Scanning dpi and finished image pixels...

[CliffG]

This is a question about scanning dpi and finished image pixels.

I want to scan some photos to be displayed on my computer screen at 1280X1024. The photos are old and will need some touch up and cropping. The scanner has options for scanning at 150, 300, 600, 720 ... 2400, etc. dpi. I see two options and frankly after trying both, my eyes really do not see any difference but I want to know if one method is better than another or if anyone has a better method for being able to display the best image possible on my screen.

1) scan the photo at the highest resolution the scanner is capable of, clean it up, crop it (fixed aspect ratio) to the area I want, and then resize it to 1280X1024.

2) scan the photo at a resolution such that after cropping the image to the area I want I will be left with a image that is 1280X1024, then clean it up. In other words, scan it at a resolution that I will not have to resize for my screen.

3) or???

Thanks for any info you all have ... Cliff

[TonyW]

You certainly wouldn't want 1). 2) might be OK but if you do a lot of retouching it's better to have more pixels to work with. So I'd go for somewhere in between - what in between is depends on the size of your pictures. I'd probably use 300 for a 4x6 for screen use although watch out that the 300 really is 300 - some scanners have been known to call 100 300 (by counting R G and B separately). A great resource on the subject of scanning resolution is:

www.scantips.com (http://www.scantips.com)

Tony

[CliffG]

You certainly wouldn't want 1). 2) might be OK but if you do a lot of retouching it's better to have more pixels to work with. So I'd go for somewhere in between - what in between is depends on the size of your pictures. I'd probably use 300 for a 4x6 for screen use although watch out that the 300 really is 300 - some scanners have been known to call 100 300 (by counting R G and B separately). A great resource on the subject of scanning resolution is:

www.scantips.com (http://www.scantips.com)

Tony
Thanks for the info and the link to the scanning tips ... that is something I am definitely going to read through!