Scanned Photos Resolution Help

[jkarar]

Hi there,

I am new to this and I'm really excited about doing a family album for everyone in my family (same book for everyone) with photos dating back 50 years ago to the present. I am going to have to scan in all the photos (which will be a lot) and I'm not sure what resolution to use. I started scanning them at 600dpi because I want the best quality as possible. Would that slow the program down to have so many photos on there at 600dpi? I already added some of the photos in the book at 600dpi and it takes up a lot of memory on my computer so I was worried about that. If so, will the quality be as good if I save it at a lower resolution? I just want the photos to come out as nice as possible. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you so much!

[Cruiser]

I'm also scanning some very old photos. Many of mine are as small as 1" x 1". I have an Epson V700 and scan all the pictures at 1200 dpi. I scan them directly into Photoshop CS3 and do my corrections at the original 1200 dpi...remove scratches, etc. Then I resize them to a more reasonable size of 8 1/2" H and 6 1/2" W at 200 dpi. When I bring them into my book, they will fit most molds without a red line.

Your 600 dpi should be resized in PS or some other program. Your final picture should be in the neighborhood of 1 mb or slightly less for small pictures and 2 to 3 mb for full bleed pictures. I even have many that are 500 kb and they look good in the small molds. If you use PS, be sure and use the blocks at the bottom of the page where you can choose the quality size and click on the drop down option to reduce file size. I also save at 12 quality. By scanning at 1200 and then reducing the picture, I can get a better quality scan.

I am using the Vintage book and am putting at least 5 pictures per page or making a page in PS with more pictures (sometimes as many as 10 small ones per page) since most of my pictures from long ago were very small. The only pictures that look good large are the ones that start at 8" x 10" and I also reduce the size from 1200 dpi to 200 for MyPublisher. MyPublisher's software prints at 180 dpi so 600 up is an overkill and will cause a lot of upload problems and cause your computer to get very sluggish.

I have an extra drive that I store all of my pictures on so I am not worried about disk space but my book is stored on my C drive and I have no choice to place the book on the drive with the original pictures. So, unless you have an external drive or another drive with your pictures stored on it, you will have your original pictures plus the pictures for your book. MyPublisher's software saves six copies of each picture and that takes a lot of file space.

[jkarar]

Thank you so much for your help!
So basically if I scan my photos at 600dpi and bring them into Photoshop (I have CS2) and save them at 200dpi, the quality will be just as good as if it were 600 dpi when it's printed in the book. And this way I shouldn't have any upload problems.

Would saving them at 300dpi make a difference in the quality or have upload issues? I'm a graphic designer and in my field it's always a big no-no to save images below 300dpi because the quality wouldn't be as good so I'm a little nervous about that. Would it matter as far as quality goes??

Thanks again for your help!

[Cruiser]

My first books were uploaded as 350 dpi. There was no printed difference in those books and the ones uploaded as 200 dpi. MyPublisher presses print at 175 lpi and 180 dpi. I use the 200 dpi because it makes a better size photo in resolution. If I am saving small 1" x 1" photos, I find reducing the 1200 dpi to 200 dpi preserves the quality. But, on the other hand, I am known to save the 1200 dpi one if the resolution and mb size is not too large. There is no firm fast rule for scanning. Just make sure your individual file size is not larger than 2 mb to 5 mb and you will be fine regardless of your dpi.

I'm not saying not to save as 300 dpi but your file size will be huge and the upload time will be long if you are making a 100 page book with 300 or more pictures. If you are making a 20 page book with 75 pictures, it wouldn't really make a difference because your file size will be much smaller. I understand that the software resizes the pictures to 180 dpi for printing. MyPublisher presses are close to 1988 Adobe RGB but I find the color output if I upload as sRGB to be much brighter and look better in my books.

Most of my vintage pictures are black and white anyway so I'm not worried about the color profile but I do have a few that I'm trying to restore the color on and they are a real challenge.

I guess what I am trying to say is do what you feel comfortable with but just remember the larger your file is, the longer it takes to upload and if it is over 2 gig, you cannot import it back into the software later if you want to revise it. My book I did at 350 dpi was 3.5 gig and printed beautifully but I could not import it back into the software to correct a huge mistake I made.

Let us see your book when you are finished.