Linda Scheimann <linda514@ivillage.com> wrote: >She was advised to make a 2400 dpi scan of each picture and save to CD. That was just ridiculous advice. Just one picture scanned at that resolution could easily be 200 megabytes. And 99% of those bytes are just wasted space. And that is exactly the reason why her hard drive is full. She needs to delete all those images and start over. You only need to scan at about half the number of pixels per inch that your printer can print dots per inch. And you get photo quality prints from printing at about 600 dpi. You can get very good prints from scans done at 200 dpi and if you scan at more than 300 dpi then you're just wasting memory and disk space and very, very much of it too, I might add. The human eye can not see any better resolution than that. Wayne League

Wayne is correct in his assessment. The choice of dpi depends primarily on the intended use. Most scanners default about 72 dpi which is usually sufficient for display on most monitors. Kodak uses 92 dpi on their Photo CDs. If the photos will always be displayed on a computer than the lower dpi (72-100) would probably be acceptable. If the plan is to print the photos then the higher dpi (200-300) would be a better choice. If unsure about the use then choose the higher range (200-300). Frank ----- Original Message ----- From: "Wayne League" <wleague@mindspring.com> To: <FAMILY-ORIGINS-USERS-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Friday, July 06, 2001 7:34 PM Subject: Re: [FO] Fwd: OT Scanner Problem > Linda Scheimann <linda514@ivillage.com> wrote: > > >She was advised to make a 2400 dpi scan of each picture and save to CD. > > That was just ridiculous advice. Just one picture scanned at that > resolution could easily be 200 megabytes. And 99% of those bytes are > just wasted space. And that is exactly the reason why her hard drive > is full. She needs to delete all those images and start over. > > You only need to scan at about half the number of pixels per inch that > your printer can print dots per inch. And you get photo quality > prints from printing at about 600 dpi. You can get very good prints > from scans done at 200 dpi and if you scan at more than 300 dpi then > you're just wasting memory and disk space and very, very much of it > too, I might add. The human eye can not see any better resolution > than that. > > Wayne League