scanning photos

I'm designing a website for a friend he is a tattoo artist he took the majority of his photos using film what is the best way to scan the photos ?

thanks

Negatives? Slides? 4x5s?

Best way is to get the best scanner for the job. If you have negatives or slides a film scanner works best. If they are prints, a good quality drum scanner is the best way, but those beasts are expensive.

For one more budget minded, a good flatbed scanner with film capability is the way to go. Check out the Canoscan 8800 or 9000 works well as does the Epson V500.

A drum scanner for a web site image is a bit over the top IMO

For prints a typical flatbed will do the job, for transparencies or negatives a slightly more expensive model will also do 35mm film.

morpheus6d9 wrote in post #10707997
...what is the best way to scan the photos ?

I use an old and inexpensive Epson Perfection 2480 Photo. It has an adapter for scanning 35mm slides and negatives. I get very good results.

I always scan in 48-bit color at 600dpi. With a slide or film, 600dpi is good enough for web images or small prints. I turn all adjusts, auto or manual, off in the scanner software, preferring to do all adjustments in Photoshop. In Photoshop, I save as a 16bit TIFF in Adobe RGB and edit. (But if the source of the scan is a very good photo or slide, 8 bit is perfectly fine.) The final image output will be converted for size, bit depth, color space, as needed.

Chas, When scanning at 600 dpi, how large a print can you make with good results?

The output of the scan will depend on the quality of the original print and of the scanner itself. If you can take the file and enlarge it to, say, 100% and it looks decent (after maybe applying some sharpening) then it should give a "good" print at 300 ppi (double the length and width of the original print) and you can try a lower resolution such as 200 ppi.

I've found, though, that printing scans of prints does tend to break down when printing, say, an 8x10 but that was in the "old days" of scanners -- the early '90s when scanners didn't have as high resolutions as they have achieved over the years and when inkjet printers were in their infancy and also didn't have the resolution they now have.

Do your scanning and print some tests and judge for yourself! I would think it would be great to have say a good quality 11x14 or 11x17 print from a 35mm shot whether scanned or directly printed.

dreamcatcher1450 wrote in post #10727070
Chas, When scanning at 600 dpi, how large a print can you make with good results?

When scanning a 35mm slide, you can easily print an 8x12 or larger at 300ppi. If scanning a print, YMMV depending on the size of the print.

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