I'm scanning at 300 dpi, which normally seems to be enough.

Recently I read that somebody who seems to scan an artbook per day scans at 600 dpi and then reduces the size, to get the quality improved.

Is anybody here using tricks like this to improve the quality of your scans?

PS: My scanner can scan only stuff up to the size of a DIN A4 page, which often isn't enough. Does anybody out there own a DIN A3 scanner?

My scanner is doing it for me, i scan them et which size i need them and then
the program from my scanner is doing the rest for me.
I don´t really have a dpi for all the picture, by small ones I use more dpi than at the big ones.
Most I need the contrast in Photoshop, when i have to imprve the quality that`s all.

Unfortunately, no. :P Only A4 (seems smaller sometimes, too >.>;;). And I'm pretty sure I scan at 300, too. ._. <-not the most tech-literate person around. I can hardly handle the basics, much less tricks for better quality. Meh.

Eck. I'm trying to submit some scans, and they all scan at terribly low quality. It's making me sad. I admit I dont own the best piece of equipment (an HP 1210xi all-in-one printer scanner copier...) but still..they shouldnt look this bad!

My computer starts actign weird if I scan it at 600dpi I have tried though. HUGE, yaya 300dpi is enough though. ^^;

I always scan at 300dpi, since all the publishers or other clients want their covers senr to them that way. I guess it is a all around nice quailty. I might try scanning around 600dpi for my prints and then downsizing. I have a tendency to stay away from the 600dpi...since my scanner(even though it gives that option) gets real stupid when I try it.

i borrow my friend's cannon scanner. it can theoretically scan up to >600dpi, but i never tried. usually i scan at 300 dpi, but if i want to make a 1600 x 1200 wall, i scan at 600 dpi, then resize the image. 600dpi scans are huge, so it would help if u have at least P4 processor, 256 RAM and 40 GB HD.

I guess I should update this thread:
I'm now scanning regularly on 600 dpi and downsize the scan afterwards + some cleaning.
I once tried at 1200 dpi (that's still not the max that my scanner can do ^_^), but I got a warning that I had too few memory to scan an entire page at that resolution.

Quote by asuk600dpi scans are huge, so it would help if u have at least P4 processor, 256 RAM and 40 GB HD.

They are huge, indeed. I once put together a double side scan I made in 600 dpi and it ended up around 76 MB. @_@

PS: I've a P4 with 3,0 GHz, 1 GB ddr-ram and a 120gb HDD.

what the best scanner to do this?

As big as I can!!

I scan at 1200 dpi then resize the scan down to around 3000-4000 pixels.

I also have a pretty crummy scanner, a Visioneer One-Touch... um... I forget the model number but it is actually USB (probably 1.1) and it came free with a Dell PC I bought in 2000. You have to trick the software to get it installed on Win2K, but it works. Slowly though because I messed up the software installation on my two better PCs, so it's set up on my Pentium 2/400 Mhz machine. A full page 8.5x11 scan at 1200dpi comes out as about 400 MB or more. Which is tough for the machine to handle with 256 MB of RAM. So it gets saved as a Jpg, then I transfer it to another PC to maniuplate the image (rotate, resize, touch up etc).

I scan at 2000 and then shrink however much I need.

I scan at 300 dpi, then use fractal image-enlarging programs (read my thread to find out more), to boost it up to around 1200 dpi, then make some quality adjusments, such as adding noise, smart blurring, etc, then reduce it to around 600dpi, still I upload the 300 dpi one, and the quality is nevertheless good enough (but sometimes, the filesize is insanely big, in this case I use JPEG compression, which is quite unfavorable)

scanner : crappy HP ScanJet 5100C

Mostly i use 300dpi never really tried anything higher

That entirely depends on the quality and size of the item i am scanning. if the item is scratched, wrinkeled, spotted, or has any othe defect that breaks the top lyer of paper the scanning resoulition is 600-1000 DPI. however if the materiel is not damaged that badly it is merely thes sise that determins the DPI. My pride is that i do bot provide scans under 3000-2000 pixels. So in order to get a good san that captures all the CMYK dots that is the basis for the final blurring i leant to the higher DPI. A inside the DVD case extra or the front half of a DVD jacket is scanned at 450 DPI, giving the perfect size. An entire DVD jacket is scanned at 300-350 dpi depending on printing quality. After a while you will all develop a method. This is mine

sorry for reving this thread but is there a reason to scan over 1200 ? my scanner can scan up to 19200 PPI (is there a differernce between DPI and ppi?) how do you know how much resolution the picture will be?

btw im using a HP printer/scanner

At least 1000 pixels. Normally - it's around 1500 pixels here actually - always scanned at such high qualities until my scanner decided to give in and broke down on its own. Oh well - got a new better scanner, so it's no problem now.

i think its abou 4090 or so DPI for me but i'm not sure haven't cheacked in like a year

I usually scan at 300dpi, but between 600 and 900 is probably the best. But I use the scanners at my school, I've only had a computer since January.

For the least, 300dpi is usually for black&white scanning...and 600dpi is usually for scanning colored materials...That's the common setting. But seriously if anone wana have higher resolution, then just go beyond that limit...and the size (mb) will go all the way up...
Just go for 300dpi =b/w, 600dpi = color if u wanna keep the size small ad in good quality...

I didn't know that scans could go as high as 19200. I would like to know if there is a difference is the quality or does it really not matter?

I always scan at 300dpi unless I want to work with it, then I scan at 600dpi and afterwards scale it down to half the number of pixels so my mistakes will get smaller ^_^

it all depends on the source material... period.... end of story...

In my oppinion the best way to tell what resolution you should scan at, is at what point can you see the individual print dots. Once you make the individual print dots the right size, you only make things worse when you scan larger. around 150dpi for newspaper print, around300 for magazines, and around 600 for art books, for expensive artbooks i go between 600-1200 dip.

The point is, if you go stupidly high, your scanner will scan one little ink dot to cover a stupid size of say 50 pixels on the screen at 1:1, At this point its rather silly because your not getting sharper images, your just wasting space.

a good rule of thumb is.... make 1 print dot cover 2-4 pixles, at that point, you can do your best image manipulation, cleaning, removing of scratches, removing text, etc....

when your done, use your gausian blur, smart blur's and any other filters you want to throw at it, and you will have amazing results.

When it comes to actually scanning photographs, and negatives, ... there is no limit,

i once scanned a 1 inch by 2 inch black and white photo from the 40's for a guy who wanted to see what a scanner was capable of, I asked him if he had any wallet photos... he said he did, and handed me this folded picture of a white triangle with a black background, and it had blue hand writeing on it that had blead from a peice of paper onto it.

scanning it in at 2300 dpi, i was able to not only turn the white triangle into his wife in her wedding gown, i was able to remove the fold, clean up all the little scratches, remove the blue ink by just keeping the red layer, and turn the black background into the wedding hall where he got married... printed it out 8½ by 11 on a laser jet printer... and it looked like the photo was taken yesterday.

So once again, ... it all depends on your source material.

Some scanners can go to 19200 dpi, but it's usually not practical for normal scans... I had a full page in my scanner I just bought (HP Photosmart 2610) and told the program to scan it in at 19200 just for a goof. Then it told me it'd be a 103 GB filesize and, needless to say, me and my 60gb hard drive gracefully backed down.

But if anybody has been brave enough to try something like that, does it make a big quality difference after size reduction? And how long did it take?