This tip was printed from the MalekTips Computer and Technology Help and Tips website at http://malektips.com.

Scanner Misc - Scan with the Highest Practical Resolution

SUMMARY: Use higher scanner resolutions to increase the resultant image quality.

When scanning anything, my personal philosophy is to always scan using the highest practical resolution appropriate for the source medium or at least close to the highest resolution available by your scanner. I'm not saying you need to scan your photos at 4800 dpi, but don't scan them at 150, either - perhaps use 300 or 600 dpi.

Yes, scanning with high resolutions takes more time to scan, more time to load the resulting documents, and requires more hard drive space to store the documents, but you can always downsample (lower the resolution) documents after scanning. The results nearly always turn out fine this way, unlike trying to add more resolution to photos previously scanned at low resolutions when you can't find the originals.