Updated 6-30-19. Helping people with their memoirs or personal histories and organizations with their histories, I am often asked at what resolution to scan photographs to get digital files good enough to print in a book. The photos on Facebook are not high enough in resolution for a quality print or for a book. Photo archivist Brina Bolanz (Restored Stories) ("Preserving family photos one memory at a time") offered a concise answer and gave me permission to share it, below. Read More
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Scanning photos: what resolution is best?
October 20, 2010
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Jun 30, 2019 4:02 PM EDT
Someone asked: If I print a photo that Photoshop tells me is 72 dpi, it looks fine on my home printer (black and white laser), and also on an ink-jet printer. But will it look okay if I scan it for a book?
Marion Johnson, who designs books under the firm name Memory Works), writes: "A photo that is 72 dpi can be successfully converted to 300 dpi (the required resolution for printing books) only if it has an adequate pixel resolution to begin with. For instance, when a photo that has pixel dimensions of 3136 x 2352 and is 72 dpi is converted to 300 dpi in Photoshop, it ends up being 10.5” wide x 7.5” tall. You just need to make sure you uncheck the “Resample Image” box in the Image Size box of Photoshop. However, if the original pixel size of the photo is much smaller, at 300 dpi you’ll end up with an image that’s much too small to use. (You can check out the photo by pulling it into Photoshop and clicking on the Image Size box.)
- PM