So Confused - Only Scan up to 300 DPI?!?

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by turingvdo

I'm not criticizing, just trying to point out that we are taking so much time to preserve these photos that shouldn't we be scanning the best that we can so that in years to come we don't go back to the link above and wish it had been scanned better?

There's no more visual information to obtain; when the photo was reduced to a halftone, the actual visual information was mostly destroyed, doesn't matter what resolution you scan it at-- the information isn't there.

If you can obtain an original negative or slide from the photographer -- that can be scanned at much higher resolution. There are some medium formats negatives from Nancy Suiter photo sessions that are sold on EBay, for example . . . this _is_ worth a big scan (I bought two and am working on scans)

But a poorly printed old magazine shot really is fully represented in a 250 kb jpeg; 1 meg is overkill for anything but very high quality printing (say a Playboy centerfold).

Its like you'll see some VHS tapes that have been ripped and produce giant files -- they can be greatly compressed with no loss, because there just isn't that much visual information there.