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This has probably been asked a thousand times before but I am sure it will bear repeating. I have recently inherited my father's collection of 6x6 and 35mm b+w negatives and some of my grandfather's 9x12cm glass negatives. I have an Epson Perfection 1200 Photo scanner which does quite a good job of scanning them. I have a HP Photosmart 7960 printer which prints them rather well too.

My question: is there a formula for working out the ideal scan resolution of different size originals for different size final prints? If I underscan them they come out pixellated when over-enlarged, but if I use a high resolution, straight lines become "jagged" if I print at smaller print sizes. Or maybe there is another trick to resizing high resolution scanned images?

Hi Ian,

I found this on the internet that will help in answering your questions.

http://www.scantips.com/basics13.html

If I'm going to print 8x10 from 35mm negatives I scan them at 3200 dpi. I have the Epson Perfection 3200.

John

Pick out those images which you really want to have prints of, and take them to someone who will print them for you in the wet darkroom. Digitizing medium and large format negs and printing them on an inkjet must be like getting a pair of horses to pull your Ferrari.

You gonna find there answers to your questions; they have also other interesting subjects....

http://photography.about.com/cs/digital/ht/Process_Scans.htm

Ian, I struggled with this for quite sometime. However I am only scanning 35mm and I use a film scanner. I asume you have to choose an input and an output resolution. I set my input resolution to as high as the scanner will allow. This is most important. Output resolution should be set to the size you wish to print. Also, It is best to save your file as .tiff if you plan on printing them. They result in a larger file but will print faster and with better quality. This is a pretty simple answer to a question that can get pretty complex. The thing I had to get over is that there really is not much of a relationship between printer resolution and scan resolution. If you size your photos in photo shop or another program try to avoid "re sampling" My scans turm out to be 4400 pixcels by 2600 this is a result of a 35mm neg scanned at 3200 DPI input res. When I Print I open the image in PS and size to what I want to print without re sampling it. I like to print at 6 X 9 but with 4400 X 2600 I could print much larger If I had a printer that could handel it. My scan resolution may be over kill for 6 X 9 prints but that is fine with me. Hard drive space just keeps getting cheaper and cheaper. The biggest thing you have to look at is the input res of your scanner. You may want to invest in a higher res scanner. Scanning these larger format negs could result in large files.

I hope this helps. If you want further explanation feel free to ask.

Jan S.	Jan S.	Aparajito S.	Jill B.	David L.	Greg S.	Randal M.	goran k.

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