I have lots of photos I want to scan - mostly 4x6 and 5x7 prints. However, I'm not sure what resolution to scan them at. I scrap on 12x12 layouts at 300dpi. Yet if I scanned the photos at 300dpi, then I gather I would not be able to resize them any larger on my layout without losing quality. What would be a good compromise between a resolution that is large enough to give a generous size picture if I want them bigger than these standard print sizes, and something which is ridiculously large and hogs all the space on my hard drive? Thanks in advance for your time!

if you scan them at 600 and then change the resolution to 300 (without checking the resample box) the image will double in size but not lose quality. At that point you could size them down smaller if you want.

this is exactly what Cathy Zielke suggests in her book Clean & Simple Scrapbooking ... but I just don't understand how it works.

When I scan photographs, I scan at 600, save as a tif, clean it up as best I can thru PSCS2, then save as a high quality jpeg to use in my layouts, which I always create at 300.

Is this what I should be doing? And at what point would I change the resolution to 300 without checking the resample box? Do I even need to?

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Andy
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As far as I know, you could have 2 reasons to change the resoltuion to 300 from 600.

First reason...to enlarge your finished photo.
Second reason.....to reduce the file size.

If you check the resampe box, the image will stay the same size, but the file will be smaller.

HTH!

Thanks for your advice! If I understand coerrectly, if photos are scanned at 600ppi, they will be double the original print size. By reducing to 300, yes they will take up less room. However, when adding one of these 600dpi photos to a 300dpi background, they will automatically resize back to their original dimensions, so reducing to 300dpi for only this purpose becomes uneccessary. I think I finally understand it now!

you should change the resolution. you can increase it without affecting the quality.

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OK - I tried this. Can someone please tell me if these results are right?

I had my original TIF image which was at 600 resolution, 2215 x 3406 pixels and 3.692 x 5.677 inches - it was 21.6mb.

I first changed the resolution to 300 and then unchecked the resample box (which also automatically greyed out the "scale styles" and "constrain proportions" options - is this supposed to happen?) and did a "save as".

My new image is still 21.6mb and still 2215 x 3406 pixels, but now measures 7.383 x 11.353 inches.

I dragged both my original and new image onto my 300 resolution layout, and they are both the same size.

Is this the result I'm supposed to get? If so, what is the benefit of changing the resolution from 600 to 300? Sorry to sound so ignorant - I'm just trying to understand resolution better.

I

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Andy
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I am dying to hear the response to Andy. I am so darn ignorant about this stuff no matter how many kazillion times I try to understand it!