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The Epson FastFoto FF-680W, $600, can scan one snapshot-size photo per second, front and back.
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(Some will scan slides and film but not as well as scanning service.) You’ll get fine results, too, from the scanner/copier component of an all-in-one (multifunction) printer. To scan prints, most flatbed scanners work fine the Canon CanoScan LLiDE 400 is less than $100, but you can also pay $1,000-plus for a letter-size scanner such as the Epson V850 Pro. It can scan the back side in the same pass if there’s writing or a datestamp. I have never scanned a print higher than 600, except in the case of scanning contact sheets,” which Cost captures at the scanner’s highest optical resolution, around 2400 dpi.Įpson FF-680W duplex photo scanner scans as fast as one photo per second at 300 dpi. “Any print made in an enlarger is unlikely to contain any more information than can be scanned at 600 dpi. “The recommendation to scan a print at 300 dpi by default and double to 600 for prints that may be enlarged when reproduced is a good rule of thumb,” Cost says. Here’s what you should consider, says Frank Cost, professor at Rochester Institute of Technology’s School of Photographic Arts & Sciences. Photo buffs can argue all day about scan resolutions and the best digital image format. You can scan at a resolution that allows you later to make prints and enlargements that are at least 300 dots per inch, so if you have a 4 x 6 print and you want to make a decent 8 x 12 enlargement, you’d want to scan at 600 dpi. What Scanning Resolution: 300 dpi, 600, More? The appreciation you get from the recipient will spur you on to spend another hundred, possibly thousand hours sorting and scanning on the rest of your family photos. Allow about two weeks’ turnaround to get the book back in your hands. Put a light letter S on the back to indicated a print was scanned. Scan 50 to 100 photos to give you enough for a photobook. Remember that good sheet-fed photo scanners do both sides at once, with no extra work on your part. Use a permanent marker on prints (back side) and wait a couple of seconds for the print to dry, to avoid smudges. With prints, write that info on the back of the first photo, or use a 4×6 index card with the info that scans before the first print from each roll of film. Copy down, photograph, or scan information from each photo envelope or slide box.
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If they’re in photo-processor envelopes, keep each envelope’s prints and negatives together (because later you may want to scan the negatives). Hunt down all the photos you can easily lay your hands on. It just has to be under the Christmas tree or nicely wrapped for an anniversary. 1 doesn’t have to exhaustively inclusive. To keep from getting depressed on day one, have a small-in-scope project in mind that you can do this week or this month – say a photobook of your parents from their first years married, or you and siblings at home as kids – and find photos that support that photobook. Siblings may have some of your parents’ photos and you have some. You may have negatives separated from the prints. You’ve probably got shoeboxes of photos in several places.
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