The following is a post that appeared on my personal blog today. I thought it would help my customers out, so here you go...
I thought I'd post a few guidelines for scanning pictures here. If you are as old as me (*wink*), A LOT of your photographs are not digital. It's really a good idea to get them scanned and digitized.
Most scanners should allow you to set the dpi guidelines. For normal sized pictures (4x6 and bigger), you should set the dpi to 300. For smaller pictures (3x5s, wallet sizes, etc.) set the dpi to 600. This will take MUCH longer than the pictures being scanned at 300 (which explains why it took me ALL DAY to scan pictures), but it's totally worth it, because you'll be able to enlarge these pictures with no problem.
At the VERY LEAST, please please please fix the red eye in your pictures. Nothing annoys me more then seeing pictures where everyone looks possessed! This should be a simple fix using Photoshop, Picassa, or any photo editor you have.
Before scanning your photos, ORGANIZE them. It's doesn't take that long and it's really worth the time and effort. I usually just take a handful of photos and split them up into different piles. (some suggestions: one pile for each person in your family, trip photos, holiday photos, pet photos, etc.). Get some of those cool photo organizer boxes (they look like shoe boxes), and using the dividers and labels, place your "piles" of photos in the boxes. Then, very methodically, take each pile - scan it - put the pile back - and then move to the next pile.
It's tempting to just scan, scan, scan until you're through with all of the scanning, but I think that it's easier to organize your photos on your computer as you go. I just make a different file on my desktop for each "group/pile" of pictures and as I scan them, I throw them immediately into Photoshop, fix them, and then save them to the appropriate file. SUPER EASY. After scanning, say, all of the photos of my family members into their own separate files, I'll make a new file entitled Our Family Photos (or something like that), and drag all of the individual files into that one master file. Then, I drag that file into my Photo directory.
As I take pictures now with my digital camera, I just upload them to my laptop and put them into the appropriate file.
It really isn't that hard to take that HUGE box full of photos and digitize and organize. Think about how pleased your extended family will be when you present them with a CD full of family photos! I've been working on my family photos (ancestors) for awhile now, and in the very near future, I'll have almost ALL of the existing photos digitized and put onto CDs to distribute to all of my Aunt/Uncles/Cousins/etc. Someone has got to do it - and if it's this easy, maybe that someone should be you! In just a few weeks time, you'll have all of your photos in digital form, and ready to make into a book! Good luck.
If you decide that you just don't have the time to do this yourself, this is something that you can hire me to do. I charge 50 cents per scan - that price includes cropping to the desired size, color fixes, red-eye reduction, and minor photo repair. Plus, I'll put all of your photos onto a CD for free! You can order additional CDs for $5.00 each. You can contact me at kara(at)cherishbound(dot)com.
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