old family photos

[krex]

I am planning on making my first album as a christmas gift for my mother and her siblings. I want to use photos of her family beginning when her parents were married until the present. A majority of the photos are low-quality from 1920 -1960. As a print advertising major i am aware of the dpi that it needs to be scanned at, but was wondering how well these photos will print in the book. also, any suggestions as to how to maximize the quality of the photos will be greatly appreciated. thanks!!

[derelic54]

I am doing the same thing. What dpi should the photos be scanned at?

[irusan]

It really is a trade-off. What size do you want to print these at?

[Jim Hess]

I'm doing a similar project for my family for Christmas. In the help section of the mypublisher website it is indicated that the DPI setting should be somewhere between 180-200 dpi. For my project I have scanned everything at 300 dpi or PPI and then used Photoshop to change that to 180 ppi, and that is what I'm going to use for my book.

180 seems to work quite well. I have one album that I have had printed at least 130 times by mypublisher, and that was the setting that were used on it. The album has been well received.

I'm sure that the "professionals" will tell me how misinformed I am. But that's worked for me in the past. My scanner has been producing good results of my slides at 300 ppi with an enlargement setting of 400%. The images really look good.

[alwaysbehind]

Can you please tell me the difference between dpi and pixels/inch?

I have always scanned and saved my pictures at 300 pixels/inch; what is the difference from 180-200 dpi?

[wollerd]

I thought dpi stands for dots per inch and a pixel was a dot. Are they the same thing? Are 300 dpi the same as 300 pixels/inch?

Message was edited by: wollerd

[renrah]

I just got my first book back, and I scanned a ton of old family pictures at 600dpi. I then used photo shop to fix them & saved them all as jpg's. (I'm sorry, I couldn't tell you what dpi/pixels I saved it to in Photo Shop but can look on my other computer, later.)
My book came back BEAUTIFUL!!!
One note, is that I used the same pictures for use as a collage through Costco's prints, and their site said that my pictures were too low-res to work. We went forward with it, anyway, and they turned out just fine. They were considered low-res, I found out later, because the pics were so old.
This is a wonderful keepsake that my family will enjoy for years to come!!

Message was edited by: renrah