out before ordering the whole book.

Any help and or suggestions would be really appreciated as I feel like I am in over my head here.

Angexx

[sehkmet22]

If your pictures are 600 ppi at 2.5 x 2.5 inches, if you want them to be 300 ppi, just print them at 5 x 5. Of course, you won't be able to fit 12 of them per page at that size.

With no photo editing software, I don't think you can change the resolution of the photos withot rescanning them.

There is no way to order a single test page, but you could make the smallest book possible to see if the images print ok at the resolution and desired final print size that you have.

-a.

[Cruiser]

Put them into the book and see how they look. The Bookmaker software resizes the pictures to fit the molds. Many times I use large pictures in small molds and they print just fine. If you get the blue line around your picture, you should be ok.

I'm currently scanning my small pictures 2" x 3" at 1200 dpi and then resizing them in Photoshop. Since you can't resize because you have no software to do so, try putting them into the molds. If they look clear and crisp, they should print just fine.

[Cruiser]

As a test, I just scanned a 2.6" x 2" photo from the 1940's using 600 dpi. The final file size was 1 mb and resolution was 1580 x 1215. I tried the picture in all the molds from 2 to a page to 12 to a page and I got a blue line on each page. The picture looked fine in preview on all pages. I even put it in a full bleed page and still got the blue line but my old picture is scratched and torn so won't make a good full page layout.

My opinion is unless you are making a Deluxe album, the 12 per page makes the pictures too small. I wouldn't go more than 9 per page based on books I have ordered in the past. MyPublisher allows you to make up to 100 pages (50 physical pages with printing on both sides). I find that the 100 page Deluxe book is awesome. If you decide to go with the Classic, your pictures will be very small.

You cannot order a single test page but you could order a 20 page test book to see if you are on the right track. That way you are not spending a lot of money to see how your project is going to look.

I hope this helps. I'm working on old photos too and it is quite the challenge.