Tips for Creating Great Digital Pictures from Paper Prints

If you are getting ready to scan some photographs to create digital pictures that you can edit, share, and store on your computer, there are a few things you should know before you begin. These tips will help you capture great digital pictures from your paper ones.

Carefully Check the Photo

Check the photograph over carefully before you scan it. While you cannot repair tears or scratches, a small fleck of dust will ruin your scan, and you can carefully wipe or brush it off. You can also use a lint-free cloth to remove smudges from the image, but do not wipe the image with anything other than a lint-free cloth made for photos or lenses. Even if the cloth feels soft, it could still damage the photograph.

Carefully Check the Scanner

Scanners seem to be lint magnets. Always clean the scanner glass carefully before you start scanning your photos. You can use the same equipment to clean the scanner glass that you would use to clean your camera's lens. Do not touch the scanner glass with your hands, and make sure it is completely dry before you put your pictures on it.

Choose Your Settings

If you are not used to scanning pictures, make sure you set the scanner to photo scanning. Also, specify the dpi, which is the resolution of the image. A dpi of 300 is a fair scan, but if you plan to do a lot of enlarging with your digital pictures, choose something 600 or higher. Keep in mind, however, that large images will take up a lot of room on your hard drive, so you may need to find a different storage option, such as a CD.

Save Before You Play

If you want to adjust your digital picture, save the first image the scanner captures before you do. This will ensure you have a clean copy to return to if your edits do not turn out the way you thought they would. Once you have the original saved, feel free to play with the color, crop the image, or try to enhance it however you see fit.

Other Options

If this sounds like too much work to get digital pictures from your old photos, you may be right, especially if you have a lot of pictures to work with. If you do not want to handle the pictures yourself, you can send them to a scanning service to have them scanned and burned onto a CD or DVD. You will get your original prints back, and you will also get a great digital picture that you can edit, share, and play with as you wish.

Before sending your pictures in, you can take the time to clean them. However, the best scanning services will do this for you, and they will have the right materials to do so, so you can actually send them in just as they are. You can still choose your resolution as you would if you were scanning the images at home, and since they will be stored on a CD, you will not have to worry about your computer's memory. Hiring a scanning service is the most convenient way to get a digital picture from a paper image.