I have just recently purchased a HP Scanjet 4370 photo scanner with 3600 * 7200 DPI capacity. I also have a HP Deskjet 5420 photo printer that prints out at 4800 * 1200 DPI. My question is: If I want to scan either a smaller than wallett size photo or scan a 4 by 6 photo to a 8 by 10 size duplication, what is the recumended DPI setting that I should increase to? Right now I have scanned a smaller than wallett size photo at 2400 DPI into a 8 by 10, and it came out alittle below fare. I have scanned a 4 by 6 photo in 1200 DPI into a 8 by 10 and it came out beautiful. I am using Kodak Photo Gloss paper @ 6 mil. OK, whell I need some assistance in this subject. Thanks.
2007-01-04 17:33:02 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Scanners
You can't increase quality. Instead, you can only do your best to hide the loss. That's what you're doing when you increase the size of something.
Imagine drawing a picture using many dots. After you're finished, someone tells you that you need to re-draw the exact same picture (no additional detail) but use more dots. Well, the only way to do so is to break each dot you had before into smaller dots. So instead of one dot representing a single detail, now many dots are representing that single detail.
It may sound confusing, but just realize that you can't blow something up into a bigger size without grabbing "additional" detail to fill the space. Otherwise, it will look choppy or jagged like your blown up wallet photo. Usually one or two size increases is easy to get away with barely noticing the loss. Wallet to 8x10 is a little on the extreme side however!
2007-01-04 17:39:45 · answer #1 · answered by SirCharles 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
If you want the highest quality picture, you should always scan/ print at the highest resolution. This will take up disk space but it will minimise your loss of pixels.
Imagine you have a small passport size photo and you want it blown up to 8x10. There's nothing to fill the gaps, so the computer extrapolates it and that's why you get below average pics. When you did the 4x6 to 8x10, then there is less gap for the computer to assume so it came out better.
The basic principle for printing is that you should have at least 300 pixels per inch of photo. You can check your picture resolution - just right-click the picture, go to Summary, click Advanced at the bottom right. You can see the width & height in pixels.
So assuming its 1704 width x 2272 height, you can get 1704/300 and 2272/300 = 5.5x7.5 photo with minimal losses. You can probably get away with blowing it bigger but just remember the bigger you blow it up the more digital info you can potentially lose.
2007-01-04 20:08:26 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
You should always scan at the highest possible resolution that is available so that you are capturing as much detail as possible.
For printing, the higher the resolution, the better the quality, but there does come a point when you wont see a difference... then it just gets silly to waste the ink on going to a higher resolution.
I wouldn't print at anything higher than 300dpi -- but I would scan at the highest res possible.
2007-01-04 17:40:15 · answer #3 · answered by Biker B 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
When I ran my graphics company 2400-4800 was my norm... that was true optical not software enhanced. And at that resolution you need plenty of ram and HD space if you plan on editing anything over 4x6. A 8x10 at 2400 dpi will tax your system when you got to edit... it's beautiful when you working on it... but you gonna have to keep shrinking it down to see the full affect of what you done on screen
2007-01-04 20:08:39 · answer #4 · answered by Sentimental Treasures Photo 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋