Should DPI always be on maximum when printing and scanning color pictures?

Answer 1

You're not going to notice a big change if you stick to the factory settings on the printer or scanner. However, if you want to blow a certain portion of a picture up, you'll want to scan at a higher DPI.

Pics scanned at a higher DPI use considerably more memory, and a lot of your computer's high memory will be used in the scanning/editing process. This will make your computer run much more slowly and may make photo editing programs run slowly or freeze during applications.

I suggest you choose a pic to scan and play around with the scanner settings. Make one copy using factory set DPI, one copy with a higher DPI and one with the highest. Print them out using the same printer setting - the preset factory settings. Label each pic and compare. Do the same with the printer settings.

The drawback of using the highest DPI for pic scans for me was when I scanned pics with a matte finish. The scan was so sensitive that it picked up the light reflected off every semi-glossy bump on the paper! It was a mess.

Good luck!

Answer 2

In a word, no. Results are better when you use the optimum settings for the hardware you are using.

Most printers work very well at 300 pixels per inch (ppi). (Although there is much confusion, DPI technically describes the size of inkjet spray dots, not the pixel density of the input image.)

If you give a printer lots more than 300 ppi, the driver throws away pixels and may print a worse image. Or the printer may try to spray too many dots into too small a pixel, and make a mess.

Scanners too have an optimum scanning ppi. If you tell it to scan at a ppi density larger than its rated optical resolution, it takes more than 1 image, then software interpolates the extra pixels. There is hardly ever an improvement from interpolation (inventing pixels).

If you stay within the optical resolution maximum, but scan more than you need, you waste storage space and may overload a printer as described above.

Save the high res scanning for when you really need it, like when scanning negatives.

Good Luck

Answer 3

Not necessarily unless you plan to print photo enlargements. Scanning at max dpi eats up your hard drive pretty fast. Think of what you'll be using it for, and scan accordingly.

Printing ideally would be optimized for your printer. Most printers are 300 dpi (at whatever size you're printing) except for Epson which is 360 dpi. However, most people can't tell the difference, and your print driver should compensate, so it doesn't make a big difference as long as you're reducing pixels instead of increasing dpi.

Answer 4

you have to be able to inform from the experiment how the revealed image will seem. at the same time as scanning small pictures, experiment them at a very severe decision (or in case your scanner helps, experiment them at 2 hundred% or three hundred%.) ideally i'd taken the with the help of Photoshop and fasten up the 'tiers' and small imperfections. i have scanned all our previous kin photos, a number of them more beneficial than one hundred years. The fantastic element in those previous pictures is stunning. They knew a thanks to image in lately. best of success

Answer 5

not if you can vector base the graphic to save processor work and improved detail. if its a texture mapped graphic then yeah you'll need to bit the bullet.