Today I’m going to talk about resolution. And I have a bit of a painful (to me) story to share with you.

On my wedding day, we had several people taking photographs. We had disposable cameras for the guests to take photos; we also had a good artist/photographer friend taking formal photos with her digital camera. Well, as they often do, misunderstandings occurred and my wedding photos were deleted off of the photographer’s camera before she made a back-up disk. She had already printed proofs of the photos; some were 5×7, but sadly most were much smaller. But that’s life, and that’s what I had to deal with.

The first thing I did (after crying, that is) was to scan my wedding proofs. But they didn’t scan as well as I had hoped. It was then that the issue of resolution first became important to me. My scanner (and most that I have used) have 200 dpi as their default scan setting. Well, we as scrappers generally work in 300 dpi. And our scanners are adjustable and can scan in 300 dpi as well. In fact, my cheap Kodak printer can scan in 400 or 600 dpi (it actually goes up to 9600 but I haven’t tried that!). By going into my scanner and changing the scan resolution, I was able to scan a clearer photo that enlarged a bit better than the original 200 dpi scan. This allowed me to at least be able to print off some 4×6 photos that were not fuzzy.

Now, you might not have teeny tiny wedding photos to deal with (and I hope you do not!), but you probably have some old family photos that you might like to scan, either for scrapping, sharing, or just for the peace of mind of having a back-up copy. The heritage and childhood photos that I have scanned have turned out much better when I have scanned at 400 and at 600 dpi. Keep in mind that the higher the dpi, the longer it will take for your photo to scan. Flaws in high resolution scans will also be clearer; thankfully those can usually be fixed with your photo editing program.

Scanning in those old photos can be time consuming, but saving those irreplaceable memories for future generations is well worth it. Happy scrapping, and happy scanning!